Newspaper Reader is un-surprised.

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Mar 27, 2025

Headline: Keir Starmer finally has a vision for Britain

Sub-headline: Energised by international events, the Prime Minister has defined his ideas for the state.

Editor: The Reader can’t be surprised by this would-be hagiography of Starmer, by Mr. Marr. Yet the pestioners with out heat, and the claim of 28 Million Buget hole from Rachel Reeves demonstrates what?

Rachel ReevesBritain’s Labour Government Says It Inherited a $28 Billion Budget Hole

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor of the Exchequer, cut some infrastructure funding and pensions benefits, adding that more “difficult decisions” would come later this year.

Editor: Here from the BBC.

Where does the £22bn claim come from?

The £21.9bn figure was in an audit published by the Treasury at the end of July – just a few weeks after Labour came to power.

The document looked at areas of public spending which are set to go over budget this year, including:

• Public sector pay rises
• Overspending on certain projects, such as supporting the asylum system
• Unforeseen costs, such as inflation being higher than expected
• Military assistance to Ukraine.

At the time, the OBR wrote that it had not been made aware of the extent of overspends and said it would investigate.

Was there a big overspend?

To put those figure into context, in the Spring Budget it was expected that total public spending this year would be £1,226bn. Either £9.5bn or £22bn would be a small proportion of that.

But by the standards of government overspends, either would be unusually large.

Spending was much higher than expected due to Covid in 2020 and 2021 and also almost £10bn higher than expected in 2023 because of inflation caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Outside those years there have not been overspends close to £9.5bn.

This piece was originally published on 3 September 2024 and has been updated following the OBR report that accompanied the 30 October Budget

Editor : What is The Reader to think ? Yet here is Reeves latest excuse making:

Editor: The Patient Reader finally emerges from the fog of would-be hagiography, to what resembles critical evaluation, of a kind !

…

At this point a hefty dose of scepticism is appropriate. Leaders of right and left have said similar things throughout the past century, while government has grown ever bigger and slower to respond. This week’s new Planning and Infrastructure Bill, read carefully, actually increases regulatory safeguards.

And Starmer, the former public prosecutor, is not ready to confront the problem of judicial review, which makes it harder for ministers to take decisions and has had a chilling effect across Whitehall. He will get there, but not yet. He believes that he has the tenacity others have lacked; that when he gets his teeth into something he tends not to let go. We will see.

But meanwhile, his argument deserves a hearing. We live in a political culture which thinks of politics as fundamentally about visions and values whereas he sees it as about levers and pulleys – what people say vs how to build a more effective machine.

Toolmaking, his late father’s trade, is not simply a working-class job. It is a highly skilled and difficult art – turning out precisely crafted implements for the real, material world. Perhaps it isn’t so hard to see where the Prime Minister’s obsession with “what actually works” and his contempt for the easier answers of populism, comes from.

At any rate, here is Starmerism. And if, grinding remorselessly through Whitehall, it can yet produce a more effective state – a big “if” – it may turn out to be what demoralised, divided Britain needs.

Editor : Final consideration: Starmer was the polical product of the the purge of Jeremy Corbyn from the New Labour of Tony Blair, and the Toxic Political Mythologist like @Freedland at The Guardian!

Newspaper Reader.