Rachel reeves

Robert Jenrick – We will have to ‘learn to live with the virus’ The Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick was the government’s chief spokesman today as England edges ever closer towards the planned relaxation of Covid restrictions on 19 July. Jenrick continued to make positive noises about this date, telling Trevor Phillips that data being examined by the Prime Minister was looking promising – and suggesting that another postponement of ‘Freedom Day’ was highly unlikely. However, Jenrick’s cautious comments did not rule out the return of restrictions in the winter, should cases continue to rise: RJ: It does seem as if we can now move forward… to a much more permissive

Labour has been making much of the issue of lobbying since the Greensill scandal broke last month, with Rachel Reeves calling for a ‘proper’ investigation ‘to rein in the lobbyists and lift standards in this great democracy.’ But attention has now turned to the opposition’s own frontbenchers– particularly in the House of Lords where both Charlie Falconer and Sue Hayman have been revealed as having ties to lobbying firms. Falconer is a partner at US law company Gibson Dunn which offers ‘political lobbying’ advice in the UK while Hayman is a board member of London outfit Grayling. Now Steerpike can reveal a third frontbencher on the red benches moonlighting as

George Eustice – David Cameron’s behaviour ‘is acceptable’ Both Andrew Marr and Sophy Ridge were joined this morning by the Environment Secretary George Eustice – and much of their conversations focused on the recent lobbying debacle sparked by the former Prime Minister’s texts to the Chancellor Rishi Sunak. Cameron was attempting to secure support loans on behalf of the financial services firm Greensill Capital, but was unsuccessful and the business filed for insolvency in March. Marr questioned Eustice over whether the current lobbying rules were too soft and ineffectual: AM: Do you think that what David Cameron has done is acceptable? GE: …Well, it is acceptable because [it was] within

Opponents of demagogues from Donald Trump to Nigel Farage have suffered from a huge political disadvantage. They were either politicians who were or had been in power, and had to take responsibility for all the failures and compromises power brings as inevitably as blisters on weary feet. Or they were voters, who thought that mainstream politicians were preferable to the leaders of the far right and left. Demagogues could dismiss them as establishment lackeys, Blairites, liberal elitists, Republicans in name only, and so on. And the dismissals could work. For how many wised-up 21st century voters wants to think him or herself as some establishment drone, some dupe of a

In recent weeks, Westminster politicians have found themselves compared to the characters of House of Cards and Game of Thrones over their post-referendum antics. Happily, parliamentarians were able to put such differences aside on Wednesday night as they took a well-deserved break from work at The Spectator summer party. As Labour’s Rachel Reeves and Liz Kendall caught up with Liz Truss, Laurence Fox — the Lewis actor — put on a passionate display for the cameras with his male companion for the evening. Meanwhile with a Tory leadership contest underway, Theresa May made sure to do the rounds and rally support for her campaign at the champagne-fuelled bash. Her efforts did not go unrewarded, with Fox confiding to

Although the EU referendum is supposed to be an issue which transcends party politics, the memo is yet to be received by Richard Burgon. Labour’s blunder-prone shadow City minister managed to bother those on both sides of the House today thanks to his question on the EU. RB: If the British people vote to leave the European union, will the Prime Minister resign — yes or no? DC: No "No" says @David_Cameron when asked by @RichardBurgon about resigning if the #EUref sees the UK vote to leave the EU https://t.co/j0ucznLHAH — BBC Daily Politics and Sunday Politics (@daily_politics) March 9, 2016 Given that Labour official backing the Remain camp, it’s hard to see

With Jeremy Corbyn announced as the new leader of the Labour party, shadow health minister Jamie Reed immediately resigned from the shadow cabinet. However, it seems the party aren’t too down hearted by the news. In fact Labour heavyweight John Prescott doesn’t even know who the Labour MP for Copeland is. Speaking on BBC News — seemingly unaware he was live — Prescott admitted he did not know who the former shadow health minister was. When asked by Jane Hill, what he made of Jamie Reed already standing down, Prescott replied that he didn’t know who he was: ‘Who is Jamie Reed? Is he in our party?’ Watch @johnprescott: Who’s Jamie

Who is to blame for Ed Miliband getting the job projections so embarrassingly wrong? Famously, he used to go about advocating his ratio of doom: that there would be one private sector job lost for every state sector job shed by the coalition. Given that George Osborne intended to shed half a million government jobs, Miliband’s maths predicted a million jobs lost. Instead there were two million created – with 5 jobs created for every 1 shed by the government. His employment spokeswoman, Rachel Reeves, was challenged about this today in the welfare debate on BBC Two’s Daily Politics. She replied: ‘We were quoting numbers from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility… So the Office for Budget Responsibility got

When Ed Miliband ran for the Labour leadership in 2010, his supporters boasted that he spoke human. Tonight, in a question time session with a group of young people broadcast on BBC3, Miliband showed flashes of his ability to connect with an audience. But, overall, it was a patchy performance. Miliband was very good on some subjects and dealt neatly with some left-field questions. However, he still doesn’t have the right answer to the question of whether he would do a deal with the SNP after the election in the event of a hung parliament. He dismissed the ideas as ‘a piece of nonsense from the Tories’. But, in contrast

Most people went into Work and Pensions Questions expecting Iain Duncan Smith to be in a tetchy fame of mind following this morning’s report on food banks. As a matter of fact, the Work and Pensions Secretary was very, very keen to tell us as often as he possibly could how ‘seriously’ he was taking that report. And the Opposition, which claims to care a lot more about these matters, completely failed to make productive use of its time grilling him. Some Tory ministers were worried that an impending Labour reshuffle at some point this term might see Rachel Reeves moved on to their patch, as she’s deemed very good

Rachel Reeves’ interview on BBC Daily Politics may have been excruciating at times (below), but was it really the ‘car crash’ that the Tories are today claiming? Matthew Hancock is crowing that she pointed out the conditions necessary for reducing debt. She said:- ‘We are planning to get the national debt down, which means you have to be running a surplus to be able to do that. If you are going to have national debt falling you have to have a surplus overall… To get debt falling you have to have a surplus on overall spending.’  Whether wittingly or not, Reeves went further than Ed Balls. She said she wants a

Rachel Reeves, the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, gave a speech earlier this week on the future of the welfare system. The choice that she presented was one between ‘…failing programmes and waste driving up social security spending under the Tories’, and Labour’s reforms to ‘…make work pay and get social security spending under control’. To claim that the current government has failed to control benefit spending is a bold tactic from a Labour Party economic spokesperson, and the numbers used to support the argument were so striking that they deserve some scrutiny. Claim One: The Conservatives have spent £13bn more on social security in this parliament than they had

I’ve always admired Jon Cruddas, and worried a little at his being placed at the centre of Ed Miliband’s policy unit. What happens if he talks sense? Well, my fears were well-founded: a good dollop of common sense has emerged from Cruddas, through the medium of today’s Sunday Times splash. On 21 June, we learn, Cruddas was speaking to Compass, a left-wing policy group, and was kind (too kind) about the IPPR’s ‘Condition of Britain’ report – which I’d recommend to conservatives with a taste for schadenfreude as it’s almost comically vacuous and exposes a Labour movement entirely bereft of new ideas. Cruddas was speaking about the report, saying that it took the

Here’s a funny thing: Labour claims to be the ‘party of work’, but the Tories have reasonable claim to be the workers’ party, given that they’ve overseen the creation of 1.5 million new jobs. Anyway, it was one of the slogans that shadow work and pensions secretary Rachel Reeves incanted on her Sunday Politics interview this morning, when she seemed to have a pretty torrid time of it. listen to ‘Rachel Reeves ’ on Audioboo She had to defend her party’s leader against his cratering approval ratings and the embarrassment of a leaked election strategy document which shows that people don’t trust him on immigration, the economy or welfare. And she had