‘Rachel Reeves still blaming Tories for her fiscal decisions’
Chancellor Rachel Reeves gave a powerful speech on the first day of the Labour conference, highlighting government victories, attacking political enemies – but also laying the groundwork for a difficult November budget.
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In brief…
- Rachel Reeves spoke on the first day of the 2025 Labour conference, delivering a speech that went some way to countering suggestions and criticism that the government is already on the decline.
- The News Agents say her words were confusing, claiming to have “fixed the foundations” but needing to make more “difficult decisions” in coming months.
- Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall say Reeves, and other Labour MPs, continue to criticise the previous Tory government to lay the groundwork for November’s budget, when taxes will likely rise.
What’s the story?
The Rachel Reeves who took to the stage on the opening day of the Labour conference was not the one seen in tears in the House of Commons in July this year.
Confident, direct and enthusiastic, she spoke about Labour’s successes during its first year in power, rallied against right-wing rivals Reform UK and the former Tory government – but also spoke about more difficult decisions the government would need to take in the future.
The conference hall was packed with party members, there to support but also – Lewis Goodall says – “desperate for answers” from Reeves, Keir Starmer and other key cabinet ministers.
Starmer’s government has faced fierce criticism for unpopular policy decisions, as well as its failure to tackle the rise of Reform UK, which leads voting intention in most opinion polls.
“Labour has felt like it has an election six months away and it's one that they feel like they're definitely going to lose,” Lewis says.
“As opposed to still being a pretty freshly minted government with four years of the mandate still to run.”
Reeves, he adds, did well to counter that narrative with her Monday speech - including her critical and precise attacks on Reform UK and its policies, including highlighting important national schemes that it has voted against in the past year.
‘Reeves has no compelling argument for these difficult decisions’
Ultimately, her speech was one that left The News Agents – and likely those party members looking for answers – in a state of confusion.
Lewis says Reeves claiming to have “fixed the foundations”, but also warning of having new “tough decisions” to make suggests those foundations aren’t fixed at all.
“She does not have a compelling account to the party, or the country, as to why it is that she is continuing to have to make these difficult decisions,” he says.
“Part of the reason for that is because she has imposed the fiscal conditions on which she now operates, and partly as well, because the growth that she promised has not been forthcoming.”
The “difficult decisions” Reeves spoke of are widely expected to be a rise in VAT, income tax and National Insurance in the November budget, which would break the rules she set for herself before Labour won power.
Starmer has said “the manifesto still stands”, however, suggesting the government may look for an alternative to work around tax rises.
Is it time to stop talking about the Tories?
The shadow of 14 years of Tory government has loomed over Labour since it won the 2024 general election, and its presence was felt in the Liverpool conference hall.
More than a year into its time in power, Labour is still spending a lot of time talking about what happened before – and The News Agents believe it’s the upcoming budget that led Reeves to invoke the Tory spirit at conference.
“Reeves spoke an awful lot about the Tories, because actually, she still wants to be able to blame the Conservatives at the next budget for some of the fiscal decisions that she's going to have to take,” says Jon Sopel.
“And so it was very important to keep the Conservatives in the crosshairs, even though you've been in government for the last 15 months.”
Lewis believes it's time for Labour to look beyond the previous government for reasons the UK is struggling.
“Labour’s diagnosis is that the Tory party was feckless, useless, disputatious, driven with internal splits,” he says.
“And you may well think that all of those things were true, but they are not solely the root structural causes of British decline.”
He says since coming to power, Labour has developed no “sophisticated analysis” beyond the incompetence of the Tories to explain the deterioration of the country to voters.