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James O’Brien speaks to listeners as Chancellor Rachel Reeves scrambles to get the economy growing, unveiling her latest changes in the Spring Statement.
Speaking in the House of Commons, she laid out plans on how the Labour government plans to get more people back into the workplace while saving the economy £4.8billion.
"If you can work, you should work," the Chancellor told Parliament on Wednesday.
Plans for greater protection for those in work were first championed by Deputy PM Angela Rayner while Labour was in opposition and have since gone to become a key offering from the party.
Listen to the full show on Global Player: https://app.af.globalplayer.com/Br0x/LBCYouTubeListenLive
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0:00
So I just almost feel a, what's the word I want
0:03
A sense of relief when I turn my attention instead to traditional politics
0:07
Traditional confusing politics. Questions that do not involve a cessation of normality
0:13
So British politics post Boris Johnson. Is that fair? No, of course not
0:17
I always forget about her. So easy to do, isn't it? It's so easy to forget about Liz Truss
0:24
I even forgot her name for a minute then. So post Liz Truss, even Rishi Sunak, for all his faults, tried to return to a semblance of normality
0:33
I know that integrity, professionalism and accountability lasted about four hours until he gave Suella Braverman her job back
0:39
But he was clearly, I think history will probably be quite kind to him and to Theresa May because he didn't have, I mean, it's not even a disregard for the truth that typifies a Trump or a Johnson. it's
0:54
what's a bigger word than disregard I don't just mean the numbers of letters
0:58
in the words I mean it's not even a contempt it's as if
1:02
I've got John Ronson on full disclosure this week one of my favourite thinkers
1:06
and writers and people actually he's an absolutely lovely man and he's fascinated by this it was his
1:12
book The Psychopath Test that first alerted me to the existence of people who
1:16
are not constructed in the same way that we are that's a bit presumptuous of me
1:21
apologies if you are actually a psychopath for excluding you from that generalization
1:25
And it's as if we're expecting, oh, they're not very moral, or they don't have much empathy
1:30
But these are stupid comparisons to make because it's like comparing a diesel engine
1:36
to an electric car. They're completely different things. They might actually look similar in some circumstances
1:42
but they're completely different things. So it's not a disregard for the truth
1:46
It's not a contempt for the truth. It's not, Rich, thank you for trying
1:49
but it's not a disdain for the truth. It's an almost innate inability to acknowledge the truth
1:57
Do you honestly think when Donald Trump said that he couldn't remember calling Vladimir Zelensky a dictator
2:04
do you think he, I don't think he realised he was lying. Do you know what I mean
2:08
It's like I'm trying to apply normality to abnormality. Trump, if you could even hook him up to a lie detector and you said, did you call Zelensky a dictator
2:18
he'd say no that doesn't sound like the kind it wouldn't start beep anyway enough of that because
2:22
we return today oblivious is a good word tam thank you oblivious to the truth it could be that i don't
2:28
know if it's an antipathy um karen indulging my enthusiasm for made up german compound words
2:36
goes for uh blind and trutzen but that's not bad actually is that a real one or is that one that
2:41
you've made up and anyway that that is just a i think a helpful distinction between what happens
2:48
when we talk about american politics and what happens today is we must turn our attention to
2:53
british politics four and a half million children in the uk were growing up in poverty in the year
2:59
to april 2024 staff at a blackpool charity have received phone calls from terrified people so have
3:07
actually yesterday as claimants struggle to understand how the new disability benefit reductions in the spring statement will affect them a third of children roughly live in some form of deprivation Those with lone parents or two or more siblings or in families where
3:24
someone is disabled are hugely overrepresented among the poorest households. Hardship of a scale
3:31
and severity that I've said to you a million times on this program is really, really difficult to
3:38
understand. If it's difficult for people who care to understand imagine how easy it is for people who don't care
3:44
to carry on not caring. I use this little illustration again. Let's go down the side of the sofa
3:52
instead of the toilet floor or yesterday I asked how much money
3:56
would you dive into a rancid toilet bowl for should you have accidentally dropped it in
4:04
so how much can you really really really not afford to lose
4:07
How small is that sum? And for some people, it will be 50p or a pound, possibly less, 20 pence
4:14
People who are occasionally or often to be found scrabbling around between the sofa cushions looking for enough money for a pint of milk
4:22
It's real and it exists. And I only know that because of doing this job over the years
4:28
Perfectly possible, of course, to do a job like this and remain completely ignorant of that reality
4:32
to remain convinced that while parents required to pay VAT on school fees for their children
4:39
for them the struggle is real. But for people who are running out of money before they've run out a month
4:45
then for them the invitation to attack is constant and clear. So you'd expect Labour to be moving into that space, to be reducing that problem
4:57
17% of workers surveyed by the Trades Union Congress revealed that they'd skipped a meal to save money over the last three-month period
5:07
Now, that's not the stuff of the workhouse, but to skip a meal because you have run out of money before you've run out of month
5:16
You've run out of money after you've run out of food, and you've run out of food before you've run out of month
5:20
You're waiting for the next pay packet. And remember, that's a survey of workers by the Trades Union Congress, and that's almost a fifth
5:26
That's almost one in five over a three-month period have skipped a meal. Many more will, of course, have skipped more than one meal
5:33
So there's shortages of food, housing, clothing, toiletries, furniture, headteachers tellers. Pupils are turning up exhausted because they're not getting enough sleep, and they're distressed by feelings of shame
5:43
which, of course, adds to the phrase we used yesterday, the phenomenon of the body-keeping score
5:49
that's the most heartbreaking thing about all of this the body keeping score stuff you go through
5:57
in childhood even if you successfully persuade yourself that it hasn't done any harm newsflash
6:02
it has the body keeps score and then there's the communication problem the workers rights bill is a
6:09
really impressive piece of legislation tougher than even some of the critics have realized
6:16
VAT on private schools is a good policy designed to reduce inequalities designed to reduce gaps reducing the gap at the top if you like bringing it closer to the mean The inheritance tax loophole for farmers again a policy that is bold in the sense that it invites enormous criticism and attack from the kind of people who spend a lot
6:39
of time urging us to, please, someone spare a thought for the billionaires and the struggle
6:44
they're facing at the moment, or the millionaires. So the loophole for farmers on inheritance tax
6:49
being closed, taking clean energy more seriously than any other government, any other government
6:54
And ever so much so, as we may discuss later, Just Stop Oil feel that they can hang up their soup cans because mission has been accomplished
7:04
The nationalization of the railways is on the agenda. Those are what you would call classic Labour policies, all of them
7:11
And there's quite a lot there considering they've only been in power for nine months. That's a decent record
7:17
There's a good piece in The Guardian today by Andy Beckett, also in The Guardian today, a headline that includes the words moral repugnance to describe some reactions to that spring statement and its possible ramifications
7:29
But there's a historian called Nick Garland who wrote speeches for Rachel Reeves when she was shadow chancellor
7:37
And he describes the Starmer government as plain old labor, which means he simply tries to make concrete cumulative improvements to many lives
7:50
and in an almost utilitarian sense, it would appear, is prepared to risk the decline of other lives
8:01
So here's a question I can't answer, and that might be a problem, okay
8:07
Who are they appealing to? 0345 6060973. And I mean, hilarious though it is to hear from Continuity Corbyn on a daily basis
8:21
I'm afraid you can't go down that road without acknowledging or including the nationalization of railways, the VAT on private schools, the inheritance tax loophole for farmers being closed, the promotion of clean energy and the huge improvements in workers' rights up to and including the minimum wage for the lowest earners
8:40
So you can't – well, you can, of course you can. But I'm not really interested in that sort of lazy rhetoric. I'm interested in a genuine answer to this question. Who are they appealing to? Or possibly more interestingly, who are they trying to appeal to
8:59
0345 6060 973 is the number that you need. A historian of the Labour movement writing in Renewal
9:11
a centre-left journal this morning, describes the government as plain old Labour
9:15
It doesn't feel that way to me. But I only really became politically conscious
9:19
after Tony Blair became Prime Minister. His prioritisation of reducing child poverty
9:25
well, I think that goes back to Clement Attlee and Anaya in Bevan, doesn't it
9:29
But they seem to be at the moment upsetting almost anybody except perhaps those of us who are possessed of slightly longer memories than the last nine months and can conceive of any circumstances whatsoever in which you sort of consider them comparable to the dog days of Boris Johnson or Liz Truss or even David Cameron But what the plan What the politics of it
9:55
I've got a theory. And I'm going to run it by you quickly
9:59
It's box fresh, this one. Brand new. And I will refer back to that word utilitarianism
10:07
And I hope I'm wrong in a way. I think that the Labour government's relationship with fairness is changing
10:16
I think that Keir Starmer and to an extent Rachel Reeves are trying to appeal to people who feel that they have been ignored
10:26
and that does not include at this point in time people in receipt of welfare payments
10:35
I think they're trying to appeal to people possibly in that 17% of workers
10:40
that the TUC have identified as having skipped meals and I think the risk they're taking
10:46
is that the rhetoric of moral repugnance while it resonates with people like me
10:51
and possibly with you it doesn't resonate with resonate? it doesn't resonate with a worker who's skipping a meal
10:58
and thinks that people who aren't doing much are getting more than he is
11:01
or getting more than she is as if you are trying to improve the lot
11:06
of the rump of the population and hopefully temporarily deprioritising the people who are outlying
11:20
It's why the conversation is not sufficiently statistical sometimes. There are elements of unsustainability
11:27
on the increase in allowances, in payments, The number of people unable to work because of mental health problems, were it to continue at its current rate, would become critical
11:40
I mean, it's heading in that direction anyway. I believe them. But I also believe that a lot of them need help to be better
11:51
And Starmer's calculation is, at the moment, that we're helping them not get better
11:56
and that is pretty close to sounding like a spin doctor because I've seen nothing in the spring statement
12:04
that really describes how you're going to help people get better enough to get to work
12:10
But otherwise, I don't see how they sleep straight in bed at night. I don't see how Angela Rayner, for example
12:14
could sleep straight in bed at night. They are in the business of reality. It's not like being in opposition
12:20
So I alluded earlier to continuity Corbyn. It's not the politics of fantasy
12:25
It's not real communism has never been tried. It's the politics of pragmatism
12:30
It was always going to be the politics of pragmatism. The achievable
12:35
He said himself in that brilliant book by Patrick McGuire and Gabriel Pogrand
12:40
he said himself he has no ideology. He just moves from problem to problem and tries to solve it
12:44
And the problem he's trying to solve at the moment is the relationship between work and income
12:51
He wants to improve it. He doesn't seem to be worrying unduly about people who genuinely can't work
13:01
So who is he trying to appeal to? And the key word is trying
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