All great policies. If that’s all they’d done I’d be praising them.
All of them drowned out by the WFA. It’s a huge mistake - not removing it but where they have set it being removed. The reasons given for removing it getting more desperate and bizarre. Fairly or not the public have linked it to public sector pay rises due to the clumsy timing of the announcement.
I can guarantee a pensioner, who was previously receiving the WFA, will die of hyperthermia this winter, in fact thousands will. They may well have died of hyperthermia if the WFA remained but the headlines and view the public get are going to be horrible. “Reeves Reeves lets them freeze” will be a headline.
The government hope it will all be forgotten next election but partygate and the such paint that as a dangerous strategy as the voting public are very able to ignore any good done and magnify the bad. Reeves will know she has fucked up (you can see it in her face) but wants to instil confidence in the iron chancellor and not create an impression of being floppy on policy. Starmer knows he should sack Reeves and reverse it but he can’t then point to stability. He may have even considered a free vote to let it be defeated but had to back Reeves. It has been a disaster and the government is trying to tough it out.
Reeves is now going to have to tread very carefully in her October budget to not create unintended consequences on her tax raising policies. Nor create a huge sense of unfairness.
But yeah good job on renters bill and that.
