The Guardian BTL has lots of people who think they're smart because they say "neoliberalism" a lot. The Guardian seems to be outsourcing editorials to these people now.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -criticism
The operative phrase here is "Treasury orthodoxy". That can mean various things- too much borrowing, not enough investment- but whatever, I'm not sure that the expansion in the budget was it. And though the stuff about borrowing costs has been overdone, most people would agree borrowing doesn't want to get much more expensive. A fair point is made about Labour falling into the Tory trap on their NI cuts, but the last time anybody ran for government on sticking up taxes on people on not much above average incomes was 1992. Labour (even before Blair) wasn't going to repeat that. Brown's NI rises for health were very popular, but they weren't a theme at the 2001 election.
The Guardian view on Rachel Reeves: turbulence caused by caution, cuts and criticism
The cuts haven't happened yet, so how can they have caused turbulence? I don't get that.
Netherlands and the Nordics have much, much lower debt than the UK. As does Germany (though that's not a particularly encouraging example). At some point you notice that it's better to be spending money on building flood defenses, train lines, clean power than giving easy money to the international rich. Getting there though is not easy. I wish we'd have more discussion of that than "ah well, the problem is Treasury orthodoxy".
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