Labour’s big spend comes up short...

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As you probably know, yesterday was budget day for our new Labour government. As the first budget since they came to power in July, there was incredible anticipation in the lead-up to the event itself. I spend a lot of time listening to political podcasts and reading commentary coming from journalists, and there have been predictions galore in recent weeks about what would be announced and what the reaction from the public would be.

There’s also been a fair amount of “expectation setting” from those media outlets that are traditionally supportive and sympathetic towards Labour. We’ve been told, repeatedly, that we can’t expect miracles; that after all of the damage wrought by the Tories, we can’t expect everything to be fixed immediately. To be perfectly honest with you, I’ve been quietly rolling my eyes at some of this. The new Labour government ran a General Election campaign based on a “change” agenda, and they did so at a disastrous time for public services and public finances. Yes, they cannot fix every single thing within one budget. I don’t think anyone expected, for example, to suddenly walk onto pristine, low-cost public transport, or find that all of our public libraries have been reopened and restocked. But what about the situation in which we find ourselves, with people dying in large numbers every single week due to the decimation of our public healthcare system? I would expect the new government to do everything in their power to turn that situation around immediately.

In case you haven’t seen this analysis, the Royal College of Emergency have shown that almost 300 patients died in England alone every single week last year, due to overcrowding and long waits in A&E departments. This is staggering, horrifying, and unacceptable.

Despite telling us we shouldn’t expect too much from this budget, many media outlets have subsequently reacted loudly and energetically about what Rachel Reeves has announced. We’re being told that it’s BIG. Big numbers, big investment, big changes, and the biggest conversation of all seems to be centred around the NHS, which is receiving an extra £22.6 billion in funding. But while that number sounds big, the service is in such a bad state that it might not be enough. Already, there are stark warnings from experts about the areas being neglected, or even where things might get worse in the coming months...