Chancellor Rachel Reeevs is pinning her hopes on sweeping reforms dragging the UK out of the economic doldrums. She calls it her “Plan for Change”.
These include unleashing pension funds to invest in Britain, fast-tracking road, building and energy projects, and unblocking the planning system.
Reeves set it out in her recent Spending Review, and is very excited about it. But there’s a problem. Actually, a whole heap of problems.
The first is delivery. As the HS2 high-speed rail line fiasco shows, the UK is lousy at big infrastructure projects. They run over budget, arrive years late (if at all) and are mired in corruption.
At the same time, her tax onslaught has killed economic growth, business investment and jobs.
Nobody rates her Plan for Change much, but Reeves is used to that. She has a bigger problem.
Angela Rayner has a plan too. And it’s about to blow up in Reeves’s face.
The Deputy PM’s Employment Rights Bill plans to kill off zero-hour contracts, tighten redundancy rules and make striking easier.
There’s even a clause allowing ministers to haul businesses into employment tribunals, even if the affected staff don’t want to sue.
With the taxpayer footing the legal bill.
In other words, Rayner will be using your money to launch ideological warfare on the productive part of our economy.
Labour’s trade union paymasters love all this. It’s why they’ve thrown money at the party for decades.
They didn’t get much in return under Tony Blair. But with Angela Rayner pulling the strings, they’re in dreamland.
Critics say her new laws will clobber employers, drive up costs and unleash a wave of 1970s-style workplace disruption.
They call it a “Bill for Unemployment”, and for good reason.
Even the government’s own analysis says it will cost business £5billion a year and wipe out 50,000 jobs. Some say that’s a best-case scenario.
Reeves is desperate to build a functioning economy. Rayner is circling with her bunker busting bomb of a bill.
And it will blow Reeves’s shaky recovery plan to pieces.
The Chancellor has been desperately trying to water down the proposals behind the scenes, but Rayner isn’t budging.
Shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith is even more desperate than Reeves. He says the bill will cripple Britain and is urging employers to speak out, but if Rayner won’t listen to Reeves, she certainly won’t listen to the bosses.
Rayner was born for this moment. She made her name as a “mouthy” trade unionist who, in her own words, “would take no messing from management”.
To her, management is the enemy. And she doesn’t care how much collateral damage she inflicts to get them.
Reeves might not like it, but Labour’s base is behind Rayner.
She’s a grassroots favourite to replace PM Keir Starmer, and will win this battle while Reeves watches her Plan for Change blown sky high. We’ll all suffer from the fallout.
