The government’s central push, to grow the economy and so put more money in all our pockets, is facing a hefty push back – from the Bank of England. It’s also in danger of getting drowned out completely by events across The Prime Minister can but hope his promised national revival will at least have made a start by the next election.
First off, the gospel according to Keir Starmer.
Last October’s budget was the springboard. A massive public spending boost, paving the way for a vastly improved health service, and transformative infrastructure and homebuilding projects.
All this without working people having to fork out for any of it.
And then the collision between those prophesies and reality, and what that might mean for the spring mini-budget, just a few weeks away now.
The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street has offered the Chancellor Rachel Reeves, and people with mortgages, a little titbit in the form of an interest rate cut.
But the central bank has also halved its forecast for growth.
That’s definitely six of the best for Ms Reeves. Plus there’s one extra, as it laid much of the blame on her decision to up the National Insurance levy on employers.
This was the government’s rather slippy-slidey way of maintaining it wasn’t putting up taxes on ordinary folk.
But, say the bank, bosses have told them it could only mean price rises or staff cuts. Meaning it’d hit the lowest paid people hardest.
And, just to rub a little more salt in the wound, the government’s official number crunchers say that selfsame lower growth means she has no spare lolly in the kitty.
Given that the government has categorically ruled out tax hikes next month, looming shortfalls can only be sorted by means of cuts to already cash-strapped public services.
Happy days, not.
Of course, it’s monstrously unfair for the likes of the insurgent Reform Party’s leader Nigel Farage to say the completely useless Labour party’s messed everything up.
Nor is it quite fair for Ms Reeves to lay all the blame on the Tories’ utter incompetence.
The Covid pandemic and the energy price spike following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine were a double kick in the you-know-wheres.
Plus there’s the underlying reality that Britain has an ageing and ever-needier population. And the money doesn’t just grow on trees.
Not that any of that does anything to wipe the smile off Farage’s face, as the polls show a collapse in Labour’s support, with some even putting his party in the lead.
All very well of course saying what’s wrong with everyone else. As yet there’s very little discernible evidence of how precisely he’d do things better.
But what our Nige has got going for him, in spades, is charisma. More of it than the other three party leaders put together.
Boris Johnson was similarly blessed. It got him a stonking majority, and he still has a fan base even though he ended up as the partygate pooper.
Worth remembering that he and Farage are in the thrall of that other Mr Bigmouth, the one whose musings have already upended the world order.
The Apple founder Steve Jobs was on the money the day he declared: ‘If you want to make everyone happy, don’t be a leader, sell ice cream.’
And, in the run-up to the presidential election, Donald Trump drowned enough Yankee punters in the stuff to enable him to turn the White House orange.
Since then it’s become a commentators’ cottage industry trying to second-guess what he means by anything, what he actually means to follow through, and what it could mean for the rest of us.
First off, and back to Rachel Reeves for a second, if he includes us on his threat to whack a tax on things exported to America, then her hopes of reviving our economy any time soon are dashed.
In fact the global instability his tariff trick would generate won’t do much for us, even if he is does have some kind of sentimental mercy on our souls.
Meantime, whichever way that cookie crumbles, it’s pushing Starmer into a tricky corner as he weighs up whether to cosy closer to our immediate neighbours or align with the Trump agenda.
Certainly, the PM’s big deal of a reset get-together with European leaders last week was dominated by how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-The-Donald musings.
Closer defence and security ties across The Channel were a no-brainer. But the question of getting some kind of better trading relationship got a bit swamped.
Then there’s the matter of Trump’s other, more outlandish, wheezes, and trying to square the circle of stating the obvious without raising his notoriously spiky hackles.
Tricky to react to his super-duper plan, for example, to turn Gaza into ‘the Riviera of the Middle East’, without pointing out that it would involve the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
In the event, Starmer settled for siding, but ever so politely, with practically every other viable world leader’s view. That the idea’s cruel, greedy, and, basically super-dumb.
Not that Trump has any thoughts of stopping there.
Besides rather liking the idea of annexing Canada, and maybe Greenland, seems he also fancies taking a pop at the Arctic, the moon, and, come to think of it, why not Mars too?
Even in his wildest flights of infantile fancy Boris Johnson aspired no further than being world king. For all his drum-banging you can’t help but wonder what he really thinks about all this.
Certainly, our top spooks are seriously worried about Trump’s choice for his country’s hush-hush info leader, Tulsi Gabbard.
It’s not just that the woman shows signs of a dangerous level of support for Russia and Syria. It’s also that, as US Director of National Intelligence, she’d have access to our secret stuff as well.
Still, there’ll always be an England. And we’ve had our swashbuckling moments too.
Pad forward Palmerston, former feline-in-chief at the Foreign Office, named after a nineteenth-century statesman who favoured gunboat diplomacy and ‘manly’ foreign policy.
The not always very dear little black and white rescue moggie has had the odd run-in with Larry, Number Ten’s head mouser.
Same as a fair few Prime Ministers, over the years, with their Foreign Secretaries.
Still, let bygones be bygones and all that, Palmerston opted for the quiet life a few years back, snuggling up in rural retirement with the department’s legal eagle, Andrew Murdoch.
But he’s had to get into to arched-back wiggly-tail mode once again, now that Mr Murdoch’s been appointed governor of Bermuda, some three-and-a-half thousand miles away.
According to Palmerston’s X account, he’s become ‘feline relations consultant’, a job not to be hissed at as the British Overseas Territory takes in nearly two hundred islands.
Besides which, the governor’s duties include key constitutional and security responsibilities. Neighbouring cats will watch their paws and claws, if they know what’s good for them.
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