Reeves hints she accepts Burnham will not keep her as chancellor – UK politics live
Key events
Reeves insists her changes to fiscal rules already allow more borrowing for defence, as Burnham urged to back ‘war bonds’
As Kiran Stacey, Pippa Crerar and Dan Sabbagh report, senior government officials are planning to lobby Andy Burnham during access talks to revive the idea of “war bonds” to pay for higher defence spending when he becomes prime minister.
As the story explains, the Treasury has consistently opposed this idea.
In her Q&A at the BCC, Reeves was asked if she would be happy to allow more borrowing to fund higher defence spending. In response, she said that the defence investment plan, which will be published before Burnham becomes PM, will involve “more money, spent more effectively”.
When it was put to her that classifying this defence spending as investment could allow more borrowing, Reeves replied:
That’s exactly what my fiscal rules allow.
We do treat now, for the first time ever, day to day spending and capital spending differently because of the fiscal rules. Up until now, it was all lumped in together as if it didn’t make a difference. But of course it makes a difference whether something boosts our longer term growth and productivity, which is what capital investment does. So we do have the flexibility within the fiscal rules to do exactly that.
Asked specifically if this applied to defence, Reeves replied:
Yes, because most defence spending is capital investment, whether you’re building new ships, investing in munitions.
Also, what is really crucial is that we get better value for money for our defence spending, which is why cooperation with our Nato allies, especially our European Nato allies, is really important.
Rachel Reeves is speaking at the BCC conference. She is being interviewed by Sophy Ridge, the Sky News presenter.
Reeves said that it was clear that Andy Burnham would keep her fiscal rules and she described that as “a good thing”.
Asked if she wanted to be Burnham’s chancellor, Reeves said that was a decision for him.
Then Ridge tried posing the question in a different way. She asked Reeves if she felt she had “unfinished business”.
In response, Reeves gave a lengthy account of her achievements as chancellor. But she then identified fiscal devolution, and reform of business rates, as areas where she wanted to go further.
Trump calls Burnham a town mayor who’s ‘extremely liberal’, complaining he’s unlikely to ‘open up North Sea’
Donald Trump has labelled Andy Burnham “extremely liberal”, in his first public comments about the former Greater Manchester mayor since he emerged as the frontrunner to replace Keir Starmer. Here is our story.
In US politics, when rightwingers use the term “liberal”, they do so pejoratively and they use it to mean leftwing.
Reeves hints she accepts Burnham will not keep her as chancellor, and won’t say if she will accept more junior job
Good morning. Rachel Reeves now seems to resigned to losing her job as chancellor when Andy Burnham becomes PM, probably three weeks tomorrow. She had reportedly been angling to stay in post, but she has given an interview to the BBC with a tone that is distinctly valedictory.
Reeves says she is backing Burnham to be the next PM. Asked why she did not stand in Downing Street to hear Keir Starmer’s resignation speech on Monday, but did turn up in Westminster Hall for a photocall with Burnham with other Labour MPs, she did not offer an explanation, but said her loyalty to Starmer had never been in doubt. She also said she was proud of her record.
I know that whoever is prime minister and chancellor in the future will inherit a stronger economy than the one I inherited two years ago.
Reeves refused to say whether she would accept a more junior in cabinet if Burnham offers her one (as he is reportedly planning to do). Asked about this, she just said:
Those are the choices that the new prime minister, I hope Andy Burnham, will get to make in a few weeks time. I’m not going to pre-empt those. It is his prerogative as prime minister to make those appointments.
We will hear more from Reeves later because she is speaking at the British Chambers of Commerce conference, along with a series of other senior figures.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9am: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, takes part in a Q&A at the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) conference in London. Other speakers during the day include Andy Haldane, president of the BCC at 10am; Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, at 11am; Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader; at 12.10pm; Robert Jenrick, the Reform UK Treasury spokesperson, at 3.40pm; and Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, at 4.30pm.
Morning: Kemi Badenoch is on a visit in London.
9.30am: The Ministry of Justice publishes criminal court figures.
Morning: Keir Starmer is in a visit in Buckinghamshire to mark the start of the government’s Great British Summer Savings scheme.
2.30pm: John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, takes questions from MSPs.
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