\n<\/p>\n
Dan York-Smith, the former senior Treasury official Keir Starmer has appointed as his principal private secretary, is a qualified international gymnastics judge \u2013 a skill set that may come in handy as Labour limbers up for the formidable balancing act of Rachel Reeves\u2019s autumn budget.<\/p>\n
After a dizzying series of backflips on tax and spending, some of which were blamed squarely on the chancellor, the government is preparing to raise taxes \u2013 at the same time as acknowledging that with inflation on the rise again, the public are still in the grip of a cost of living crisis.<\/p>\n
As well as York-Smith, who previously coordinated fiscal events at the Treasury and is well liked by colleagues across Whitehall, Starmer has pinched Reeves\u2019s No 2, Darren Jones, to be his own \u201cchief secretary\u201d \u2013 a previously nonexistent job. The former Bank of England deputy governor Minouche Shafik, a well-respected economist, will be Starmer\u2019s economic adviser.<\/p>\n
Economists and former government advisers welcomed the reshuffle, suggesting it was high time for Starmer to take more interest in the direction of economic policy.<\/p>\n
Jonathan Portes, a former senior government economist, said it was always a mistake to subcontract tax and spend entirely to the Treasury. \u201cIt is a well-functioning department staffed by people who know what they\u2019re talking about and if it\u2019s not politically challenged by No 10 things go wrong,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause of the way the Treasury works, it\u2019s intellectually predisposed to do things that are not just politically counterproductive but economically counterproductive. You need somebody in No 10 to push back, and that\u2019s in the interests of the government as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/span>Dan York-Smith is a qualified international gymnastics judge.<\/span> Photograph: HM Treasury<\/p>\n Tim Leunig, the chief economist at Nesta, who advised Rishi Sunak when he was chancellor, agreed that part of the problem had been a lack of direction from No 10. However, he suggested any number of new appointments would make little difference without a clearer sense of what the prime minister wants.<\/p>\n \u201cI think all this adds up to absolutely nothing, until Keir Starmer decides what he stands for, and what he stands against,\u201d he said. In particular, Leunig said that would mean deciding which groups to single out to bear the brunt of tax rises \u2013 which are widely viewed as inevitable, with the Office for Budget Responsibility expected to downgrade its growth forecasts.<\/p>\n \u201cUnless Labour are willing to say: \u2018We\u2019re never going to be a good government unless we\u2019re lucky enough to get growth,\u2019 then they\u2019ve got to learn to pick some losers,\u201d he said. Another former Labour adviser said these risks were particularly grave during tough economic times, when the Treasury tends to go into \u201cfinance ministry mode\u201d \u2013 focusing above all on balancing the books.<\/p>\n However, Labour\u2019s first year in power has underlined the political challenges of either cutting spending or raising revenue \u2013 particularly given the manifesto promises they made not to touch key taxes, including income tax.<\/p>\n Business groups have reacted with fury to Reeves\u2019s \u00a325bn increase in employer national insurance contributions, which has been blamed for putting the brakes on hiring and exacerbating inflation, while backbenchers forced the abandonment of \u00a35bn-worth of disability benefit cuts. The removal of the winter fuel allowance from most pensioners was also almost completely reversed after months of damaging criticism.<\/p>\n Memories of previous disastrously received fiscal statements abound \u2013 including George Osborne\u2019s \u201comnishambles\u201d budget and, of course, Liz Truss\u2019s \u201cmini-budget\u201d, much of which subsequently had to be ditched in the face of market chaos. With bond markets already skittish, the pitfalls are obvious.<\/p>\n As one Labour insider put it, the government\u2019s task in the budget \u2013 which is still at least 10 weeks off, with no date yet announced \u2013 is to \u201cfill a hole, in a way that makes it not look like they\u2019re filling a hole\u201d.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Sign up to Business Today<\/span><\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Reeves, meanwhile, has not yet found a replacement for her former chief economic adviser John Van Reenen, who has cut back his role at the Treasury \u2013 although she has roped in the pensions minister and wonks\u2019 wonk Torsten Bell to be her wingman on budget prep.<\/p>\n Jones will be succeeded by the safe pair of hands James Murray, moving up from the post of exchequer secretary to the Treasury. Murray\u2019s successor is another graduate of Bell\u2019s former thinktank the Resolution Foundation \u2013 the MP for Chipping Barnet, Dan Tomlinson.<\/p>\n Shafik, too, had some involvement at Resolution, serving as one of the commissioners on its landmark Economy 2030 review \u2013 although she is better known as an expert on the international economy.<\/p>\n Margaret Thatcher famously used her economic adviser Alan Walters as an intellectual battering ram against the then chancellor, Nigel Lawson, ultimately leading to the latter\u2019s resignation in 1989.<\/p>\n Few at Westminster expect Shafik to play such a divisive role, however. \u201cShe\u2019s not like an Alan Walters figure: she\u2019s not an ideological person,\u201d one Labour insider said.<\/p>\n But given the political somersaults required, Portes argues that it will take serious political commitment from the very top of government to make another tax-raising budget stick. \u201cNo 10 and No 11 have to argue it out, agree, and then come out and sell it together,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd Starmer has to own it, not just Reeves.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dan York-Smith, the former senior Treasury official Keir Starmer has appointed as his principal private secretary, is a qualified international gymnastics judge \u2013 a skill set that may come in handy as Labour limbers up for the formidable balancing act of Rachel Reeves\u2019s autumn budget. After a dizzying series of backflips on tax and spending,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[113,844,8276,478,5281,1347,5655,10425,11097],"class_list":{"0":"post-18638","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-budget","9":"tag-economics","10":"tag-gymnastics","11":"tag-prepare","12":"tag-reshuffle","13":"tag-starmer","14":"tag-tightrope","15":"tag-tricky","16":"tag-walk"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}