\n<\/p>\n
Ferrari<\/strong> asks about what Keir Starmer said yesterday about Reform UK\u2019s plan to end indefinite leave to remain being racist.<\/p>\n Q: Does supporting that policy make someone racist?<\/em><\/p>\n No, says Reeves.<\/strong><\/p>\n Q: So you can support a racist policy but not be racist.<\/em><\/p>\n Reeves<\/strong> says it is a racist policy.<\/p>\n Q: But how can you support a racist policy and not be racist?<\/em><\/p>\n Reeves<\/strong> says people support Reform UK for all sorts of reasons.<\/p>\n Ferrari<\/strong> says he does not see how you can support a racist policy and not be racist.<\/p>\n Reeves<\/strong> says she is not sure lots of people do support this policy. She says:<\/p>\n I think there are lots of people who back Reform would be horrified by the thought that people who came to this country legally, are working and contributing, will be deported from this country. And we had to call out Reform for their policies. And this is a racist policy, and it\u2019s a bad for our country, and we need to call that out.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Updated at\u00a003.09 EDT<\/p>\n <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Key events<\/p>\n <\/span>Show key events only<\/p>\n Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n In her Today interview Rachel Reeves<\/strong> was asked about a FT report saying she will urge business leaders to highlight the risks of a Reform UK government in her speech later.<\/p>\n The FT say Reeves will tell the Labour conference.<\/p>\n Who is standing up for Britain\u2019s stability. A Labour government that is resolute in cutting interest rates and borrowing or a Reform party that cheered on Liz Truss\u2019 mini-budget?<\/p>\n Who is standing up for Britain\u2019s businesses? A Labour government that is forging a closer relationship with our nearest trading partners or a Reform party that talks Britain down and is hungry to cut us off from the world?<\/p>\n Nick Robinson<\/strong> suggested that business would not take kindly to this, given the way Reeves put their taxes up. Reeves<\/strong> brushed this aside.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Q: You are saying you don\u2019t call supporters of Reform racist. But it looks as if you don\u2019t understand people\u2019s concerns.<\/em><\/p>\n Reeves<\/strong> says the government should call out policies that are wrong.<\/p>\n She says it is one thing deporting people who arrive in the UK illegally.<\/p>\n But the Reform UK plan would mean someone working alongside you being deported because they were born abroad, or someone living next to you being who was born abroad being deported. That is wrong, and racist, she says.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Q: Do you accept that you cannot tax your way to growth?<\/em><\/p>\n Reeves<\/strong> says it is not just about tax.<\/p>\n The government\u2019s changes to the planning rules will promote growth, she says.<\/p>\n Q: People with shares, or pensions, or savings, or a valuable home \u2013 when you say you will protect working people, who are not including them, are you. You are coming for them, arent\u2019 you.<\/em><\/p>\n Reeves<\/strong> says many of the people who claim to know what will be in the budget are \u201ctalking rubbish\u201d. And some of the pre-budget speculation is irresponsible, she says.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Reeves<\/strong> says her youth unemployment plan will build on what previous governments have done.<\/p>\n There has always been conditionality in the benefits system, she says.<\/p>\n Q: Can you repeat the statement you made to the CBI last year, when you said you were not coming back with more borrowing and more taxes.<\/em><\/p>\n Reeves<\/strong> says everyone can see that the world has changed since then.<\/p>\n Robinson<\/strong> says he is interpreting that as meaning taxes will go up.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Rachel Reeves<\/strong> is now being interviewed by another Nick \u2013 Nick Robinson<\/strong> on the Today programme.<\/p>\n Q: Last year you spoke of iron discipline. But you buckle when you face difficult choices.<\/em><\/p>\n Reeves<\/strong> says she faced a difficult situation when Labour took power.<\/p>\n She says the government has maintained its commitment to economic discipline.<\/p>\n Q: You changed on winter fuel payments, and on disability benefits. As soon as the going got tough, you got going.<\/em><\/p>\n Reeves<\/strong> says the government had to make a number of difficult decisions.<\/p>\n But all the tax decisions stand, she says.<\/p>\n Q: Are you ever going to say no to people?<\/em><\/p>\n Reeves<\/strong> says people have seen her take difficult decisiions.<\/p>\n Q: Will you cut welfare spending. Spending on health and disability benefits is due to rise from \u00a361bn to \u00a372bn by the end of this parliament.<\/em><\/p>\n Reeves<\/strong> says Stephen Timms, the disability minister, is looking at this.<\/p>\n Q: Will you cut the benefits bill?<\/em><\/p>\n Reeves<\/strong> says the benefits bill is too high.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Reeves<\/strong> ended her LBC interview by saying that anyone saying the government should just borrow more \u201cmakes no economic sense\u201d. That was in response to a question about Andy Burnham and his comments about the bond markets in an interview last week.<\/p>\n Ferrari<\/strong> asked her if she was saying that Burnham was \u201cTrussesque\u201d.<\/p>\n Reeves<\/strong> laughs as Ferrari\u2019s word, which he describes as new. She goes on:<\/p>\n Anybody that says you can just borrow more \u2013 I do think that risks going the way of Liz Truss.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Ferrari<\/strong> asks about what Keir Starmer said yesterday about Reform UK\u2019s plan to end indefinite leave to remain being racist.<\/p>\n Q: Does supporting that policy make someone racist?<\/em><\/p>\n No, says Reeves.<\/strong><\/p>\n Q: So you can support a racist policy but not be racist.<\/em><\/p>\n Reeves<\/strong> says it is a racist policy.<\/p>\n Q: But how can you support a racist policy and not be racist?<\/em><\/p>\n Reeves<\/strong> says people support Reform UK for all sorts of reasons.<\/p>\n Ferrari<\/strong> says he does not see how you can support a racist policy and not be racist.<\/p>\n Reeves<\/strong> says she is not sure lots of people do support this policy. She says:<\/p>\n I think there are lots of people who back Reform would be horrified by the thought that people who came to this country legally, are working and contributing, will be deported from this country. And we had to call out Reform for their policies. And this is a racist policy, and it\u2019s a bad for our country, and we need to call that out.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Updated at\u00a003.09 EDT<\/p>\n Ferrari<\/strong> says the UK has lower growth forecasts than other G7 countries.<\/p>\n Reeves<\/strong> says the OECD is saying the UK will have the second fastest growing economy in the G7 this year and next.<\/p>\n And for the first half of this year, the only period for which data is available, the UK economy grew at 1% \u2013 faster than other G7 economies.<\/p>\n Q: Can you rule out a VAT increase in the budget?<\/em><\/p>\n Reeves<\/strong> says the government made those commitments and they stand.<\/p>\n Ferrari<\/strong> says something stands until it falls.<\/p>\n Reeves says Labour made those commitments because they want working people tobe better off. She goes on:<\/p>\n We are continuing with standing by, whatever words you want to use, those commitments.<\/p>\n Q: Can you rule out a VAT increase?<\/em><\/p>\n Reeves<\/strong> says listeners \u201ccan hear the commitment that I have made\u201d.<\/p>\n She says the govenment is standing by its commitments because it wants people to be better off at the end of this parliament.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Updated at\u00a003.03 EDT<\/p>\n Rachel Reeves<\/strong> is on LBC, being interviewed by Nick Ferrari.<\/strong><\/p>\n Reeves<\/strong> says almost one million young people are not in work or training. That amounts to one in eight, she says, 18 to 24-year-olds.<\/p>\n They are more likely to suffer as a result unemployment later in life, lower wages and mental health problems.<\/p>\n Q: How much will this cost?<\/em><\/p>\n Reeves<\/strong> says the money for this was allocated in the spending review. Further details will be in the budget.<\/p>\n Ferrari<\/strong> keeps asking how much it will cost, and Reeves keeps insisting she will set that out in the budget.<\/p>\n Reeves<\/strong> says there are hundreds of thousands of vacancies in the economy. Employers say they struggle to hire the right people, she says.<\/p>\n Ferrari<\/strong> quotes various business leaders saying government policies are making it harder for them to operate.<\/p>\n Reeves<\/strong> says some of the first quoted by Ferrari (Next, Marks and Spencer, Asda and Aldi) have recently announced good results.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Good morning. Rachel Reeves<\/strong>, the chancellor, was a student when the Blair government was in power and one of her heroes at the time was Gordon Brown, who ran the Treasury for 10 years. One of Brown\u2019s flagship measures was an employment programme for young people (the new deal) and today Reeves says she wants to achieve something similar. In her speech she will say:<\/p>\n At the spending review, I pledged record investment in skills to support our young people. And so today, I can announce that with that investment we will fund a new Youth Guarantee \u2026<\/p>\n We won\u2019t leave a generation of young people to languish without prospects \u2013 denied the dignity, the security and the ladders of opportunity that good work provides.<\/p>\n Just as the last Labour government, with its new deal for young people, abolished long-term youth unemployment I can commit this government to nothing less than the abolition of long-term youth unemployment. We\u2019ve done before and we\u2019ll do it again.<\/p>\n Reeves is doing a full media interview round this morning. I will be covering it in detail.<\/p>\n Some newspapers are splashing this morning on previews of the Reeves speech.<\/p>\n <\/span>Mirror splash<\/span> Photograph: Daily Mirror<\/span>i splash<\/span> Photograph: The i<\/p>\n As Pippa Crerar<\/strong> reports for the Guardian, Reeves is also going to announce funding for a library in every primary school in England.<\/p>\n Shabana Mahmood,<\/strong> the home secretary, is also speaking at the conference today, and other papers are splashing on what she is set to say. Rajeev Syal<\/strong> has a preview for the Guardian here.<\/p>\n And here are the frontpage headlines from the Telegraph and the Times.<\/p>\n <\/span>Telegraph splash<\/span> Photograph: Daily Telegraph<\/span>Times splash<\/span> Photograph: The Times<\/p>\n And the Guardian and the Daily Mail have both splashed on Keir Starmer\u2019s comments about Reform UK yesterday \u2013 with rather different takes.<\/p>\n <\/span>Guardian splash<\/span> Photograph: The Guardian<\/span>Mail splash<\/span> Photograph: Daily Mail<\/p>\n Here is the agenda for the day.<\/p>\n 10am:<\/em> The conference opens. The morning speakers include Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, at 10.05am, John Healey, the defence secretary, at 10.50am, and Peter Kyle, the business secretary, at 11.40am.<\/p>\n Noon:<\/em> Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, speaks.<\/p>\n 2pm:<\/em> The afternoon session open with a speech from Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary and candidate for deputy leader. The other speakers include Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, at 2.40pm, David Lammy, the deputy PM and justice secretary, at 2.50pm, Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, at 3.30pm, Liz Kendall, the science secretary, at 3.45pm, and Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, at 4pm.<\/p>\n 2pm:<\/em> Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, speaks to Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey from the Guardian\u2019s Politics Live podcast at a fringe event.<\/p>\n 2.30pm:<\/em> Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, speaks at a fringe event.<\/p>\n 3.15pm:<\/em> Burnham speaks at a fringe event on devolution.<\/p>\n 4.30pm:<\/em> Anneliese Dodds, the former development minister, speaks at a More in Common fringe.<\/p>\n 5pm:<\/em> Lammy speaks about taking on the populist right at an IPPR fringe meeting.<\/p>\n If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (normally between 10am and 3pm BST at the moment), or message me on social media. I can\u2019t read all the messages BTL, but if you put \u201cAndrew\u201d in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.<\/p>\n If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.<\/p>\n I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can\u2019t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.<\/p>\n Share<\/p>\n Updated at\u00a002.50 EDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reeves says people can support racist policy without being racist, in reference to PM’s comment about Reform UK Ferrari asks about what Keir Starmer said yesterday about Reform UK\u2019s plan to end indefinite leave to remain being racist. Q: Does supporting that policy make someone racist? No, says Reeves. Q: So you can support a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24609,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[132,328,124,2655,4458,2656,4800,8649,2980],"class_list":{"0":"post-24608","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-live","9":"tag-policy","10":"tag-politics","11":"tag-rachel","12":"tag-racist","13":"tag-reeves","14":"tag-reforms","15":"tag-supporting","16":"tag-voters"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24608","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=24608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Reeves to urge business leaders to face up to risk Reform UK poses to economy<\/h2>\n
Reeves says much of speculation about possible tax rises in budget is ‘rubbish’<\/h2>\n
Reeves confirms she no longer stands by pledge to CBI last year about not coming back with more tax rises<\/h2>\n
Reeves says benefits bill too high<\/h2>\n
Reeves does not dispute LBC presenter’s suggestion that Andy Burnham bond market comments makes him ‘Trussesque’<\/h2>\n
Reeves says people can support racist policy without being racist, in reference to PM’s comment about Reform UK<\/h2>\n
Reeves pushes back at suggestions VAT may rise, saying commitment not to put it up still stands<\/h2>\n
Reeves to pledge Youth Guarantee to ‘abolish’ unemployment for young people<\/h2>\n