LET’S face it. It’s not as though our hopes have been dashed by this government. 

After all, Labour is a party led by someone who deceived thousands of party members into voting for him as leader by making 10 decent pledges, only for almost all of them to be ditched within months. 

The same someone who has an affinity for accepting freebies, for himself and party, yet insists he is restoring trust in politics! He takes advice from Blairites, and appointed an ex-banker who claims the money-laundering, customer-exploiting City is the “crown jewel” of the economy, to be his chancellor.

Presumably none of these Blairites has found it necessary to tell Starmer that their hero had lost almost three million votes by the end of his first term? Luckily for him, there wasn’t a right-wing party waiting, already with four million votes in the bag, to lure in the disillusioned. 

Starmer isn’t so fortunate in that respect. Reform’s obnoxious leader, the privately educated, ex-City employee who claims to be a man of the people, will be rubbing his hands with glee, especially as there are, even now, some of Starmer’s team who think Farage only offers a threat to the Tories!

Even after 14 years of Tory misrule, when the absolute wealth gap in terms of assets between the richest and poorest 10 per cent of the UK increased between 2011 and 2019 from £7.5 trillion to £11tn, there was still no mention of “inequality” in Labour’s election manifesto to raise some hope. Starmer and Reeves even agreed to the idiotic Tory fiscal rules, ruling out any increases to VAT and income tax. Corporation tax would consequently stay at 25 per cent, even though in Thatcher’s time, it never went below 34 per cent. So, our expectations were not exactly sky-high, but we didn’t expect things to be quite so bad!

A freebie extravaganza for starters, then came the refusal to change the two-child benefits limit which could have almost ended child poverty, the winter fuel debacle and a Budget which had hedge-fund managers celebrating in Bond Street and proved, moreover, that Downing Street is a joined-up thinking-free zone. 

Did Reeves manage to become a chess champion without thinking ahead? Add to all of this, speeches from Starmer and Reeves which are not only so cliché-ridden as to be somniferous, but repeat endlessly the mantra about the government going for economic growth!  

Unbelievably, things are getting worse.

Growing the economy will, according to our Blairite rulers, benefit us all, because the increased wealth will “trickle down.” 

Really? Like it always has? Like modern economists suggest? Did our representatives fail, when in opposition for all those years, to notice how short-termist businesses made vast profits by maximising the use of cheap labour, and ignoring the need to invest in training and new technology? The profits went to bosses and shareholders, and did not trickle down into wage-packets!

Starmer and Rayner have put tackling regional inequality high on their list of priorities, given the UK has a larger gap between its most and least economically productive areas than almost any other developed country. So, what do we get? Our “first green chancellor” (her words) is now promising not only a third runway for Heathrow, but expansion of Luton and Gatwick airports, with, no doubt, the expected increased wealth trickling not down, but north and west!

Economic growth is clearly more important than net zero! The not-so-green-now Reeves herself admitted this at Davos. 

In opposition, the Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said in 2019 that Heathrow’s expansion was “dreadful symbolism,” that whenever there’s a choice between “economic gain and environmental protection, the latter loses out.” That’s clearly happening under Labour. Didn’t Starmer say something about “change” if the Tories were voted out?

Regulators, the so-called “watchdogs,” with duties to ensure consumers get a fair deal, should be the focus of all governments’ attention, but our so-called “Labour” government is so lacking in ideas and policies, it has asked for their advice on how to grow the economy. 

Yes, the very same regulatory bodies which “oversee” the privatised water companies so rigorously, and which granted licences to so many underfunded energy companies which then went bust, including Bulb Energy, costing the taxpayer around £6.5 billion. The Competition and Monopolies Authority’s boss actually thought growth was not his priority, and was removed!

So, we come, of course, to the regulators of the finance industry. People who failed to stop four years of money-laundering at Metro Bank, who explained their leniency on Barclays for misleading investors by saying “the events took place over 16 years ago,” and who fined Starling Bank a mere £29 million even though it claimed £94m of taxpayer money through the bounce-back scheme.

All regulators have a “consumer duty role,” basically to protect us from being ripped off. When the Bank of England kept raising the base interest rate during the inflation crisis, banks and other lenders increased their rates for borrowers and mortgage holders, making their profits even greater. 

Not happy with that, and clearly aware that their regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), would do nothing, banks also kept down their savings rates, thereby increasing their net interest margins, and their profits. 

HSBC, for instance, increased its net interest margin by almost a whole percentage point, and recorded an 80 per cent increase in profits in 2023. Customers were ripped off, regulators did nothing, and Starmer gave the HSBC boss a knighthood! 

A month later Reeves is asking the FCA, which was described in an MPs’ report last November as “incompetent at best, dishonest at worst,” for advice! Reeves has made it clear that anything that negatively impacts growth will be overruled or rejected — that obviously includes the interests of us, the consumers.

Even now, forecasts about the Bank of England slashing base rates twice this year haven’t “fed through into market pricing,” enabling the UK’s main banks to increase their mortgage rates yet again. 

Their regulators, which also include the Bank of England, seem quite happy to reduce even further the spending power of consumers, thereby hindering economic growth, and playing into the hands of Reform.

If Reeves wants growth, and Starmer wants to prevent Farage gaining the votes of disillusioned Labour voters, one joint solution is to control mortgage rates and private rents, giving millions more spare cash to spend in their local economies. History shows us how deregulation leads to disaster, but presumably Reeves dropped the subject after GCSE.

Rather than controlling the rapaciousness of banks, Reeves encourages it; instead of reining in landlords’ greed, the government allows private rents to rise by 9 per cent a year; in place of a fiscal policy which initiates real change, we have centrist policies which alter nothing fundamentally. The country needs a new chancellor.

Where’s John McDonnell when we need him?