The financial effects of Brexit and the pandemic will require tough choices from Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves

politics expert Dr Steve McCabe explains why Labour would argue that the upcoming ‘tough budget’ may be necessary to get the country back on track.

Transcript

00:00You know, you go down any high street and of course you sort of see lots of closed shops.

00:06That's a consequence of the fact that people are obviously buying online and of course

00:10the thing is though, the goods are not produced in this country largely, so we buy, yeah,

00:16certainly my parents and of course their parents, my grandparents, you know, this country or

00:21the country they would have lived in was much more sort of orientated towards manufacturing

00:25and coming back to the whole aspect of the service sector, it tends to be paying people

00:30a lot less money and there's a lot less assuredness about contracts than a couple of generations

00:37ago.

00:38Since being elected earlier this year, Labour has faced growing unpopularity due to a slow

00:43economic recovery and dissatisfaction with their handling of the cost of living crisis.

00:49Critics, such as many in the Conservative Party, argue Keir Starmer's leadership lacks

00:55bold policy direction, alienating both traditional and progressive voters, while internal divisions

01:02further weaken the party's image.

01:04So there's a whole set of circumstances, but of course, you know, the current government,

01:09they inherited, dare I say, a bit of a mess from the previous administration and I can

01:13put that down to a number of things.

01:16If I may sort of say, Brexit, you know, of course we're sort of, we're poorer as a consequence

01:19of that.

01:20Then of course we had the pandemic, now of course that was sort of a once in a lifetime

01:24event where the economy closed down.

01:26There is this difficulty, people want better services, but when it comes to sort of the

01:31fact that we're going to have to pay more money, they don't like it and of course that

01:34was the sort of difficulty.

01:35I think there was a sort of, if you like, a conspiracy of silence on the sort of the

01:40fact that the budget, or the financial considerations looking forward, were pretty dire and dare

01:47I say it, Labour are trying to sort of remedy that, but of course, as we know, we're getting

01:51howls of derision from every interest group that feel they're going to be affected by

01:55what may or may not be announced next week.