Last night (10 September) Labour voted to scrap the winter fuel allowance for all but the poorest pensioners. On Monday evening, Reeves addressed a meeting of Labour MPs, many of whom were reportedly uneasy about the proposal and considering abstaining on the vote. Here’s part of what she said – a part deemed important enough to have been briefed to ITV’s Robert Peston:
“If we show, as I believe we will, that economic stability is the hallmark of labour (sic) governments, there is no limit to what we can achieve, because with that stability comes investment. With investment comes growth. With growth comes prosperity.”
This quote tells us a great deal about how Reeves seems to see the role of the state essentially as a big derisking machine, which should exist primarily to create the most optimal conditions for private investors to extract profits from the key structures in our society - from energy infrastructure to housing to care homes - and then to constantly reassure them of this fact by ‘reluctantly’ forcing through policies that condemn millions of children to poverty or risk killing thousands of pensioners, but are nonetheless considered to signal fiscal responsibility and stability to the markets. It would have been no more obvious who this sentiment stems from and ultimately serves if Reeves had read it straight from a Blackstone lobbyist’s briefing note – or one of JPMorgan’s, who she met with last week.
