Rachel Reeves and the 2p Trap
The chancellor’s proposed income tax shuffle is clever accountancy but toxic politics — a pledge-break disguised as fiscal discipline, and proof that Labour has trapped itself in rules it cannot escape.
Welcome to my blog, a space where I explore the intersections of politics, culture, and radical thought through a Marxist and eco-socialist lens. I write about the ways capitalism shapes our world, how it seeps into art, film, TV, and literature, and what resistance can look like.
Through essays, reviews, and analysis, I aim to unpack the forces that drive our political and economic systems, and how they shape the culture we consume and create. Whether you’re here for political theory, cultural criticism, or just searching for alternative ways to think about the world, I hope this blog offers something valuable.
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The chancellor’s proposed income tax shuffle is clever accountancy but toxic politics — a pledge-break disguised as fiscal discipline, and proof that Labour has trapped itself in rules it cannot escape.
More than 200,000 young men aren’t “signed off for life”—they are the reserve army of labour, conscripted into the Telegraph’s morality tale to prepare the ground for austerity.
The chancellor’s proposed income tax shuffle is clever accountancy but toxic politics — a pledge-break disguised as fiscal discipline, and proof that Labour has trapped itself in rules it cannot escape.
More than 200,000 young men aren’t “signed off for life”—they are the reserve army of labour, conscripted into the Telegraph’s morality tale to prepare the ground for austerity.
David Frost calls it a new “Red Terror.” The truth is plainer: it’s the Right’s wars, coups and crackdowns that have spilt the deepest blood in politics.
Trump’s latest “kinetic strike” killed three unknown Venezuelans he labelled “narco-terrorists.” The phrase is not law but incantation, a word that strips away humanity and legitimises killing. From Vietnam body counts to Obama’s “signature strikes,” America has always named its enemies into existence, and into death.
To call Robinson’s rally “populist” or “right-wing” is to miss the point. Fascism doesn’t require every marcher to be a coherent ideologue; it requires a mass, a scapegoat, and leaders prepared to turn grievance into violence. That is what we saw in London.
The events of Saturday (13/09) prove that Britain can go fascist. Musk calls for violence, the Telegraph and Times launder his words, and Starmer clings to the flag. We must name the danger or watch it grow.
Camilla Tominey’s sainthood act for Charlie Kirk trades politics for piety. The Right already owns the machinery (press, finance, courts, police) and Kirk was part of the drive shaft. A death certificate doesn’t wash clean a career built on making violence respectable.
The ONS reports zero growth in July. The papers call it “grim news” for Rachel Reeves. In reality, it is the latest entry in a long obituary for British capitalism — a system now sustained only by euphemism, stagnation, and decline.
Jim Ratcliffe built his fortune on Britain’s resources and workers. Now he cries foul at Labour’s windfall tax, shuts down jobs at Grangemouth, and shifts billions abroad—all while eyeing public money for a new Manchester United stadium. The rich never change: austerity for us, subsidy for them.
Labour promised a new deal for working people. What it has delivered so far is hesitation: IMF shadow-boxing, a workers’ rights bill diluted before it is even law, unions warning of betrayal, the press cheering “flexibility”, and Gaza turning into the defining test of loyalty inside the party.
Starmer’s reshuffle wasn’t about delivery but about panic—appeasing business, placating the press, and signalling to Reform voters that Labour will trade away climate policy and workers’ rights if that’s what survival in office demands.
Angela Rayner’s fall was only the spark. Behind the reshuffles and comms resets lies a Labour government without a programme, lurching toward authoritarianism and corporate capture while Britain burns. The real legacy of Starmerism will be the normalisation of far-right cruelty and the abandonment of labour itself.