Rachel Reeves warns UK Government is facing difficult choices

Rachel Reeves has warned that the UK Government is facing difficult choices and stressed she will not take risks with public finances.  

The chancellor made the comments during her speech at the Labour Party’s annual conference in Liverpool yesterday.  

Ahead of the November Budget, she warned there is “nothing progressive” and “nothing Labour” about accumulating debt.  

She pledged to keep “taxes, inflation, and interest rates as low as possible”. However, she hinted at tax rises, telling the conference the government’s choices had been made “harder” by international conditions and the “long-term damage” done to the economy. 

The chancellor said Labour would “reject austerity and support our public services” to build “a renewed economy for a renewed Britain”.  

“A renewed economy that supports investment, that gets inflation and borrowing down, and where we build growth in every part of Britain,” said Reeves.  

She added: “I will make my choices at that Budget. There will be choices to take our country forward. And whatever tests come our way, whatever comes my way, I make this commitment to you: I will take no risks with the trust placed in us by the British people.” 

Speaking to the media before her speech, said, “The world has changed” since she pledged last year to impose no further tax increases. 

She also made comments that will likely be interpreted as a swipe at the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham. Reeves said: “There are still those who peddle the idea that we could just abandon economic responsibility and cast off any constraints on spending. 

“They are wrong - dangerously so - and we need to be honest about what that choice would mean.” 

The comments come amid speculation that the former MP could challenge Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s leadership of the party. 

Reeves also used her speech to criticise Reform UK, accusing its leader Nigel Farage of being “the single biggest threat” to living standards for British people. 

“Remember everything that is at stake here,” Reeves told the conference.  

“The single greatest threat to our way of life and the living standards of working people is the agenda of Nigel Farage and the Reform party. 

“Whatever falsehoods they push, whatever easy answers they peddle. However willing they are to tear communities and families apart. They are not on the side of working people.”