Rachel Reeves has handled this week's budget comparable to a unwilling bather inching into freezing water, striving to mitigate the discomfort through step-by-step exposure.
First Moves and Tax Commitments
She began addressing the challenge of limited funds at the close of the summer months. To begin with, she refused to uphold previous statements that increases in taxation in the previous year's financial statement would be the final ones.
Later, in early November, she took a bolder stride into the freezing sea. Her address committed to "do what is necessary" to support government services and maintain borrowing costs low.
Manifesto Pledge and Political Backtrack
After 10 days, the finance ministry had withdrawn the suggestion. The campaign pledge still stood in the end. Like every freezing-water swimmer knows, this halted plunge and quivering withdrawal is the least effective of all techniques. Nothing prolongs the suffering like indecision.
It's difficult to be resolute when selecting between types of personally caused harm.
Hope as Plan
Optimism has not been a successful approach for the ruling party. At the core of the Labour leader's election bid was the unrealistic belief of somehow satisfying citizens' desire for enhanced state services without undoing large sums of Tory revenue decreases.
Messaging Weakness
Not once has both the prime minister or the chancellor effectively expressed a feeling of national purpose to explain all this hardship. To some extent that is a problem of personality appeal. Both leaders are strikingly similar in their poor communication skills, wooden and reticent in a way that drives audiences away instead of pulling them in.
Brexit Deal and Economic Situation
Similarly to political pressure to invest in government services has pushed the finance ministry to concede that levies must rise, the commercial requirement of increasing prosperity makes it more challenging to overlook the expense of separation from the European single market.
EU Relationship and Talks
The government used a twelve months splashing in the shallow end of closer ties with the European Union: suggestions to end border inspections on agricultural goods; a young people's exchange program. Ambition went a more substantial on power generation, military and protection collaboration, but no major deals has to date been finalized.
Political Situation and International Status
Without clear direction and impetus from the prime minister's office, talks are stuck. The European Commission says trading benefits are obtained with payments to the EU budget. UK ministers know that's the agreement. That doesn't cause them enthusiastic for a visible argument and Nigel Farage shouting betrayal over the eventual amount ends up being settled.
Economic Impact and Government Language
Financial circumstances has triggered some change in the government's language on the continental partnership. Reeves has commenced identifying leaving Europe alongside the Covid pandemic as a factor of financial harm that the Treasury is striving to fix. Cabinet members have done the same, although they deliberately assign the fault to "poor negotiation terms" or "the exit process", never just "leaving".
Geopolitical Situation and Future Possibilities
The problem of the UK's future relationship with the European Union can't be simplified to procedural changes and customs systems when the global political landscape is in constant change. Given everything that has occurred since the referendum year, it feels reasonable still to be asking the big question: were Britain's interests served by leaving the European Union?
Final Analysis
These represent cold, uncomfortable truths about the nation's situation in choppy international waters. It is understandable that the prime minister and the chancellor flinch from the task. It would take them beyond their capabilities, into forces that they will not oppose. So as an alternative they carry on anxiously walking the coastline, praying that perhaps shortly the situation will shift.
