Spring Statement: "OBR halving the 2025 UK growth forecast from 2% to 1% is a gut punch to Labour’s flagship growth mission"

When it comes to government speeches, I think it’s important to apply a version of Murphy’s Law, as not only will anything that can go wrong will go wrong, but also any remotely positive policy will be twisted beyond recognition until it is ineffective and redundant. Decades of neglect, underfunding and the pursuit of short-term gains by successive governments have stunted development and eroded business confidence. This Spring Statement has aimed to disguise our current economic failures with the promise of future riches and development just around the corner. It has also relied heavily upon the government’s favourite tactic of political point-scoring, poll boosting and positive soundbite creation, with brilliant promises that will almost certainly be marred by horrendously poor execution. Many of us came into this speech with a fairly good idea of what was likely to be said, but even with the government-imposed ‘trigger warning’, it's hard to dignify this speech with a response.

This feels like Reeves trying to play chess while everyone wants a rugby match. There were strategic moves such as defence and fiscal discipline that might pay off later, but the crowd’s restless now. The Office for Budget Responsibility halving the 2025 UK growth forecast from 2% to 1% is a gut punch to Labour’s flagship growth mission. Welfare hits will bite and the optics of “tough choices” might not land well when growth is stalling. A £2.2 billion defence uplift for 2025-26, pushing spending to 2.36% of GDP, is the headline grabber but it’s still shy of what Trump is demanding, and critics will call it a shiny distraction from domestic woes. The Pound’s sulking. Reeves is blaming everyone else and banking on our patience but with stagflation whispers (inflation up to 3.7% later this year per BoE forecasts), it’s yet another gamble. For me, too little, too late. If she was a Tory Chancellor, she would be gone by now.

Compared to the Autumn Statement, this was almost a non-event with little of note announced. No doubt, the Chancellor will have been pleased to see inflation drop to 2.8% before she made her speech, but there was little in the speech that will convince the markets or the wider public that the country is on the right track no matter what she says. At the end of the day, the British public will want to see that the Chancellor's policies bear fruit, with the OBR forecasting growth to halve from 2% to 1% this year. She's running out of time to produce those results.