George Eaton, The New Statesman Journalist Profile

Articles

The age of five-party politics

2 weeks ago | newstatesman.com | George Eaton

One of the ironies of Brexit is that since leaving the EU, the UK has become a more European country. Tax and spending levels – once likened to the US’s – are beginning to resemble Germany’s. Britain’s “flexible” labour market is undergoing continental-style regulation. And it will soon be the government’s job to make the trains run on time. The UK’s politics, too, has an increasingly European appearance.
Is Labour ready for recession?

2 weeks ago | newstatesman.com | George Eaton

At the beginning of a crisis, actions always trail behind events. In autumn 2007, as the first bank run for 150 years began, Gordon Brown refused to nationalise Northern Rock (fearing it an “Old Labour” remedy). By the following year he had taken the commanding heights of the banking system into public ownership. In early March 2020, as the worst pandemic for a century began, Boris Johnson declared that it was “business as usual” and reacted with libertarian incredulity to calls for a lockdown.
Keir Starmer’s middle way on globalisation

2 weeks ago | newstatesman.com | George Eaton

In 2005, fresh from his third general election victory, Tony Blair delivered one of his most ideologically confrontational speeches to the Labour Party. “I hear people say we have to stop and debate globalisation,” he observed. “You might as well debate whether autumn should follow summer.”Two decades later, Keir Starmer’s Downing Street has declared what Blair deemed impossible: “globalisation is over”.
The UK isn’t a winner from Trump’s tariffs

3 weeks ago | newstatesman.com | George Eaton

It was both predictable and predicted. Donald Trump, a politician often defined by his unpredictability, is on some questions almost maddeningly consistent. Trade policy is one of them. “Liberation Day” wasn’t months or years in the making but decades. It was in 1987, as Trump first pondered a bid for the presidency, that he published an open letter in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe. “To The American People,” it opened portentously.
The spectre of stagflation haunts Labour

3 weeks ago | newstatesman.com | George Eaton

A week ago, Rachel Reeves rose to deliver her Spring Statement, an event likened by some to an “emergency” or “mini” Budget. Yet now, as one minister put it to me, “Trump has wiped out everything.” The UK and the world have entered a new economic era – and Reeves’ statement already feels outdated. For Labour, there is much to fear.
The Lib Dems should terrify the Tories

3 weeks ago | newstatesman.com | George Eaton

A decade ago, the Liberal Democrats fell victim to the “black widow strategy”. Having mated with Nick Clegg’s party for the purposes of coalition, the Conservatives then devoured them. Twenty-seven Lib Dem seats – West Country fortresses thought impregnable – were won by a majority-bound David Cameron. This electoral shock cast doubt on the party’s very existence. In 2010, Clegg had aspired to break the Tory-Labour duopoly and become prime minister.
The decade that growth forgot

4 weeks ago | newstatesman.com | George Eaton

In January 2020, as Boris Johnson basked in his election victory, young Conservative activists began to share Gatsby-era memes. The “Roaring Twenties”, they declared, were back. After the anaemic 2010s, a new decade of prosperity beckoned. I sounded a note of scepticism: “2020 is already awash with dispiriting signs,” I wrote, noting the rise of authoritarian nationalism (including in the US and Russia), the climate crisis and Brexit.
Rachel Reeves’ fraught balancing act

4 weeks ago | newstatesman.com | George Eaton

When Rachel Reeves announced her intention to hold just one “fiscal event” a year, there was much eye-rolling. Previous chancellors had made the same pledge, designed to encourage long-termism, but found it impossible to keep. Reeves has just about done so – there will be no major tax changes in her Spring Statement today. But this is now an event far larger than the financial “update” that she originally planned.
Can Rachel Reeves recover?

1 month ago | newstatesman.com | George Eaton

William Gladstone, it is said, was at the Treasury from 1860 to 1930. As they gaze across Horse Guards Parade, the question some in Labour now ask is whether George Osborne still is. The £5bn welfare cuts announced in advance of Rachel Reeves’ Spring Statement were just a preview of the flinty decisions to come.
Will Labour fight for net zero?

1 month ago | newstatesman.com | George Eaton

In 2016, soon after his enforced departure from politics, Ed Balls recalled: “In the period from 1996 to 2004, I don’t remember anything the Tories did having any effect on my life whatsoever.”There are some inside government today – basking in a New Labour-sized majority – who view Kemi Badenoch with similarly magisterial indifference. “Nothing” was how one aide replied when I asked what they made of the Conservative leader’s speech on net zero this week.