Let's go to Glasto again

Great excitement a couple of months ago in the Holden household - well half of it anyway - when it was announced that Roy Harper would be headlining the Acoustic stage at Glastonbury on Sunday 29 June, a few weeks after his 84th birthday.

There had been no signs of Roy playing live since his last tour in 2019 (and before that it was 2016 and then 2013). Most Harper fans had begun to suspect he had, this time, retired from live performance for good. His blog and facebook posts had become very rare and totally silent on the issues of recording and performance. Inevitably I began to wonder if time and age had taken too much toll.

Harper originally retired from playing live more than 15 years ago but was persuaded back into performance by the American singer Joanna Newsom who, like Kate Bush and several others, attributes her presence in the business to being inspired by him. We saw Roy support Joanna in 2010 and, while he played well, his voice seemed a bit frail. But the tour prompted a resurrection. More gigs, a new album Man and Myth - which I'd put in the top half of his career bounty of more than 20 albums - then a tour (when he sang strongly and well) and a burst of recognition greater than he received in most of his career which will now go into a seventh decade. That recognition included a Lifetime Achievement award at the BBC Radio 2 folk awards, a slew of interviews in daily newspapers and music mags, several appearances on TV including BBC Breakfast and a guest spot on Test Match Special playing his 1975 classic When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease.

Disastrously for Roy's Indian Summer period (and quite possibly prompted by the extensive publicity) this was all soon followed by a historical sexual abuse allegation which put everything on hold. Roy's had a knack of upsetting a lot of people over the years. He was persona non grata for 3 years with the media until the case against him, which always sounded tenuous in the extreme, collapsed. 

So it was a relief to see him playing again in 2016 and 2019. And playing without blemish, apart from one song where he caused his backing "orchestra" of a string quartet, double bass and second guitarist to chuckle when he said, after the applause had died down, "you know I always thought that song had four verses, but I found it only needed three". 

Of course people can be forgetful at any age and all musicians make mistakes which they either have to cover or recover from. When we saw Harper in 2013 he was backed by another of his young American acolytes, Jonathan Wilson. Harper had gone to Los Angeles where Wilson produced four of the seven tracks on the album and then they toured together, Wilson playing his own set and then backing his mentor on second guitar and various percussion. I have a vivid memory of two things from that gig. The first is that Wilson took to the stage barefoot, which would always seem odd to someone like me who gets cold hands and feet almost year round - but in Manchester in late October? The second was how gently and with great respect Wilson supported Harper's performance, most notably during Twelve Hours of Sunset which has featured in Harper's stage set since 1974. At a conservative estimate Harper must have played this song to an audience several thousand times. With rehearsals that number must be into five figures. But we saw quite clearly from our front row seats a look of panic in Harper's eyes part way through the song as he reached a transition from verse to chorus: it was clear as he looked up towards Wilson that he couldn't remember the next chord sequence. Fortunately the previous chord is held on sustain anyway and Wilson mimed the next four fret positions which introduce the chorus. Harper's head snapped back round to the front and he went straight into the main motif in the song with such a slight delay that it was probably noticed by few present and certainly no-one beyond the first few rows of seats. These are the moments that I think make watching a live performance so special. But I'm hoping Roy doesn't have any of those heart in mouth  moments at Glastonbury. I'm expecting he will have his son Nick filling the second guitar role this weekend. Nick, a performer and recording artist in his own right of long standing, has made 15 albums of his own. And nobody other than Roy knows the songs better as Nick grew up hearing them. The photo below shows Nick on stage with his dad at the Cambridge Folk Festival in 1967

But there is another, tantalising prospect. Harper's big buddy since the late 1960s might be a special guest - Jimmy Page. We can but hope.

Having played there several times before Harper is a link to an earlier, simpler, less commercial and, yes, more "hippy" Glastonbury, though Harper would reject the hippy label just as much as he would the folk label.  He was on the Main stage in 1970, in 1981 on the newly built Pyramid stage, again on the Pyramid in 1982 and, most recently, the Acoustic Stage in 1990. Indeed he headlined in 1982 and there's a story behind that. 

In 1981 Ginger Baker's band headlined on the Friday, with Roy on next to last. There are many accounts on the internet of what happened that night, succinctly summarised by the BBC as follows:

In a moment that certainly trumps Lee Nelson's stage invasion during Kanye West's set, Baker caused an almighty ruckus by setting up his equipment while the previous act, folk-rocker Roy Harper, was still playing. Understandably miffed, Harper confronted him and the two ended up scrapping on-stage. According to an eyewitness account on UK Rock Festivals, the crowd then pelted Baker with bottles during his set, with one hitting him square on the forehead. Some claim that Baker, hardman that he is, simply carried on drumming.

Apparently Michael Eavis felt so bad about what had happened that Harper was immediately invited back as a headliner the following year.

When I told Mrs H about the Glastonbury announcement she reminded me that we "don't do festivals". I said that was irrelevant, which worried her - but then clarified that all the tickets, costing several hundred pounds each, are sold long before the line up is announced. On TV then? Harper fans wait to see whether any of his show will be broadcast: the Beeb doesn't routinely broadcast from the Acoustic stage (there are ten stages at Glastonbury these days). Given Harper's status as one of the few significant performers from the 1960s still around I expect BBC will at least show a snippet (he's due on stage from 9.30 to 10.30pm).

But, on the back of the Glastonbury announcement, a "Final tour part 2" was revealed, comprising 3 gigs in Manchester, London and Birmingham in September. Yes, of course we're going, though in Mrs H's case she says only to keep me company driving back afterwards. But she has always enjoyed Roy's Me and My Woman which I think he has played on most of the occasions I've seen him - around a dozen, since 1971. The song starts with (for me) a classic couplet:

I never know what kind of day it is

On my battlefield of ideals

That's certainly a possible for the Glastonbury set, but if Jimmy Page is with him, they'll play the equally classic song from the very same album as Me and My Woman, Roy's withering take on Christianity and Catholicism in particular, The Same Old Rock.  Oh please....

You can take a listen here. The song is a good, but far from the only, exemplification of one critic's categorisation of Harper as "epic, progressive acoustic - a category of one". I expect mainly shorter songs on Sunday, but we don't have long to wait and, hopefully, see and hear.

PS There's a brilliant book published by Penguin on the history of the Abbey Road studios by music author David Hepworth. After 11 chapters on EMI, the Abbey road building and it's uniformed commissionaires, the producers who wore suits but sports jackets at the weekends, the in house development of equipment and recording techniques, the many famous artists of all types from classical to stars like Noel Coward and Gracie Fields to comedy artists like Tony Hancock, Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers and of course pop musicians including the Beatles, I came to the chapter where EMI, speculated by creating the Harvest label. They gave studio time and resources to a gamut of obscure artists from the college scene like Edgar Broughton and the Third Ear Band. Amongst them was Roy Harper and I was delighted to find this unexpected excerpt:

...by common consent the zenith of Harper's entire career as a recording artist, also took place in Studio One. Harper had a passion for cricket, one he shared with Ken Townsend (a long serving EMI producer) and the members of Pink Floyd. This had led him to write a song about the strange vibrations which thoughts of the game set off in the English breast. It was decided, with more thought for history than accountancy, that what would set this song off a treat was a brass band. Thus no less august a body than the entire Grimethorpe Colliery Brass Band was brought down from south Yorkshire and set up in Studio One, where they performed under the baton of David Bedford. The resulting record, When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease, is one of the dozen greatest records ever made at Abbey Road.

Wow. Hepworth's rationale for that comment is that, while the sound of that brass band could have been attempted by some local session musicians or, in another era, digitally dubbed in, it just wouldn't have the same emotional effect. The song endures in the imagination because one can "close our eyes and imagine the performance taking place", "we knew it had been delivered by a bunch of burly men in their cardigans, men who sprang from the same soil as the song". He called it "proof of the genius of the studio system".

PPS I feel able to call my hero by his first name having met him and spoken one to one for several minutes. Roy being Roy he made as much eye contact with Mrs H standing silently beside me. She said she immediately understood why his compendium of lyrics, The Passions of Great Fortune, is littered with photos of his many lovers (and those were the ones who were happy to be in print...) But he's settled down a bit since the 1990s and I've also met his lovely wife Tracey, who sends out email and facebook updates and deals with all the mail orders personally, on two occasions.

The title of this piece comes from a song called Glasto on Roy's penultimate (as yet) album The Green Man released in 2000:

It has some classically whimsical Harper lyrics:

Michael is running the party (actually his daughter does now of course)/Helping us all pay the rent/So that Billy the kid/Can spend a few quid/Being out of his tree in a tent

 and

And watching the bare naked protest/Is the giggly teengirl from Tring/She can't understand/How a man could have planned/To protest the odd shape of his thing

 with the chorus

Maybe there'll be summer/Maybe It won't rain/Maybe it don't matter/Oh let's go to Glasto again

12 artists you never knew headlined Glastonbury, BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/articles/f4764a16-9f5f-4405-bed0-6d9d0651e4cf

Farewell to the Grand Old Lady

Quite a few words to start with in this post, but - to give you some incentive - later on it's nearly all pictures.

In 1999, The Independent newspaper journalist David Conn gave Goodison Park the nickname "The Grand Old Lady". Over the last decade I've used that phrase many times to excuse the obstructed views, the limited (though generally adequate) refreshment and toilet facilities and the general condition of the stadium, which looked a throwback at best and not like a "Premier League" ground. How are the mighty fallen, given that when I first went in 1963 it was commonly considered the best club ground in the country - and by some distance. In conversation I've often described the ground as "an ancient and historically significant monument". And all that was before the club finally got its act together on moving home.

Many people picked up on the "old lady" moniker. But if it is a lady it's not a very polite one and a bit uncouth. Nevertheless the press coverage of Everton's last match at Goodison Park, at least for the Everton team as we've always knew it, i.e. the men's team, was not only extensive but hugely positive. I heard several lengthy features on Goodison on Radio 5 Live over the weeks running up to the last match there. The newspapers gave huge numbers of column inches to many individuals who wrote sentimental and loving pieces about their experiences there with their families. Many football journalists wrote about how it was one of the best, if not the best, football stadium at least for atmosphere. Martin Samuel wrote* about how, after his first visit there in 1985, he told everyone it was the best ground in the country. "I'd still argue" he wrote "on that night, it was". 

Samuel's first match at Goodison just happened to be one of the most famous ever at the ground, the European Cup Winners Cup semi-final 2nd leg when Everton beat Bayern Munich 3-1. I was there and it was a fantastic occasion, though for atmosphere I can think of two matches at least, victories against Liverpool in the 60s and 80s, that felt even more intense, but maybe that was just to to me.

A number of Premier League managers said it was the most hostile stadium for an away team to visit, though I've often experienced it being rather meek. It needs something to kick start the crowd, but when they get going...   Arsenal manager and former Everton player Mikel Arteta perhaps summed it up best when he said after his last visit there in early April:

"If you want to describe to somebody from abroad what the Premier League looks like, go to Goodison Park and experience it." A bit late even then, Mikel, getting tickets for those last few games was all bar impossible, with some changing hands for thousands of pounds. But it was good advice.

I went to an Everton Legends event the evening before the last match. It was a really good night, but Peter Reid said one thing that stuck with me - in recent years it's the fans who have kept Everton in the Premier League. I'd certainly agree with that in season 2021-22, when it looked for all the world that they were sliding meekly to relegation with 3 months of the season to go. The fans started greeting the team buses with an enormous street party. I went to the first match where this was planned and saw the plumes of blue smoke from flares from a mile away as I exited the Mersey Tunnel at the Liverpool end. When I got to Goodison Road it was littered everywhere with beer cans and bottles, discarded flares and ticker tape. The noise outside the reception area, which would be easily audible to both teams, was enormous. Many of the fans looked like smurfs with blue paint from the flares. Everton recorded several vital home wins leading up to the critical 3-2 win over Crystal Palce (from 2-0 down) and I believe Reid is right - that team had lost belief and the fans made the difference.

Everton announced shortly before the last (men's) home match that Goodison would be retained as the home for Everton women's team. Some felt that this took the edge off the last match - it wasn't actually the last match anymore - but given the expansion of interest in women's football and the fact that Everton women have outgrown their home in nearby Walton Hall Park (capacity not much more than 2,000) the decision was perhaps forseeable, though I do wonder about maintenance and reconfiguration costs. Perhaps Everton's owners were influenced by Chelsea FC selling their women's team to their owners for "considerably more than £150 million". One of the reasons the Premier League hasn't apparently made much of that latest bout of financial chicanery by Chelsea is that several other clubs may see it as a future "get out of jail" card for themselves.

It is a fitting home for the ladies team as Goodison Park held the record for attendance at a women's match anywhere in the world for 99 years: 53,000 saw Dick, Kerr Ladies beat St Helens Ladies 4-0 on 27 December 1920, just before the FA banned women's football in England. And at least I'll still be able to do that behind the scenes stadium visit that I've been meaning to get round to.

Talking of financial chicanery, Premier League Chief Executive Richard Masters won what one fan called the "Brass Neck of Eternity Award" by showing his face at the game. He ran a gauntlet of "heckles" according to the media as he made his way to the main reception on Goodison Road. I suspect heckles is a very polite way of saying vitriolic abuse, but at least it was no worse than that. There's no hiding place in those narrow streets around the stadium: this photo of the scene in Goodison Road before the kick off. The photo comes from the Times:

There's more on the Everton fans' problem with Masters and the Premier League in the PS below. 

On a more positive note the post match show went very well and was clearly emotional for all Evertonians. Whoever chose the ending - John Lennon's In My Life  followed by a Last Post style rendition of the Z Cars theme, used to greet the team onto the pitch since the 1960s, nailed it. Bill Kenwright, with all his background in theatre, couldn't have done better. It was touching that the scouse singer was either overcome by emotion, or maybe just couldn't sing, but the choice of John Lennon's  In My Life was very apposite, the lyrics capturing how many were feeling.

However, my last match at Goodison was the penultimate fixture a fortnight earlier. A very strange and bittersweet experience. Here are some pictures from that match and some other matches I went to in the last season at Goodison Park.

Having parked in Kirkdale a good walk away from the ground I soon past one of my most frequent stopping points en route to the ground in recent years. This flashy looking establishment is the Medlock Hotel:

I didn't call in on this occasion as I'd been in there very recently and the journey had been quite quick so I wasn't in need of the loo. However it does have behind the bar one of the most apposite signs I've ever seen in a pub:

Funnily enough I've never asked how much they charge for rooms at the Medlock Hotel.... I pressed on and got some refreshment in another favourite haunt, the Barlow Arms, about 400 yards away from the ground:

This pub was given Mrs H's seal of approval on her last visit to Goodison (and her first for 30 years) in September on account of the ladies loo being "quite nice, clean and with plenty of soap and handtowels". It has my seal of approval because, unlike some of the pubs near the ground, it still serves draft bitter as well as the now obligatory huge range of lagers. But also because the bar has a remarkable and beautiful backdrop:

Note the "cash only sign": in the stadium it's card only even for a cuppa. As this was a 3 o clock kick off and I 'd parked up by 1230 it was time to get lunch from my regular if dodgy looking Chinese chippy:

To be fair I mainly pick it because the ones right by the ground get very busy and I don't like standing in a queue tens of yards long, whereas here I've rarely been in a queue of more than 4. On Mrs H's visit she surprised me by declaring it to be "cute" (and yes, she did get some chips). For me it was the usual sausage, chips and curry sauce which was absolutely standard and therefore just to my taste:

I couldn't help reflecting that, sadly, with the ground relocation some of these businesses will struggle to survive in the future. While consuming my feast as soon as it was cool enough, I walked towards the stadium, soon getting into bigger crowds as I neared Spellow Lane and my next nostalgic call at the "Spellow Brick Road". This was built by the club adjacent to the Everton in the Community hub and the successful free school it runs. Fans could buy the commemorative bricks laid in the curving pathway around 5 years ago:

As it's probably fifty to a hundred yards long the first time I went to find the brick my son got for us I couldn't find it, though in my defence it was dark and I didn't have much time on that occasion. But once I found it and an associated landmark it 's easy to spot, if already looking a bit faded:

"Phil and Dave Holden COYB" (Come On You Blues, of course).  Everton have built a far more ambitious walkway by the new stadium, the Everton Way, with 36,000 personalised stones. Yes, I've bought one. Imaginatively it says "Dave and Phil Holden COYB". It should actually be easier to find as they are embedding stones to commemorate Everton "legends" at regular intervals so you just need to know which legends your stone is between. Hopefully.

Another hundred yards and Goodison Road and the ground came into view, always a great sight on match days - a bit flat when the streets are deserted:

  

Just a bit further on you come to the Everton shop, built in the style of the Everton lock up (or Prince Rupert's Tower) landmark in Everton:

This shop is called Everton One, the shop in the Liverpool One shopping centre being known as Everton Two. So it's address is, of course, Everton Two, Liverpool One. 

I didn't go in the shop this time as  the chips and curry had left me needing a liquid top up so I called in a bar at the top of Spellow Lane, near Dixie Dean's statue, that has been there for many years but I don't recall visiting before:

The time it took to get served reminded me why I prefer to call at the Medlock, the Barlow Arms or the  Saddle Inn on the other side of Walton Road. Or the Thomas Frost or the Brick on Walton Road, all better bets. Then on through the growing throng up Goodison Road past the main stand:

and the "Evertonian's pub" the Winslow, right opposite the main stand:

I have been in the Winslow but only once that I can recall and then only to tick it off as it were as, of course, on match days it's chocker. Even the Spellow, up Goodison Road past the ground, isn't quite as manic:

I popped along to have a look for old times sake as this has been the most common meeting point with friends over the years, though I fell out with them a bit a year or so ago as now the only bitter is canned Boddingtons (I tend to find the lagers far too cold, especially in winter).  So it was time to go past the statue by St Luke's Church of Everton's Holy Trinity:

 

This of course is Alan Ball (man of the match in the 1966 World Cup Final), Howard Kendall and Colin Harvey from the 1970 championship winning team. Which was the last time I had a season ticket - but next year...

And along Gwladys Street with the street vendor on the corner

A great uncle (or maybe great great uncle) of mine lived in Gwladys Street but I never thought to ask my father if he knew whether the house was in the row of terraced houses still standing off to the left in this picture, or those that were demolished in 1938 to enable the Gwladys Street end to be enlarged, making the ground entirely two tier with seats on the top deck and terraces below all the way round

And then round into Bullens Road where I was going in:

It's very tight in there under the Lower Bullens Road stand but, remarkably, both here and in Gwladys Street I could nearly always stand up when the ref blew for half time, navigate the queues for the loo and the half time cup of tea and get back just in time for the 2nd half.

I hope the new stadium is as well designed, haha. I had the use of my buddy's season ticket on this occasion - luckily as getting a ticket through the official members scheme would have been nigh on impossible (my relatives all failed). In the paddock and close to the halfway line it had one of the best views in Goodison Park and not just because there are no pillars in the way:

Close to the pitch but not too low and far enough back to be under the roof when it rains! (I didn't take the equivalent shot this time so this photo is actually from the game against Manchester City in February - you can see City's Bernardo Silva nearest the camera who impressed me for one moment of superb skill but also for having one of the smallest pairs of feet I've seen on a men's football pitch). Well, I did take an equivalent photo, as the teams were coming on the pitch. But as Everton made quite a song and dance about this penultimate match as well as the last one, there were banners in the way so at that point you couldn't see a thing:

Though that is still a better view than some of them I've had over the years. Earlier this season the "letterbox" view from the Lower Bullens:

And here a very typicl Goodison view. This was from the corner of Upper Gwladys Street stand for a match in 2023:

I know that pillar is blocking out one of the goals but you can bob either way and that is far more exhausting if the pillar is across the centre of the pitch, so I counted that seat as not too bad!

This time the match itself was an odd affair - the atmosphere was understandably a bit strange with nothing at stake. It was almost - but not quite - the last match and a lot of spectators seemed quietly reflective rathert than overtly emotional. Everton took a 2-0 lead against relegated Ipswich and an easy win seemed likely but Ipswich scored a "worldie" to make it 2-1 before half time and got a second half equaliser. But the day wasn't really about the football. So I took some photos of the famous Archibald Leitch architecture:

Got a long suffering steward to take my picture by the pitch (the nearest I've got to going on it) - a few others had asked already but after me a long queue had formed. And yes I am wearing a vintage 1990s replica shirt, bought recently for me by my son (the son who's a red, like his mother):

A last picture from the corner of the Lower Bullens where I used to sit regularly with my two then quite young sons in the early 90s (now that was a good view when we could bag one of those):

And, after getting hurried along by a steward keen to get home, out of the ground with a last look at that amazingly tight area under the Lower Bullens Road stand:

And away from Goodison Road with a last look back from Walton Road down a side street:

Yes, that's The Brick, but I didn't go in it, it was time to drive home. But, on a whim, via the Dock Road and a glimpse of the new stadium. Which looks, as one scouser who went to one of the test events there said "like a f**king spaceship has landed".

Beam me up Scotty. It's time for a new era, new episodes, some new characters and, hopefully, plenty of drama. After a strange, happy/bittersweet/sad kind of day, I can't wait. 

P.S. The Everton fans have been booing the Premier League anthem since the points deductions and that was no different at the last game. I'm glad Masters was there to hear it. After all, if you don't know why the Everton fans sing "Premier League, corrupt as f*ck" (to the tune of Tom Hark if you were wondering) then consider this - why is the Manchester City case still outstanding? I know it's complex but Pep Guardiola  expected the result within one month back in February. Then it was "before the end of the season".That has come and gone and there is a deafening silence.  Now I've always thought that most of the charges against City are unproveable, for example off book payments to Roberto Mancini when he was manager. If the Inland Revenue isn't interested I don't see how the Premier League can prove that one. However, City were found guilty by UEFA on several charges which it was eventually decided were time barred. Those same charges are on the Premier League's rap sheet and the Premier League has no time bar so those, for me, are a slam dunk case of guilty. Though UEFA normally levy a financial sanction - and a modest one at that - so City would certainly appeal any other form of penalty.

 I suspect the Premier League want to get an agreed result, with some guilty charges which City won't contest, so the case doesn't rumble on indefinitely, consuming huge legal fees (which don't seem to count for "fair play" calculations, else City couldn't threaten to litigate till hell freezes over). I also suspect that City aren't playing ball and won't accept any punishment without contesting it. Either way, when City eventually escape with a penalty not much more than Everton's 8 point deduction - or even a small multiple of it - you might agree with the Gwladys Street's verdict about how corrupt the Premier League is.

Everything possible at the new place, but it will never be Goodison, by Martin Samuel, Sunday Times 18 May 2025

PS on the chancer Chancellor

My last post was mainly about the state of the economy and the reasons Rachel Reeves looks as if she's not sleeping.

Though perhaps the reason she's not sleeping is that she's not up to the job.

While I didn't vote for Labour I had long resigned myself to them winning and felt that, as at least it was Starmer-Reeves and not Corbyn-McDonnell, things should be ok. Oh they would make a mess of it slowly, as Labour always does, but nothing catastrophic. I found confidence in the fact that Reeves had had a career in finance and had been an economist at the Bank of England.

What could go wrong?

For a start Rachel wasn't what she claimed to be, or had allowed us to believe she was.

First we found out that claims that she'd been the British under 14 national chess champion were slightly exaggerated. She actually came 26th*. Some supporters tried to claim she was being harshly treated for winning the 'wrong chess tournament' as she apparently won - with 3 others - the British Women's Chess Association under 14 competition, a rather less significant achievement**. She may only have ever said that she won A rather than THE national under 14 title but she had allowed it to become part of her bio.

She claimed on her LinkedIn CV to have been at the Bank of England for a decade - it was actually 6 years. She also said she was an economist with the Bank of Scotland. Except she wasn't. She was in a customer services role with the Halifax, part of that banking group but a very different role. This came to light when former colleagues outed her. Her linkedin page suddenly got 'updated' and she let it be known that she had "brought her experience as an economist" to a role in retail banking. Oh dear***.

I thought nearly everyone realised that, if there ever was any point in tweaking your CV, it won't work now and isn't worth it. I saw much bluster evaporate under simple questioning when interviewing candidates for employment and that was a long time ago now.

So Rachel's not as sharp a tool as she'd allowed us to think. These things always come out in the end.

As far as I can understand the Reeves "plan", the top priority is growth. I agree, tick. But we have a crisis of delivery in public services. I accept that required higher taxes in the short term: things have to be paid for. However, the important point for the longer term is that significant productivity improvements are essential. Labour doesn't seem to have the a clue on how to go about that. Indeed, their first actions, bunging money at doctors and train drivers while with drawing any requirement for changes in working practices, was seriously counter-productive (pun intended). Change to the borrowing rules to enable more investment - big tick, I've thought for a long time it was daft that capital spend got slashed at the first sign of problems for the budget. Balancing current spend with taxation and investing in tangible assets at an affordable rate makes much more sense. Though the implication is that, when the economic outlook deteriorates, the chancellor will have to cut spend or raise taxes straight away. You can see why chancellors have taken the soft option of deferring capital spend - it hurts much less at the time.

Returning to "topline" in the plan - growth (pun also intended). From the outset Reeves spent too much time aggressively talking down the economy, talking up the problems and over emphasising (indeed grossly exaggerating) her economic inheritance. She can't expect those with money to invest to respond positively to all that stuff. They were always much more likely to keep their hands in their pockets. 

Those to the left of Reeves have warned that she seems to be returning to austerity. They make that out to be a political choice. I would have hoped that those folk would have heeded the major lesson of the brief Truss-Kwarteng interlude - that the elected politicians in charge of our affairs at any point in time often have much less room for manoeuvre than one might think. They can take a touch on the tiller but major rapid shifts are likely to cause a capsize. This is because, whatever the demands for spending (and they appear almost limitless), there is only so much money.

Only so much you can raise by taxes and only so much you can borrow. Too much of the former and wave goodbye to any chance of strong economic growth for the foreseeable future.The bond vigilantes will limit the latter. The former Bank governor Mark Carney referred to us being dependent upon the  kindness of strangers. But here's the rub. Those strangers aren't necessarily strangers - they are the major lenders in a market we know well. And they aren't being kind when they lend, they are just taking a cold, hard assessment of returns and risk. And they have other places they can put their money.

One of the things Reeves seems to be considering is merging the various comparatively small public sector pension schemes inter a superfund and "encouraging" it to invest in the UK in her infrastructure schemes. Most pension schemes used to invest mainly in the UK but for some time now they have invested mainly overseas, which has been one of the factors reducing the liquidity in the London stock market and its attractiveness as a place to list shares. I understand the logic in this and it is tempting. But I wouldn't want to be the one who has to tell those pension scheme members in the future that the returns on their invested pensions have been poor. Just think - their money could have been put into HS2.

Of course one could try to direct where the money goes - if you want to take a big step towards a communist economy. Not a good track record there. 

The latest bit of thrashing around from Reeves, after her visit to China (did they chide her about Huawei, I wonder?) was the rather sudden and bizarre reintroduction of the Heathrow third runway into the conversation. There is a case for the third runway as Heathrow routinely runs very close to capacity so has next to no resilience against problems at Heathrow or indeed at other connecting airports. But as the owner of Heathrow has no current intention of attempting to resurrect the project and the controversy it would cause all over again one couldn't imagine any concrete being poured for several years. Just get on and build those houses, Rachel. Not easy but surely more guaranteed to bring benefits. Benefits, moreover, that would be spread around the country. But maybe Angela told you she can't deliver them?

Well just go back and tell her to get on with it. House building is an example where you could nearly reach the target or surpass it. After all, you can't build 80% or 120% of a third Heathrow runway, can you?

Despite having executed the equivalent of an F1 driver stalling on the grid, Reeves got a football manager's vote of confidence from Starmer, who said she'd be in post to the end of her contract. Sorry, the political equivalent, the next election. 

But then it doesn't matter whether there is a change of chancellor, the economic circumstances - the exigencies of our situation - would be pretty much the same, as would the room for maneouvre.

The one possible reason for changing is that a new chancellor could adopt some change to the latest version of the "golden rules", loosening the straight jacket of what counts as being prudent and underpins budgets these days. Gordon Brown's version was that the government should only borrow to invest in the future, met on average over the economic cycle with a sustainability rule, limiting the debt to GDP ratio. George Osborne tweaked these in 2016 to have national debt falling as a percentage of GDP and achieving a budget surplus by the end of the parliament. The can kicking equivalent of make me righteous but not yet. Jeremy Hunt modified it to target the overall deficit. Rachel has gone back to a target where day to day revenues meet day to day expenditure by the end of the parliament and that public debt should fall as a share of the economy. Those of you who have stayed awake may say that is pretty well what it said before, but Reeves adopted a new definition of public debt (PSNFL, public sector net financial liabilities. If you hear an economics editor say "persnuffle" they aren't sneezing). This gave her a bit more wiggle room without spooking the markets.

She also tweaked a third rule, introduced by Osborne, called the welfare cap, designed to limit payments on social security. From my reading she tightened that to limit the scope for future policy changes to increase social security spending. I imagine this was to protect her against spendthrift pressure later in the parliament, "can't  break my rules".

A  new chancellor could further tweak the rules. But that wouldn't instill confidence so, at least for now, wouldn't help.

So we're stuck with Reeves, her rules, her growth mantra and the utter vacuum that lies behind it. 

The problem is it turns out that Rachel is a chancer. A chancer with her CV and a gambler with her budget. Go bold she thought. It worked for Geoffrey Howe and Margaret Thatcher in 1981 even though 364 economists wrote to the Times to say they'd made a big mistake. That time boldness paid off. 

Sometimes boldness is indeed the right approach. Many fail because they aren't bold enough. 

But on this occasion a more incremental approach was called for. I understand why she thought it best to get all the bad news on tax out of the way at once and get on with mending public services by a big boost in spending rather than being timid. But they were political, not economic reasons. The markets twitched but didn't melt down but business didn't buy it. The desperately needed growth is further away, not closer. But going back isn't an option.

It usually takes chancellors more time than this to run out of road. The better analogy might be that the road is there, but Rachel's motor has no engine.

Winnie the Pooh may have been a bear of little brain but at least he had some self awareness. I'm afraid Rachel is a bird of far less brain than I had thought. 

She (and we) will have to live with it.

Sleep well, Rachel. At least until the next set of economic and employment data.

* https://order-order.com/2024/10/15/investigation-rachel-reeves-british-chess-champion-myth-busted/

** https://x.com/Simon_Nixon/status/1858524910856937489

*** What's true on Rachel Reeves' LinkedIn CV - and what's not. Evening Standard 14 Jan 2025, https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/rachel-reeves-cv-scandal-memes-b1195128.html

What did they think would happen? And what do they think will happen?

A year ago economists and the hapless Sunak government were optimistic about the UK economy. 

The end of 2023 had been miserable. High energy prices, persistent inflation, staff shortages causing problems everywhere and figures subsequently published would show that there had been a "technical" recession, with two successive quarters of falling GDP.

But by January the most optimistially deluded of the Tories felt that a golden scenario was in prospect: falling inflation leading to lower interest rates and rising real terms wages. Advisers suggested the economy was liked a coiled spring, ready to recover because of a combination of factors, with an outside chance of a victory in an autumn general election.

Now that outside chance was always a long shot and we may never know what on earth was in Rishi Sunak's mind as the wally without a brolly stood in the Downing Street rain calling an early general election. There was supposition that the economic outlook was negative rather than positive - interest rate reductions had been deferred by the Bank and maybe things were going to get worse rather than better.

They didn't actually get worse through the late summer. Inflation dropped to 2% (though it's gone back up a bit since) and growth was much improved at 0.7% in Q1 and 0.4% in Q2.  We'll never know whether a November election would have been closer, though one still couldn't imagine anything other than a Labour win. Just like in 1997, when the Tories had delivered 3 good years of an economy was going well, the electorate had long since made up their mind that they didn't want more of the Tories, even if there was nothing like the kind of love for Starmer as for Blair.  A couple of good quarters was never going to return Sunak to no 10.

However, at the start of 2025 there is none of the cautious economic optimism of a year ago. Growth was flat in Q3 - it fell in GDP per capita terms. Labour's mission for growth has stalled on the launch pad - indeed there are fears of recession. The cost of government debt (gilts) - the most important indicator of confidence in the government and the thing that sank Liz Truss - ended 2024 at 4.55% but has continued edging upwards and this week reached 5.4% for 30 year gilts, the highest rate since 1998.  For context the OBR projected rates 0.4% higher for 5 year gilts by 2030 as a result of the Reeves budget but we've already past that figure. 7% would be getting into Greece bailout territory.

The rate at which the UK can borrow matters because higher debt repayments on our mountain of public debt means higher taxes or less to spend on services. In order to maintain confidence the chancellor pledged to meet the latest version of the Treasury's "golden rules". At the time of her budget she had some £10bn of leeway, a figure the Institute for Government called 'small'.  The increase in rates has meant the leeway has disappeared. If rates go higher she would be forced to break her rule, cut services, or raise taxes. Raising taxes would break a promise from just a few weeks ago that the tax rises in her budget were a once in a parliament event and she wouldn't be back for more. Cutting services will go down a storm with the Labour left and result in lots of hand wringing all round. The Institute for Government said it was 'not clear' how Reeves would respond in the event of even a 'modest' revision to forecasts.

In the run up to the budget Mrs H and I commented to each other that Reeves looked as if she wasn't sleeping. We thought she was worried about the decisions in her big bang first budget. She looked even worse in the Commons this week:

There was a lot of crowing in the Daily Mail a few days ago about the situation the economy and Rachel Reeves find themselves in. To be fair, while the budget unsettled markets, this week's problems are more to do with the world economy, in particular the extra debt Trump's administration is likely to take on. It's a simple matter of supply and demand: more demand for borrowing pushes up rates. Lenders will generally see the US as the best risk, leaving other countries scrabbling around - and needing to offer even higher rates - to borrow as much as they want or need.

The bond markets have come to be seen as the primary factor in keeping the tendency of governments to borrow and spend in check, hence the term 'bond vigilantes'. Who are these vigilantes? Mainly everyday financial institutions like pension and investment funds. Your pension fund is highly likely to hold gilts, quite probably from several countries. They have no axe to grind politically and are simply trying to make good returns and manage risk for their investors. They aren't speculators like George Soros, who famously crashed the pound back in 1992. The bond vigilantes have become the ultimate protector of the financial probity of governments.

You can see from the graphic shown in the same Daily Mail article this week that there hasn't been a sudden loss in confidence in the UK. Yes, since Reeves's budget, rates have been similar to those immediately after the kami-Kwazi Truss budget, but not as the result of a spike as happened then, just an inexorable increase as markets adjust to the international situation:

The Mail's gleeful comparisons with Truss-Kwarteng debacle are way off beam. Gilt rates now are higher than then, but the margin over short term interest rates is small, with Bank rate currently 4.75%. In contrast under Truss 30 year gilts, at 4.8%, were a whopping 3% more than the then Bank rate. She pushed the gilt rate up by 2.5 percentage points - doubled it pretty well - and the sterling index (the pound's value against a basket  of other currencies) plunged 12%, whereas it has been relatively stable of late and is stronger since summer. 

False news in the Mail? Well the facts are right, it's the inference that's clearly incorrect. I'm not sure what the right phrase is for ignorantly - or deliberately - drawing the wrong conclusion. False news doesn't really fit - deception, misrepresentation perhaps? How about hoodwinkery? (Yes of course I just invented that).

So I have some sympathy for Reeves. But not a lot - much of what is happening was entirely predictable. And she did leave herself little wiggle room, when she could have held some comittments back. Like bunging the train drivers a big increase when they're already paid around twice their equivalents in France and nearly three times their equivalents in Spain, for example. 

So no golden economic scenario in prospect for her and Starmer. The latter of course is already significantly tarnished in the eyes of the public by the pensioners' winter fuel allowance cut (I expect this story to keep running with the current cold snap) and the rows over freebies for suits, glasses, gig and football tickets.

There are other indicators of economic problems. Not long ago there were a lot more vacancies than unemployed. But now there are only 1.8 people unemployed for every vacancy, almost what it was before the pandemic. The number of vacancies has fallen 29 months in a row. The boss of one employment agency called this a "slow motion car crash" and a sign of impending recession. "When I've seen this before, that's what's happened". And this is before the employer's NI increase kicks in, in April.

What I'm wondering is why on earth Reeves and Starmer thought giving a weak but convalescing economy one of the biggest kicks possible in the budget would do anything other than make businesses pause investment and recruitment plans. With tax already at historically high overall levels her budget was one of the biggest tax raising budgets ever. £40bn of new taxes made it bigger in real terms than Lamont's post ERM crash 1993 budget and much bigger than anything Brown or Osborne did. It also provided for significantly higher borrowing as well, £30bn of it. £70bn a year of extra spending, £40bn of it on day to day services and the rest increased capital investment.  Even the Guardian said it was a return to tax and spend on a massive scale, pushing the UK towards European levels of spending.

Which was like giving the economy a huge kick in the nuts while force feeding it a Red Bull sugar and caffeine rush. No wonder it has stumbled around feeling sick.

A lot of attention focussed on how Reeves chose to raise tax, mainly the employers NI increase. Large companies can deal with it. They can generally pass on costs in their prices. The multi-nationals are looking at which country to invest in, have long term plans and can be reluctant to change course abruptly. But the larger part of the economy, small and medium sized businesses, are in a different boat. One can't blame them for pausing while they see how they can get through what will, for many, be a difficult time. 

I've always felt Labour is happier dealing with big companies. They have a better understanding of that culture, with unions, collectively bargained pay and economic regulation. In contrast they've always seemed to me to have little or no understanding of why someone would start a business or go through all the hassle and risk of trying to grow it. At their heart they are more comfortable with a socialist collective type of economy. Add your own adjectives, such as sclerotic, perhaps.

I don't actually expect the economy to shrink, at least not significantly, despite Reeves's well aimed but badly thought out kick. For a start, the public spending increases in the budget will increase GDP in the short term. This is why the OBR's budget forecasts showed a bit of a short term increase in growth, followed by it weakening later in the parliament as the spending increases work through and the growth depressing impact of the tax rises is felt. I think it is more likely to stumble on, flatlining. Maybe Ed Balls can reprise his much used but then incorrect gesture from a decade ago, false news at the time. But now there's the danger of inflation remaining stubborn or even going back up a bit, risking the scenario known as stagflation.

Meanwhile in other areas than the economy Labour is already setting out on courses of action which will steadily erode the precious few gains and improvements made under the Tories.  The best example of this is education where Bridget Phillipson risks undoing the gains made in education not just under the Tories but the previous Labour governments as well. Somehow education was a notable success for the Tories over the last decade with large improvements in our position in international league tables for literacy, numeracy and science despite significant real terms reductions in funding. 

Controverially perhaps I feel much of the credit for this lies with Michael Gove. While that might be a name one hardly dares mention to any current or former teacher, the evidence is clear, though the credit is far from entirely his. The main reason, in my view, is that education has not been a political football since Richard Baker, Thatcher's education secretary in the late 80s, introduced the national curriculum and the "Baker" training days now known as inset days. As an aside, wasn't it astounding that teaching had precious little of what became known as continuing professional development before that? I recall the odd teacher going off for a sabbatical but keeping up to date back then seemed to be entirely ad hoc. From Baker onwards successive Tory and Labour education secretaries have built on their predecessors achievements rather than changing course. Labour introduced academies, now it threatens to water them down.  Phillipson, in thrall to the producer part of the process (i.e. in this case teaching unions), has set out on a path which is likely to erode these various achievements as well as being, in what folk had been saying was an out of date phrase but seems to have gained fresh legs, utterly "woke". I'm referring, of course, to decolonising the curriculum (there wasn't much colonialism in what I was taught in the 50s and 60s for God's sake - just teach history, warts and all and keep contentious takes like critical race theory out of it).  Though taking the decision to put schools into special measures away from Ofsted and giving it to civil servants probably presents greater danger.

Things have gone quiet on watering down industrial relations legislation (but it will come back) and of course we have the dogmatic pursuit of a net zero electricity grid by 2030 which no genuine expert thinks is any other than 'challenging'. Having had to be told by the US to ditch Huawei from our telecomms system we're now thinking of putting Chinese stuff in key elements of our disaggregated, renewables dominated grid. But don't worry, I expect periods of dunkelflaute (a German word for periods of windless, cloudy days in autumn and winter) are more likely to crash the grid in coming years.*

This scenario, with a limp and unenthusiastic economy, large pay rises buying off strikes with no reform or efficiency strings attached and things that work replaced with what the providers prefer to dish up is broadly what I feared and why I didn't vote for Labour in the last election. 

There are grounds for hope that Labour will prove incompetent at delivering damaging change. It's remarkable that so early in Starmer's term as PM he picked up the whinge of previous ineffective PMs and ministers by saying that the levers of power weren't connected to anything and the civil service was getting in the way. The difference this time was he then had to back down after the civil service unions complained. I'm sure the civil service and other elements are obstructive at times, Michael Gove's blob etc. But I've also always thought that ministers don't understand that, in many areas, the civil service is there to formulate policy, not to implement things in practice. Which is why bodies charged with doing that, like the NHS, exist. Those levers in many areas don't connect to anything because they never have.

A few ministers do understand that. Unfortunately, not the right ones. “The only minister who really knows how to work the system and get officials delivering what he wants is Ed Miliband, who has been there before,” a colleague of the climate-crusading energy secretary told Tim Shipman of the Sunday Times**. “And Ed is the one minister we don’t want to be a success if we want to win the next election.” 

There is grave concern about the economy flatlining and few Labour advisers now privately defend the decision to deny winter fuel allowance to all but the poorest pensioners. “The political mistake they made was in conflating toughness with strength,” the party veteran said. “They wanted to look strong, so they tried to act tough. But when you beat up on poor old ladies, you just look like a bully.”

Wes Streeting, the health secretary, is the government’s best communicator, but the source said: “Wes always knows what to say, but it’s unclear yet whether he knows what to do.”

Until they figure out the right rather than wrong things to do, let's hope that's true. 

Some of the above draws on David Smith's column 'The coiled spring economy that failed to bounce back' in the Sunday Times on 29 December 2024, though he didn't quite as directly link it to Reeves's budget or use analogies like a kick in the nuts. The comment on the implication of a long term fall in vacancies also came from the Sunday Times business section. Smith's column this week was called The bond vigilantes are back - and that's no bad thing (12 January). I'd already written my paragraph on their significance by then but his helpful summary of the movement in bond rates meant I didn't have to look them up. 

Other sources:

Rachel Reeves' first budget is a clear break from the recent past, The Institute for Government review of the budget, was published on 30 October 2024. Note to their editor: it really should be "Reeves's budget"

Rachel Reeves goes back to the future with a tax and spend budget. The Guardian 30 October 2024

* Wind was our biggest source of generation in 2024, providing over 30% of our electricity. When I worked in energy economics 40 years ago we already knew that wind was the most practicable and economic of the renewables. However we also knew that guaranteed supplies were needed as renewables are intermittent. On some cold days earlier this month wind contributed a tiny fraction of its theoretical capacity, just a few percent of demand. Officials denied we were close to blackouts but there wasn't much resilience for, say, our biggest single source of supply (the interconnector with Norway!) dropping out. A Scandinavian politician had a vivid comment on Germany's energy policy with its over reliance on wind with insufficient base load generation which caused problems across northern Europe recently. He called it 'shit'. I doubt Ed Miliband will take note.

** Politics is notable for party colleagues also being rivals. The delicious and indiscreet quotes from Labour 'colleagues' are from Tim Shipmans's column '2025 will be a political shoot out. Which leader has most to fear?' in the Times on 4 January. This column also explained for me the debacle of the Tory leadership election. James 'not so' Cleverly was favourite to win it until, many believe, some of his supporters tried to fix who would be his opponent in the final run off. Cleverly’s camp think four of his supporters voted tactically for Badenoch, to keep Jenrick out, while Jenrick’s team believe one of theirs voted for Badenoch to keep Cleverly out. Without those votes switching, the run-off would have between Cleverly (42 votes) and Jenrick (40), with Badenoch (38) eliminated. D'oh, they're too incompetent to even frig their own leadership election!