Things are not quite going according to plan for Rachel Reeves. The economy has contracted for the past two months and inflation is proving hard to shift. The first Labour budget in more than 14 years received a frosty reception. But everything is relative; at least the chancellor had no trouble getting her measures through parliament, which is more than can be said for Emmanuel Macron in France. And if opposition MPs at Westminster were to call a vote of no confidence, Labour’s massive majority means it would be spared the defeat suffered by Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, earlier this week.
In Germany and France, support is growing for parties of the hard right and the hard left, and it is not difficult to see why. A crisis that affected countries on the periphery of the 20-nation eurozone 15 years ago – Greece, Portugal and Ireland – has now worked its way to the core of the single currency zone. Let’s be clear: France is not the new Greece. The European Central Bank would probably step in to buy French bonds in the event of a full-scale speculative attack, and is now better equipped to do so than during the last crisis.
