Why Rachel Reeves's first budget cannot survive the coming financial meltdown - Richard Murphy

22nd November 2025

Rachel Reeves is presenting a budget built on assumptions that simply cannot survive the world we are about to enter.

Share prices are likely to fall sharply. A banking crisis may follow. Pension funds could be hit harder than at any time since 2008.

And the Chancellor? She has offered only cuts, caution and neoliberal wishful thinking.

In this video, I explain why her budget is unravelling before she even delivers it — and why government action, not austerity, will be the only way out of the crisis that is coming.

00:00 - Rachel Reeves's budget begins to unravel
01:00 - Assumptions behind the budget already failing
02:00 – Remembering March 2020: when crisis struck overnight
03:00 – Looming financial collapse and AI tech bubble burst
04:00 – Banking and pension crises on the horizon
05:00 – Why Reeves's assumptions will collapse like Sunak’s in 2020
06:00 – Government must step in—but Reeves won’t
07:00 – Austerity dogma and neoliberal blindness
08:00 – How the next crisis could devastate jobs, banks, and pensions
09:00 – Why cutting isn’t leadership: Reeves’s small-accountant mindset
10:00 – What real economic courage and care would look like

TRANSCRIPT
A transcript for this video is available at: https://www.taxresearch.org.uk