Trump Chaos Labour Must Focus On Risks To Global Financial Stability

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have underlined how much the world has changed after Donald Trump's "liberation day", with the prime minister even declaring an end to globalisation.

- Heather Stewart

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have underlined how much the world has changed after Donald Trump's "liberation day", with the prime minister even declaring an end to globalisation. But as the chancellor prepares to fly to Washington this week to meet her global counterparts at the International Monetary Fund meetings, Labour appears to see the risks purely in terms of the hit to international trade.

While frantically negotiating with Washington over tariffs, the government is pressing ahead with plans to deregulate the City - just as global financial stability appears threatened by the chaos unleashed by the White House.

Labour has taken a muscular approach to saving the steelworks in Scunthorpe, and Reeves has written of the need for a "strong, smart and agile state to support key industries". Yet its stance on the UK's highly globalised financial sector appears to remain the one set out in the chancellor's Mansion House speech in November: that rules imposed after the 2008 crash have "gone too far".

The governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, appeared to raise a metaphorical eyebrow at that suggestion a couple of months later, when he used a speech to warn: "Memories disappear in the rear-view mirror. And those of us who lived through it, worked through it and had to deal with it, are left saying: 'Just remember what we had to deal with.'"