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The hidden N**i heritage of Germany’s far-right leaderAlice Weidel’s grandfather was a military judge in Hi**er’s regime...
02/11/2024

The hidden N**i heritage of Germany’s far-right leader

Alice Weidel’s grandfather was a military judge in Hi**er’s regime.

By DIRK BANSE,

UWE MÜLLER

and NETTE NÖSTLINGER

in Berlin

Illustrations by Andrei Cojocaru for POLITICO

Alice Weidel likes to talk about Germany’s past — but she’s talked less about that of her own family.

As co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), Weidel has urged her country to move on from what her party calls a “cult of shame” over its N**i-era atrocities. Yet, despite her calls for Germany to look forward, her own family’s history has remained in the shadows.

An investigation by Welt am Sonntag, drawing on extensive documents from German and Polish archives, reveals that Weidel’s grandfather Hans Weidel was a prominent N**i judge, appointed directly by Adolf Hi**er, responsible for sentencing opponents of the Third Reich.

While the Weidels’ history is not unique in a country where the N**i past touches nearly every family, these revelations are relevant given the AfD’s positions on Germany’s efforts to atone for the actions of previous generations.

In 2018, the party’s co-leader Alexander Gauland shocked the country when he minimized the N**i period as “just bird sh*t” in a millennium of glorious history. The previous year, Björn Höcke, one of the party’s more extreme figures, described a Holocaust memorial as a “monument of shame” and called for a 180-degree reversal to the country’s approach to remembrance.

Despite its overt radicalism and warnings by authorities that it is an extremist organization, the AfD has surged in popularity. In September, it achieved the most significant electoral win for the far right since WWII, capturing its first regional election victory. Now, with Alice Weidel as its top candidate, the AfD is preparing to push its nationalist agenda in the upcoming federal election.

Military judge

It’s not that Weidel is completely opposed to talking about her family history. She has recounted how it was expelled from what used to be Silesia, now Poland — but she’s remained silent on her grandfather’s prominent role in the N**i regime.

Through a spokesperson, Weidel said she had no knowledge of her grandfather’s N**i past. “Due to family discord, there was no contact with the grandfather, who died in 1985, nor was he a topic of conversation in the family,” the spokesperson said.

Weidel was six years old when her grandfather Hans died. Her grandmother, also a member of the N**i party, passed away two years later.

The elder Weidel was nearly 40 when he became a military judge at the Warsaw commandant’s office in July 1941, joining about 3,000 Wehrmacht judges in enforcing Hi**er’s military rule.

His superiors praised him for “carrying out his work with great interest and understanding,” the documents showed.

Under Hi**er, who ruled as commander in chief of the Wehrmacht, military courts issued an estimated 50,000 death sentences, of which over 20,000 were carried out, according to the findings of historian Claudia Bade, who wrote that such a record “far exceeded that of the civilian N**i courts.”

Three years into the job, Hans Weidel was appointed Chief Staff Judge. His appointment passed through the Führer’s headquarters, according to an official document from Oct. 12, 1944 that reads: “Der Führer, signed Adolf Hi**er.”

Before his steep rise in the N**i system, Hans Weidel had studied law in Munich and Breslau. He was a member of the N**i party since 1932, joining before Hi**er’s rise to power and serving in the Waffen-SS from 1933 as a legal advisor. “Even before the September 1930 election, I voted National Socialist and actively campaigned in the movement’s election propaganda,” he wrote in a document preserved in German archives.

Hans Weidel would later tell investigators that he had no knowledge of the N**i’s treatment of Jews. He lived in a small town, he said : “I didn’t hear anything there other than what was in the newspapers or on the radio.”

“I must stress, however, that I never heard anything about the SS’s crimes,” he added.

The aftermath

After Germany’s defeat and its division into four occupied zones, the victorious powers set about cleansing the country from the N**is. Supporters of the dictatorship were not to hold important positions in the new state. To this end, tribunals were set up by the military governments of the allied powers.

Hans Weidel, who had moved with his family to East Westphalia after the war, faced three investigations for his roles during the dictatorship.

In Nov. 1948, a tribunal in Bielefeld, part of the British-occupied zone, opened a case against him for “membership of a criminal organization.” But the case was closed within a month, with prosecutors citing a lack of evidence, the investigation file in the federal archives showed.

That decision, while not an outright acquittal, spared him from being disbarred. He went on to open a law firm in the Western city of Gütersloh, where he became active in an association of displaced persons and sought compensation for his lost property in Upper Silesia.

Two decades later, his N**i past caught up with him again. In the late 1970s, police in North Rhine-Westphalia and Hamburg reopened investigations into his wartime role. Requests for documents were sent to East Germany, then under communist rule. However, both attempts to prosecute him failed. In the Federal Republic, not a single military judge was brought to justice for imposing arbitrary death sentences.

The revelations are unlikely to damage Alice Weidel’s standing with her base as she prepares to lead her party in the election next year.

However, as the AfD struggles to shake off accusations of N**i sympathy, how she chooses to confront her grandfather’s prominent role in the regime could influence how voters see the party’s commitment to moving beyond its past.

WELT is a sister publication of POLITICO in the Axel Springer Group.

The hidden N**i heritage of Germany’s far-right leader

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The hidden N**i heritage of Germany’s far-right leader Alice Weidel’s grandfather was a military judge in Hi**er’s regime. By D...

WASHINGTON — It’s three and a half months since Donald Trump was left bleeding after an attempted assassination that alm...
02/11/2024

WASHINGTON — It’s three and a half months since Donald Trump was left bleeding after an attempted assassination that almost succeeded. Now, in his latest violent rhetorical outburst, he suggested one of his opponents should be made to face guns “shooting at her.”

Liz Cheney, a former Republican lawmaker, is backing Trump’s rival Kamala Harris for the U.S. presidency in a contest that is on a knife edge with just four days to go. At a rally in the swing state of Arizona on Thursday, Trump described Cheney as “a very dumb individual.”

He said she wanted to keep American troops fighting foreign wars in places like Iraq and Syria, while he had acted to cut back U.S. military commitments. “If it were up to her, we’d be in 50 different countries,” Trump said. “She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her okay? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

Cheney hit back. “This is how dictators destroy free nations,” said the former member of Congress, who is the daughter of ex-Vice President Dick Cheney. “They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant,” she said.

Cheney has been backing the Democratic Party nominee, Vice President Harris, for the presidency because she cannot stand her own side’s choice for the White House.

But attacking the outlandish remarks of your opponent runs the risk of amplifying them. In her case, Cheney even reposted the video of Trump’s interview on social media platform X, presumably in an effort to motivate more voters to oppose him and go out to vote for Harris.

The episode illustrates how the Nov. 5 election is not so much a battle of contrasting ideas for the future of America but a referendum on one man.

Harris’s entire campaign has emphasized how Trump must not be entrusted with the White House again after his role in the riot that saw gangs of his supporters storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. She has described him as a “fascist” and a threat to democracy.

The Trump campaign’s increasingly inflammatory rhetoric has dominated the final full week of campaigning. At a Trump rally in New York last Sunday, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe provoked condemnation from Republicans and Democrats after describing Puerto Rico — a U.S. territory — as a “floating island of garbage.” The backlash began immediately. Critics attacked the “racist” joke and urged Puerto Rican voters — who could be vital in key swing states — to back Harris.

A few days later Joe Biden himself described Trump’s supporters as “garbage,” prompting the Harris campaign to distance the Democratic candidate from the erratic president.

The election is officially too close to call. Polls suggest Trump and Harris are effectively tied in swing states that are expected to decide the election. In the context of such a tight race, gaffes in the fraught final days of campaigning could prove costly.

Andrew Howard contributed reporting.

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Eight people are dead after the outdoor roof of a railway station collapsed in the Serbian town of Novi Sad on Friday, I...
01/11/2024

Eight people are dead after the outdoor roof of a railway station collapsed in the Serbian town of Novi Sad on Friday, Interior Minister Ivica Dačić said.

In a statement released by the Serbian government, Dačić said two people were injured and hospitalized, one of whom was in “very serious condition.” Dačić added that authorities are in contact with two people trapped under the rubble as they conduct a “very difficult” rescue operation.

Videos circulating on social media showed damage to the structure and paramedics at the scene.

Serbian TV station N1, citing Dačić, reported that a young girl was pulled from the rubble after a four-hour rescue operation. Novi Sad Mayor Milan Đurić said that more than 30 people were injured, N1 reported. Đurić said in statement posted to the Novi Sad government website that he arrived at the scene “as soon as he received news about the collapse.”

Serbian Prime Minister Miloš Vučević — a former mayor of Novi Sad — paid tribute to emergency workers fighting a “superhuman battle” on what he called “Black Friday” and “one of the hardest days in the postwar history of Novi Sad.”

Local politician and fellow former mayor Borislav Novaković urged residents to donate blood in the aftermath of the tragedy. He also said that authorities must take responsibility for the incident.

Located in the north of the country on the banks of the Danube, Novi Sad is Serbia’s second-biggest city and an ethnically diverse cultural hub.

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Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column.Brussels owes Washington an apology: We’re sorry for distracting from you...
01/11/2024

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column.

Brussels owes Washington an apology: We’re sorry for distracting from your election.

After all, who can expect the United States presidential vote to get the attention it rightly deserves when there is such a monumental event taking place across the pond at the same time?

Sources tell POLITICO that U.S. senators begged Brussels to shift the dates of the European commissioners’ hearings amid panic over the prospect of low turnout on Nov. 5, when millions of Americans will be glued to the European Parliament’s website.

And when it comes to Brussels’ interest in the U.S. election, forget about it. In the European Union capital, Harris is the Irish taoiseach, Donald is the prime minister of Poland, Republicans are French conservatives and Georgia is a swing state — in the Caucasus.

On Nov. 5 — a date that has become synonymous worldwide with the much-anticipated hearing of Bulgarian Commissioner-Designate Ekaterina Spasova Gecheva-Zaharieva — there is a genuine risk that what happens in Brussels could swing the balance in the U.S. Some are already calling it election interference.

On that blockbuster day next week, members of the European Parliament will fire questions at six commissioners — covering topics regularly discussed by your Average Joe in America, like “competitive circular economy” and water resilience. There’s every chance that the commissioners’ policy pledges, no matter how noncommittal, will filter back into key U.S. swing states and impact the results there.

Let me level with you.

Viewed from Brussels, one can just about see why what’s happening stateside could garner some worthwhile attention: You have two starkly different candidates, one of whom survived being shot, going head-to-head in a generation-defining election that’s putting the future of democracy itself at stake.

But doesn’t that pale in comparison with two dozen mid-ranking European politicians/technocrats facing 720 MEPs’ questions across 78 hours of parliamentary hearings (with speaking time allotted according to the d’Hondt system, no less)?

The numbers make it obvious. There are 27 commissioners but only one U.S. president. That’s 27 times the power!

On the global stage, it’s clear which political showdown counts. Hardly the nuclear superpower choosing whether to reelect Donald Trump; rather, the EU with its brand-spanking-new commissioner for defense.*

So if it’s political theater you want next week, switch off CNN. You’ll want to be in Parliament room JAN 4Q2.

*This product does not come with an army.

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“Raise your hands if you miss Lady Di!” by POLITICO’S very own Max Griera

Eddy Wax is POLITICO’s Playbook co-author.

Forget the US election — EU commissioner hearings are the real global event

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Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said Thursday that it is Hungary’s “sovereign right to negotiate with whomeve...
31/10/2024

Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said Thursday that it is Hungary’s “sovereign right to negotiate with whomever we want.”

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s top diplomat spoke from Belarus, which he traveled to Thursday to appear as a speaker at the Minsk Conference on Eurasian Security. Other participants at the summit include Szijjártó’s Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov and Syrian Foreign Minister Bassam Sabbagh.

The minister’s trip to the Munich Security Conference’s eastern rival caused alarm among the country’s NATO allies, with the United States Embassy even convening the treaty members’ ambassadors to discuss Orbán’s “economic sovereignty” policy.

However, Szijjártó continued to promote the policy in his keynote speech on Thursday, addressing the conference audience in Russian.

In his 14-minute speech, Szijjártó did not mention Ukraine once, nor did he speak specifically about the war — saying only that “Europe and Hungary are facing one of the most serious conflicts since World War II.” Instead, he stressed the importance of “Eurasian cooperation” and “unity in the Eurasian region.”

After his keynote speech, Szijjártó held talks with Lavrov. According to his video statement, Budapest wants to increase “rational” economic cooperation with Moscow in areas “not damned by sanctions,” especially in the energy sector.

He also held talks with Belarusian Foreign Minister Maxim Ryzhenkov, with whom the Hungarian minister also made a press statement.

“We believe that the world is going down the drain when some people want to tell others who can talk to whom, who can meet with whom and who cannot. We have a sovereign right to negotiate with whomever we want,” Szijjártó told the press.

The foreign minister said it’s in Hungary’s “national interest” to increase cooperation with Belarus, which was praised by his Belarusian colleague: “We were thinking of giving you an office here, since you travel to Minsk a lot,” Ryzhenkov said.

Hungary taunts Western allies: We’ll talk to whoever we want

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Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said Thursday that it is Hungary’s “sovereign right to negotiate with whomever we want.” Prime M...

Former United States President Donald Trump received best wishes from his old pal, said Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor ...
31/10/2024

Former United States President Donald Trump received best wishes from his old pal, said Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

“Just got off the phone with President . I wished him the best of luck for next Tuesday,” Orbán announced on X, referring to the upcoming U.S. election without specifying who called whom.

The Hungarian prime minister added: “Only five days to go. Fingers crossed.”

Closeness between the two leaders began to build in 2016, when Viktor Orbán was the first European leader to call Trump “a better option” in the presidential race against Hillary Clinton.

Their bromance further blossomed as they praised each other when they met at the White House in 2019. Even after Capitol Hill was stormed on Jan. 6, 2021, Orbán continued to call Trump his “good friend.”

As Trump’s current campaign unfolded, Orbán adopted a modified version of his slogan for use during Hungary’s presidency of the Council of the European Union: “Make Europe Great Again.” Trump also publicly praised Orbán in his nomination acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in late July.

Even as former GOP officials sounded the alarm over Orbán’s ties to Russia and China, Orbán publicly claimed to be helping draft the Trump team’s policy.

After the European Parliament’s debate on Hungary’s EU presidency earlier this month, Orbán said at a press conference that he’d open “several bottles of champagne” if Trump won.

Hungary’s Orbán wishes Donald Trump good luck in phone call

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NATO allies’ frustration with Hungary is reaching boiling point as the country continues to flirt with Russia.The split ...
30/10/2024

NATO allies’ frustration with Hungary is reaching boiling point as the country continues to flirt with Russia.

The split widened on Wednesday as Hungarian officials snubbed an invitation to join a Budapest meeting of all ambassadors and military advisers from NATO countries stationed in Hungary. The aim was to discuss Budapest’s policy of encouraging ties with Russia and China.

“We appreciated the opportunity to discuss Hungary’s new policy with our allies. The fact that a discussion about an ally’s ‘neutrality’ policy was necessary speaks for itself,” the U.S. ambassador in Budapest, David Pressman, said in a statement after Wednesday’s meeting

While Hungary was a no-show at the NATO meeting, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó is due to speak at a Belarusian security conference on Thursday alongside his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov and even Syrian Foreign Minister Bassam Sabbagh.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, although he leads a country that has been in NATO for 25 years, has been pushing the concept of economic neutrality, including a “shift from traditional Western alignment.”

“We must preserve our relations eastward and westward,” he said in a radio interview last month.

That has made him an increasingly troublesome ally within NATO and the EU at a time when the West is aiding Ukraine and trying to sanction Russia for its war of aggression.

Hungary has been blocking EU efforts to refund countries for arms shipments to Ukraine, and has made it difficult to use the proceeds from frozen Russian assets to help finance Kyiv.

After years of isolation, Orbán recently gained an ally in Slovak PM Robert Fico — another NATO member. Fico was interviewed by Russian propagandist Olga Skabeyeva this week, saying he plans to visit Moscow for next year’s 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, and that he would meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Orbán has also turned to freelance diplomacy — often undercutting EU and NATO efforts.

He traveled to Moscow in July to meet Putin, even though the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant against the Russian president for war crimes. The EU was outraged that Orbán was presenting himself as representing the bloc; Hungary holds the bloc’s rotating Council presidency, but that doesn’t give Budapest any extra weight in international diplomacy.

On Tuesday Orbán was in Tbilisi to support Georgia’s Russia-backed ruling party in the face of condemnation from other EU countries that it had rigged Sunday’s parliamentary election.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson slammed Orbán’s appearance in Georgia. “He does not speak for the countries of Europe, he does not speak for Sweden, he may speak for Russia, but he does not speak for the rest of us,” Kristersson said.

There are growing worries that Orbán’s eastern efforts are turning Hungary into an unreliable partner; apart from cozying up to Moscow, he has also been lobbying China to build more car plants in his country.

“Hungary’s newly announced policy of economic ‘neutrality’ and its growing dependencies on Moscow and Beijing have security implications for the United States and Euro-Atlantic interests,” U.S. Ambassador Pressman said.

The Hungarian delegation to NATO asked POLITICO to reach out to the foreign ministry, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trust deficit

There is no mechanism to kick Hungary out of NATO, the world’s largest defense alliance and one that produces and circulates some of the West’s most sensitive military secrets.

Despite concerns about Orbán, senior diplomats from other NATO countries repeatedly told the media on condition of anonymity that Hungarian officials are not excluded from intelligence-sharing or discussions.

“By construction, every ally has full access to all NATO documents, including the secret ones,” said Camille Grand, a former NATO assistant secretary-general.

“At a certain point, if Hungary expresses a sort of sympathy for the views of Russia, or for [a] Russian approach to some of the critical crisis in and around Europe, the ability to share things will become an issue,” said Grand, now with the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank, adding: “I don’t think we’re there yet.”

Grand noted that, traditionally, if a NATO ally stepped out of line, the U.S. would weigh in. This time, however, Orbán is betting that his ally Donald Trump will win the U.S. election; Orbán’s government has become increasingly hostile to Pressman and his team in Budapest — appointed by incumbent President Joe Biden.

A NATO diplomat said there have been “serious concerns” owing to Hungary’s latest actions and rhetoric.

Wednesday’s meeting “would have been a useful opportunity for Hungary to explain itself to its allies, but they were absent from the discussion,” the diplomat said.

Earlier this year, Orbán secured a unique opt-out for Hungary not to participate in NATO’s mission to provide Ukraine with military aid and training. Budapest also delayed Sweden’s bid to join the alliance last year, and spent months stalling Mark Rutte’s application to become the NATO chief.

Another NATO official, however, highlighted Budapest’s continued role in supporting NATO activities — while conceding its political divergence from mainstream views in the alliance.

On the operational side, the official stressed, Hungary plays a part in NATO’s mission in Kosovo and hosts a sizeable NATO command in the country.

Hungary’s status as a questionable ally marks a sea change for the country. When it joined NATO in 1999, alongside Poland and the Czech Republic, memories of their decades as Soviet satellites was still fresh. All three had lobbied fiercely to be admitted to the alliance, and were allowed to join despite some misgivings in Washington and in Western European capitals.

Hungary’s accession was signed by Orbán, who in a speech marking the ceremony denounced the “unnatural relationship” that had made his country dependent on Moscow, and celebrated the “occupying power” pulling its troops out of Hungary in 1991.

“All of us can feel, most directly, the genuine security that NATO membership means,” he said at the time.

Hungary flirts with Putin and snubs NATO meeting

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Ukraine’s allies in the West did not have a “strong enough” reaction to North Korean soldiers actively joining Russia’s ...
30/10/2024

Ukraine’s allies in the West did not have a “strong enough” reaction to North Korean soldiers actively joining Russia’s side in the war, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday.

The Pentagon warned Monday that North Korea has sent about 10,000 troops to Russia for training, with some already moving toward the front line near the Ukrainian border to help the Kremlin’s military battle Kyiv’s forces. NATO also confirmed Monday that Pyongyang’s soldiers have been deployed to Kursk, the Russian region that is partly controlled by Ukraine.

“The voice of the United States, the voice of NATO, the voice of Western partners, the voice of Global South and China, is not so loud as it has to be now about North Korean contingent on the territory of Russia,” Zelenskyy told reporters Wednesday at the Nordic Council summit in Reykjavík. “I think it’s very dangerous. It’s opened a new page in this war.

“I had meetings with leaders, a lot of different leaders, and NATO and etcetera, and I said to them that this is very dangerous and I think that we need strong reaction on it,” he added. “Till now, we heard some reactions, but it is not strong enough.”

He also chided Ukraine’s allies for balking at providing Kyiv long-range weapons capable of striking targets inside Russia out of a fear of escalation.

“Some countries say that’s crossing the red lines. If we give you permission, Russia will escalate things,” he said. “I am sorry, but I think the North Korean soldiers entering war is escalation.”

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LONDON — Rachel Reeves just delivered the first Labour budget since 2010 — and set Britain out on a markedly different c...
30/10/2024

LONDON — Rachel Reeves just delivered the first Labour budget since 2010 — and set Britain out on a markedly different course.

With taxes and borrowing hiked, and big cash boosts promised for schools and the health service, the leftward economic shift under Britain’s newly elected Labour government was arguably even more pronounced than many were expecting pre-budget.

Here are five things you need to know.

1) Britain’s tax burden is at record levels

Reeves’ budget hiked taxes by £40 billion a year. The litany of tax rises, mostly targeting businesses and high-wealth Brits, will take the U.K’s tax burden to more than 39 percent of gross domestic product by 2029 — its highest post-war share of the economy.

That’s far above what Prime Minister Keir Starmer promised during the election campaign, after repeatedly saying no tax rises were needed above what was outlined in Labour’s manifesto. The government is arguing that its fiscal inheritance was far worse than it expected and that extra cash is needed to prop up Britain’s struggling public services.

The bulk of the tax hikes come from an increase in national insurance contributions for employers, with an offset for Britain’s smallest businesses providing some relief for small and medium-sized firms. There are also increases to capital gains tax for shareholders, stamp duty on second homes, passenger duty on private jets and the imposition of VAT on private schools.

2) NHS and schools win big

Reeves said the tax hikes were necessary to stop a second round of austerity, with Britain’s creaking health service the biggest winner. The NHS’s day-to-day budget will increase by £22 billion next year, in the biggest real-terms increase for the health service since 2010 (the Covid-19 years not included.)

The health service will also get billions of pounds of extra capital investment, along with a host of promised reforms, in a bid to cut back the NHS waiting list which sits at nearly 8 million.

It shows just how politically important an improvement in the NHS is for this government. Polling consistently showed it was the top issue for voters in the July election. Many in Labour believe that they will only win a second term in 2029 by drastically improving NHS outcomes.

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves will argue this kind of change is necessary to mend Britain’s public services and fundamentally reorient the British state. | Pool Photo by Hollie Adams via Getty Images

The education department also got a large uptick in spending. It’s bagging a 20 percent increase in capital spending, earmarked for building and improving schools.

3) Growth still anaemic

Despite the tidal wave of fiscal policy changes announced today, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) expects U.K. economic growth to remain anaemic. In fact, the budgetary watchdog reckons economic growth will be slower than previously expected after this budget by the end of the decade.

After a two year uptick, growth is expected to be lower in 2026-2029 than under the previous Tory government. The OBR also reckons today’s increase in taxes, spending and borrowing will also increase inflation and bond yields over the term of this parliament.

In other words — the OBR reckons Reeves’ decisions will mean higher mortgage rates and government borrowing costs.

4) Labour bets big on infrastructure

Reeves is betting big that her budget will sow the seeds for long-term economic growth by clearing up space for tens of billions in extra infrastructure spending. Her decision to change the government’s fiscal rules, by adjusting how debt is measured, will now allow the government to borrow far more to invest in infrastructure over the next five years.

Reeves is hoping this extra investment will help drive up supply and economic growth in the U.K. economy, while also powering the green transition.

The money will be spent on green energy projects, on things like carbon capture and wind energy, and new transport infrastructure. The government is banking on this extra investment spending crowding in even more private industry spending in these areas through what is known as a multiplier effect.

5) This is not Tony Blair’s New Labour

This was a budget that hit high earners and businesses in a way which Labour election-winner Tony Blair would never have dreamed of — especially just after winning office. Reeves created clear winners and losers by hiking taxes on businesses, high-worth individuals and private schools to increase spending on public services.

The NHS’s day-to-day budget will increase by £22 billion next year. | Adrian Dennis/Getty Images

It is an explicitly worker-oriented economic policy which has seen Labour draw dividing lines in a way the party shied away from under Blair.

Starmer and Reeves will argue this kind of change is necessary to mend Britain’s public services and fundamentally reorient the British state. But they will surely only have the political space to do this type of tax-hiking budget just once during their five-year term in government.

UK budget: 5 things you need to know as Labour hikes taxes

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LONDON — Rachel Reeves just delivered the first Labour budget since 2010 — and set Britain out on a markedly different course. With taxes a...

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