在工党政府的两次预算中，瑞夫斯将税收提高了近700亿英镑，相当于GDP的2%，同时承诺约800亿英镑的额外开支，废除让30万儿童陷入贫困的两孩福利上限，并以豪宅税向价值500万英镑以上房产开征新税。国家角色迅速膨胀，从耗资4亿英镑在全国推广早餐俱乐部，到提高支出、税收和借贷，使这届政府成为过去五十年来经济上最偏左的一届。

除财政政策外，政府每年承诺在公屋上投入40亿英镑，在两年内向国民保健服务体系无附加条件地注入230亿英镑，并把40小时周工时的最低年薪提高到2.64万英镑，以至于清洁办公室的人每小时可能比加班的“四大”毕业生挣得更多。尽管如此，工党支持率却跌至约18%，对每一名流向右派的选民，就有两名转向波兰斯基领导的绿党等更激进的左翼政党。

在经济上极度左倾的同时，工党在打击寻求庇护者等社会议题上右转，试图迎合一种在选民结构中几乎不存在的“经济左翼但文化保守”的选民组合。结果是，在当前受财政约束的环境里，即便这场“半个世纪一遇”的大规模税收与支出扩张让国家史无前例地“烧钱”，公共服务依旧疲惫不堪，而绿党则以仅向超级富豪收费的“普通希望”社会主义显得更具吸引力。

Across two budgets, Reeves has raised taxes by almost £70bn, roughly 2% of GDP, while pledging about £80bn of extra spending, scrapping the two-child benefit cap that keeps 300,000 children in poverty, and turning a mansion tax on homes worth £5m or more into government policy. The state is expanding rapidly, from a £400m nationwide rollout of breakfast clubs to higher overall spending, taxes, and borrowing, making this the most economically left-wing government in five decades.

Beyond fiscal policy, the government has promised £4bn a year for council housing, handed £23bn over two years to the NHS with few conditions, and lifted the minimum wage to £26,400 a year for a 40-hour week, so that cleaners can earn more per hour than overworked Big Four graduates. Yet Labour’s support has slumped to around 18%, and for every voter it loses to the right, two drift to more radical progressive parties such as Zack Polanski’s surging Greens.

While aggressively left-wing on the economy, Labour has shifted right on social issues like asylum, chasing a voter who, as Ben Ansell notes, barely exists: economically left but culturally conservative. The result is that in a fiscally constrained environment, even this once-in-a-half-century tax-and-spend surge leaves a state that has never been so costly yet feels exhausted, while the Greens’ “ordinary hope” of socialism funded mainly by the super-rich appears more enticing to disillusioned progressive voters.