RACHEL REEVES has been forced to quash suggestions she might means-test free school meals for infants — which is possibly why they were aired in the first place.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson reportedly proposed the cut as part of measures to reduce the schools budget, alongside other unpalatable cuts including ending provision of free period products for girls.

Allies suggested she was not serious — as did an anonymous Treasury source, calling it “game-playing.” The gambit being to shield education spending by showing how toxic cuts are once you detail where they fall.

Education cuts are not a game. School budgets have not been increased enough to cover pay rises, which will force many of them to cut staff. Nor do government grants cover the increased cost of employers’ National Insurance. As National Education Union general secretary Daniel Kebede warns, this could be “the first Labour government to cut education since [James] Callaghan.”

Phillipson’s is a useful exercise. It exposes what Chancellor Rachel Reeves tries to disguise — that cuts have consequences. 

Fourteen years of Tory rule have cut services to the bone. The notion that “efficiency savings” can slice off further billions without worsening already degraded services is absurd.

Ironically, the cuts are intended to fund increased military spending — though if there is a department renowned for waste it is the Ministry of Defence. The MoD is repeatedly excoriated by the public accounts committee for the huge sums squandered on projects that end up delayed by years or not delivered at all.

Current Defence Secretary John Healey, when in the shadow cabinet, published a report identifying billions it had overspent on projects and billions more paid for cancelled contracts with its often extortionate suppliers. The report noted that the MoD had even been fined £32.6 million by the Treasury for its “poor accounting practices.” Yet it is this department which is having more billions thrown its way.

As for extortionate suppliers, the evidence is plain that besides tying institutions from hospitals to schools into contracts forcing them to repay PFI debts worth multiples of the original loans, many such agreements also tie them into inflexible and costly servicing contracts. 

Outsourcing services is massively inefficient, yet remains the norm, despite Reeves’s one-time promise to deliver “the biggest wave of insourcing in a generation.” 

As the Prison Officers Association (POA) points out of outsourced prison maintenance, we end up paying through the nose for “crumbling cells, compromised safety and rodent-infested jails.” 

“We do not for one minute accept that the privatised model of prison maintenance is more cost effective than insourcing … it is completely delusional to claim it provides best value for the taxpayer,” POA general secretary Steve Gillan observes.

Clearly value for money is not Reeves’s priority — corporate profits are, including at the Treasury’s expense. 

But the consequences are broken services and falling living standards. The Resolution Foundation finds that British households will, on average, be £1,400 worse off by 2030, with the poorest suffering the biggest proportional drop in income.

If that is Labour’s legacy, we know where it leads. Supposedly centre-left governments that back capital over labour have fallen again and again to the right. It happened to France’s Francois Hollande. It’s happening to Germany’s Olaf Scholz. 

Most ominous, given the rise of Reform, are the cases of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, both of whom paved the way for the far-right Donald Trump. The first time as farce, the second time as tragedy, given the greater cohesion and purpose of his hard-right team this time around.

Do Labour MPs want a one-term government whose legacy is a withered public sector, a poorer population and a far-right successor?

If not, they need to change this government’s trajectory before it does more damage. Reeves should not be allowed to dictate to the party and the country on Wednesday. She must be challenged.