The Chancellor is dishonest and economically illiterate. We will all pay a dreadful price.
Cancel Rachel Reeves says one thing and does the other again and again (Image: Getty)
Rachel Reeves repeatedly promises one thing then does the opposite. She’s crushing growth, killing businesses, destroying jobs, driving up inflation and sending debt through the roof, while claiming to have “fixed the foundations” of the economy. It’s outrageous. I’ve compiled a list of 25 policies that flatly contradict each other. There are many, many more. Writing this made my blood boil. Warning: it may do the same to yours.
1. The Chancellor says her top priority is economic growth, then repeatedly hammers businesses with growth-destroying taxes, notably her £25billion “jobs tax”.
2. Reeves claims she wants to make it easier for young people to find jobs, then makes it more expensive for employers to hire them. The result? Employment has slumped to a 14-year low.
3. She’s now talking about finding young people jobs in pubs, while sentencing pubs to death with her latest tax blitz. It makes no sense.
4. Labour claims to be the party of working people, but Reeves makes benefits so generous that work no longer pays.
5. Reeves says scrapping the two-child benefit cap will lift children out of poverty. In reality it means trapping more in workless households, teaching them that benefits pay better than jobs.
6. Her own fiscal rules pledge to “make working people better off as part of the Plan for Change”. Then she repeatedly taxes them to fund those who don’t work.
7. She backs “Small Business Saturday” while crushing small firms with red tape, higher wage bills and new taxes.
8. Reeves claims to protect pensioners as the state pension rises above the personal allowance. Instead, she’s giving them an incentive to blow all their savings, risking poverty in later life.
9. Reeves claims to back stability and growth while slapping new taxes on savings, investments, pensions, properties and inheritances, destroying aspiration.
10. The cost-of-living crisis is the biggest worry voters face today. Reeves pretends she agrees, then forces through inflation-busting minimum wage hikes that are passed onto consumers as higher prices.
11. Reeves says there’s nothing “progressive” about borrowing more money, with £1 in every £10 of taxes going on debt servicing costs. Then piles on another £70billion of borrowing this Parliament.
12. Her supposedly “iron-clad” fiscal rules require her to cut net financial debt as a share of the economy. The Office for Budget Responsibility says national debt is now set to rocket from £2.8trillion to £3.5trillion by 2031.
13. Labour claims it wants to help save the planet by backing electric vehicles. Then in the Budget, Reeves slaps an unworkable pay-per-mile tax on them.
14. Plug-in hybrids are a stepping stone to EVs. Reeves will now hit them with both the new EV tax AND fuel duty, slowing the switch from petrol engines.
15. Our Chancellor pledges to help save the high street, then hikes business rates up to five-fold crushing shops, pubs and restaurants.
16. Organised crime is taking over with vape and barber shops fronts for money laundering and other illicit activities. Reeves gives them a helping hand by driving out honest businesses.
17. The music industry is a British success story. Her business rate hike will sink it, by taxing recording studios as if they were office blocks.
18. Labour’s Employment Rights Bill is supposed to make work more secure, but thanks to Reeves firms are ramping up recruitment of temporary staff, as hiring permanent ones is now too risky.
19. Labour wants more house building. On Reeves’s watch, construction jobs are collapsing at the fastest rate in five years. Fewer homes will be built as a result.
20. Reeves has denied her inheritance tax raid will hurt family farms. Now Labour’s own analysis now confirms it will. Surprised, anyone?
21. Reeves repeated claims to be pro-business but slaps huge inheritance tax bills on family firms. Many will be wiped out when founders die, with IHT billions running into billions. Good for growth
22. Small firms face a backlog of half a million employment tribunal claims, many of the vexatious. Instead of helping, Labour plans to scrap a cap on payouts, give troublemakers even more incentive to complain.
23. Reeves boasts about fiscal credibility but in her Budget she backloaded £26billion of tax rises to the end of the Parliament, leaving her successor to clear up her mess.
24. She insists her plans are “fully costed” while growth flatlines and she blames everybody else for her errors.
25. Reeves clearly isn’t up to the job, but bond markets want her to stay. Why? Because the rest of the Labour Party is even more economically illiterate than she is. That, I suppose, is how she got the job in the first place.
