Rachel Reeves won’t stop taxing us. She can’t.
Rachel Reeves cannot control public sector spending so taxes will have to rise and rise (Image: Getty)
Last year, the Labour Chancellor swore her brutal budget was a one-off. She said: “I’m really clear: I’m not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes.” She claimed to have “put public finances and public services on a firm footing, and as a result, we won’t have to do a Budget like this ever again.”
She should never be allowed to forget that. On November 26 she will deliver a Budget very like the last one, and possibly even worse. Another £30billion in taxes is coming, maybe more. That’s on top of last year’s £40billion raid that strangled growth.
Public finances are on far from a firm footing, as she claimed. Instead, they’re on a slippery slope.
This morning, we learned she borrowed another £20.2billion in September alone, the second-highest figure for that month on record.
So far, she’s borrowed more than £104billion in the current financial year – and we’re only halfway through.
Taxes shot up too, by 6% to £71.2billion in September. Doesn’t help. No matter how much Reeves grabs, it will NEVER be enough.
The public sector swallows 45% of our annual economic output, even more than under Labour in the 1970s.
That’s up from 38% in 1990, the year Margaret Thatcher resigned and things started to slip.
State spending is up almost 5% since the pandemic, the equivalent of about £150billion extra every year.
That’s down to the ageing population, soaring state benefits bills, rising defence costs, and Ed Miliband’s reckless net zero spending spree.
We employ 600,000 more public sector employees than five years ago. What’s the impact of all these extra civil servants? Productivity has dropped nearly 10%.
Today, 4.4million Britons claim health-related benefits. That’s 1.6million more than before Covid. Growing numbers are young people who should be working and paying tax instead. Many will claim for life.
The more Reeves taxes, the more the public sector will spend, and the less we’ll get in return. Rather than being on a firm footing, it’s dragging us over a fiscal cliff.
The left pretends another tax raid will plug the gap. It won’t. State spending will simply swallow up the money, and stick its hand out again.
The more Reeves taxes, the slower we grow. The IMF predicts the UK economy will grow just 0.5% next year, the slowest in the G7. And it still has to feed a ravenous, unproductive public sector.
She could unleash 100% tax on everything tomorrow and it still wouldn’t be enough. The left would still cry austerity and demand more.
Reeves will keep hiking taxes as long as she’s in No 11. She won’t stop. Can’t stop. And it will never, ever be enough.
