Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer think we’re idiots – get ready for 1 jaw-dropping betrayal
If you thought things couldn’t get any worse, you have got another think coming, says Giles Sheldrick.
Rachel Reeves stands ready to rip up Labour’s manifesto when she delivers her Budget (Image: Getty)
For an inept government that has scored plenty of own goals it should come as a surprise to no-one that Labour continues to move the goalposts.
Just 17 months ago when Sir Keir Starmer took office he told the British people there was a “crisis of confidence in our political system’s ability to deliver any change”.
In words that sound even more disingenuous now than they did at the time, he said: “It is not just sleaze and scandal that have eroded trust. Just as corrosive has been the inability of politicians to keep promises made to the British people.”
Really? The promises he made to the electorate – written in Labour’s manifesto – were not to raise income tax, National Insurance, or VAT.
Today, exactly a fortnight out from a widely expected Budget bloodbath, the document is not worth the paper it was written on. That’s because it no longer exists. Instead, Labour now trumpets its equally meaningless Plan for Change.
It means the “tough choices” to which charmless Chancellor Rachel Reeves endlessly refers is code for an almighty U-turn.
She claims her set piece statement on November 26 will focus on the cost of living, getting a handle on national debt, and bringing NHS waiting lists down.
And here’s the rub. Sticking to the promises Labour made to the country would require “deep cuts”, she said.
So there we have it. As clear an indication as is possible that a flip-flopping party with form in economic foul-ups, and led by a prime minister who has a net favorability rating of -51, cares not one jot about the promises it made – in writing – to the British people.
If the doomsday scenario comes to pass on what is shaping up to be an extremely Black Wednesday, as seems increasingly likely, it surely leaves Labour with no mandate to govern.
Labour is preparing to unleash an unprecedented raid on working people (Image: Getty)
The Labour Party was created in 1900 as a “new party for a new century” born out of the struggles of working class people.
Fast forward 125 years and how shameful it is that every area of Britain has been left feeling betrayed by those who promised things would get better, not least the workers it so cravenly claims to champion.
Ms Reeves’s argument – if you cut through her rehearsed robotic speak – is that continued investment in public services is worth breaking a cast-iron contract with the electorate not to raise taxes.
Good luck with that, Chancellor.
Last year she delivered £40 billion of tax rises in what she told Britain was a “one off” raid never to be repeated in an effort to wipe the slate clean.
But if you thought things couldn’t get any worse, you have got another think coming.
We’re already at the mercy of soaring inflation, stunted wage growth, and record levels of unemployment, all of which has left the country staring down the barrel of a recession.
Labour’s answer? Fleece the strivers to reward the shirkers.
But there might be a shaft of light at the end of this never-ending tunnel of despair.
As one Treasury source rather succinctly put it: “I imagine November 26 is going to be a disaster, but it might be the last one (Rachel Reeves does). I very much doubt she will last past next year’s local elections.”
And so say all of us.
