Rachel Reeves stood at the Despatch Box last year and told the country a fairy tale. Her £40billion tax grab, she promised, was a “one-off”. A temporary shock. A tough but necessary measure to “wipe the slate clean” and stabilise the books after inheriting a so-called “black hole.” Tough decisions now, she said, so she wouldn’t have to take them again. Well, here we are. And she’s doing it again anyway. Reeves trots out the same tired Westminster euphemisms — “everyone must do our bit.” We all know what that means. It’s code for “brace yourselves — we’re taking more of your money.”

The blunt truth is this: Reeves and Labour have completely lost control of the public finances, and they’re reaching — yet again — for the easiest solution. Not to cut waste. Not efficiency. Your wallet. For weeks, the Treasury has resembled a circus. Chaotic leaks, frantic U-turns, panicked briefings, markets spooked, Labour MPs furious, and a Chancellor visibly out of her depth.

One day income tax was going up. The next day it wasn’t. Then suddenly we’re told thresholds may be frozen for years — a tax rise by stealth. Meanwhile the pound shuddered, gilt markets tightened, and even Labour MPs were calling the whole spectacle a “complete and utter shambles.”

This isn’t a government governing. This is a government flailing. And flailing governments always turn to tax rises. Britain is not under-taxed. The UK’s tax burden is already the highest since the Second World War.

Yet everything is falling apart. Roads are a mess, borders are porous, policing is in retreat, the NHS has never been worse, and productivity is flatlining. And what is Labour’s instinct when their own incompetence becomes visible?

Tax more. Spend more. Waste more. Reeves will never admit this, but she doesn’t need to raise taxes at all. The money is already there — she just burns it.

If the Chancellor were remotely serious about repairing the public finances, she would start with the colossal waste she herself is fuelling:

• Carbon capture schemes — £9.4 billion

• Net Zero commitments — £30 billion

• Foreign aid (halve it) — £7 billion

• Migrant accommodation — £4 billion

Total: £50.4 billion saved.

Do you know what that equates to? About a 7% cut in the basic rate of income tax. Instead of strangling the working public, Reeves could actually relieve the tax burden. But that would require discipline.

It would require valuing taxpayers’ money. It would require putting Britain first. Reeves cannot do it because she is ideologically incapable of doing it. In Labour’s worldview, spending itself is the point — not what it achieves. Waste is not a bug of the system; it is the system.

And because she refuses to cut waste, she must come after you. We are now looking at a shopping list of new tax raids: freezing thresholds until the end of the decade, cracking down on salary-sacrifice schemes, scrapping the fuel duty cut, taxing electric vehicles, pushing mansion taxes and gambling levies — an endless stream of cash-grabs that will hammer workers, pensioners, motorists, savers and families alike.

The “one-off” tax raid was no such thing. It was the warm-up act. Even Labour MPs are warning this could be the moment the party seals it’s fate. And all the while, the government spirals deeper into chaos. Markets twitch. Investors lose faith.

Starmer fights off leadership plots. No.10 wages briefing wars against its own Cabinet. MPs refuse to turn up for work. This government is collapsing under the weight of its own incompetence — months into its term.

Britain’s finances are not in crisis because we pay too little tax. They’re in crisis because the people running the country have no idea what they’re doing.

Reeves had one job: restore stability. Instead, she has delivered panic, confusion, chaos and the certainty of more tax rises. She said last year’s tax raid was the last.

She said it was a “one-off.” She said it would not be repeated. Britain doesn’t need higher taxes. Britain doesn’t need more Labour spending sprees.

Britain needs a government willing to take a chainsaw to the billions of waste and finally put taxpayers — not ideological vanity projects — first. Until that happens, the only thing going up in Britain will be your tax bill.