Stop the presses. Hold the front page. The Chancellor is said to have lied.
Was Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s Budget based on a deception? (Image: Getty)
Rachel Reeves stands accused of misleading the nation. That’s a serious allegation. If true, she must surely resign. But can it really be so? The UK’s first ever female chancellor, admired by young girls around the country, telling porkies? Let’s examine the evidence.
On Wednesday, in full view of the nation and with malice aforethought, Reeves delivered her second Budget. In doing so, she inflicted a cruel and injurious assault on the nation’s wellbeing. Basically, she coshed taxpayers over the head and emptied their wallets.
Reeves snatched £26billion. That was on top of the £40billion she grabbed in a similar raid last year. This happened around 1pm on November 26. It was daylight robbery.
We know the raid happened, but Reeves insists she had no choice. That she needed the cash to plug a gaping hole in the nation’s books.
And this is where the alleged lie enters the frame. There was no hole. She made it up.
Last night, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) published a blow-by-blow account of its discussions with the Treasury before the Budget. And it directly contradicts what Reeves told the country before the Budget.
It suggests Reeves and her Treasury cronies exaggerated a phantom fiscal shortfall to justify picking our collective pockets.
Before the Budget, newspapers were briefed that the government faced a shortfall of £20billion to £30billion. But there was no such shortfall.
In a letter to the Treasury committee, OBR chief Richard Hughes revealed that Reeves had “at no point” faced a gap of more than £2.5billion. A serious accusation. And it gets worse.
Hughes confirmed that on October 31, the OBR upgraded its forecasts and told Reeves there was no deficit at all. In truth, she had a £4.2billion surplus.
Which means she didn’t need to raise a single penny. Her entire Budget justification collapses. The story she told the country was a fabrication, now exposed.
At this point, we must address her character. Is Reeves the type of person who might lie to an entire nation?
I may be of help here, as it’s a question I’ve addressed before. On February 19, 2025, I set out 12 previous examples of deception. Call that Exhibit A. You can read it here but I’ve included some excerpts.
During the election campaign, Reeves assured voters that higher taxes were unnecessary. She then launched the biggest tax raid in decades, and repeated the exercise last Wednesday. Despite knowing it wasn’t necessary.
She repeatedly claimed Labour wouldn’t hike taxes on “working people”, meaning income tax, national insurance (NI) and VAT. Yet she hiked NI last year and income tax this year, by stealth.
In her defence, Reeves claimed she only discovered a £22billion “black hole” after the election which gave her no choice. Yet Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies shot that down saying: “That fact was obvious to all who cared to look.”
After pensioners revolted over the scrapping of the Winter Fuel Payment, Reeves claimed she never wanted to cut it but had been forced into the move. Yet Parliamentary footage shows her boasting about plans to axe it way back in 2014.
Exhibit A also shows how she misled the public about her CV, career history, expenses, plagiarism and even her teenage chess career.
All of this brings her character into serious question. Put simply, she has form. As long as your arm.
That’s the case for the prosecution. We’ll see what the defendant – sorry, Chancellor – has to say for herself when questioned on tomorrow’s political TV shows. But it doesn’t look good.
