How is the Chancellor still in office? She’s costing us a fortune and nobody does anything
Chancellor Rachel Reeves is costing this country a fortune (Image: Getty)
Bungling Rachel Reeves makes one error after another and it’s costing us billions. This is real money, taken from taxpayers, and thrown away through repeated ignorance and incompetence. She’s only been in power for 18 months and she’s already burned a staggering £6.1billion through an endless string of U-turns and policy climbdowns. And there’s more to come.
That’s an astonishing figure, made all the more damning because it comes from a Labour-leaning think tank, the Resolution Foundation. This isn’t an attack from political opponents but an organisation that should be on her side. Torsten Bell, who drafted last November’s Budget, ran the foundation for 10 years. The famously potty-mouthed Bell must be swearing his head off as his former employer sticks the knife in.
The Resolution Foundation says uncertainty over government policy decisions is now at its highest level on record. If this is what Labour’s supposed allies are saying, imagine what the rest of us are thinking.
Yet here’s the thing. There hasn’t even been much of an outcry. What’s going on?
The Treasury is in chaos under Reeves. Thoughtless policy announcements are made, reversed, diluted, delayed, then reworked again. All of this comes at a cost. The Resolution Foundation’s figure includes U-turns on the winter fuel payment, welfare benefit cuts and the two-child benefit cap.
And Reeves isn’t done yet. The figures don’t cover recent reversals on business rates for pubs, or the inheritance tax reversal on farmers, thought to cost another £300million and £130million respectively.
Nor do they include the impact of changes to jury trials or the U-turn on ID cards, bungled by other Labour ministers. These will push the total towards £8.63billion and counting. That’s roughly the money raised by one year of freezing the income tax personal allowance. Taxpayers are paying a high price for government ineptitude.
So where’s the uproar? Faced with this level of incompetence, we’ve become numb to sums that once would have destroyed careers.
Older readers will remember Black Wednesday in 1992, when Tory chancellor Norman Lamont burned through Britain’s foreign exchange reserves trying to defend the pound inside the EU’s Exchange Rate Mechanism. I remember that day vividly. The country was incandescent. It was seen as a moment of national humiliation and the Conservatives never recovered, limping on until John Major was swept out in 1997.
So how much did that disaster cost? The net bill was £3.3billion. While that’s the equivalent £7.35billion today, allowing for inflation, the national outrage at the squandered wealth was far higher than anything Reeves is facing.
The next comparable scandal came during the financial crisis in 2008, when taxpayers were forced to rescue Royal Bank of Scotland. The initial bailout cost £45billion but after share sales, dividends and repayments, the final loss was reduced to £10.4billion. It was a colossal scandal that scarred public trust for a generation.
In 2022, it was the turn of Tory PM Liz Truss and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng to squander our money and incite furious voters. After the madness of their mini-Budget, they were gone. Yet Reeves clings on.
The Labour Chancellor has squandered billions in 18 months. Imagine what three more years could bring. She’s a national scandal who should have been shown the door long ago, yet somehow she remains in office, free to do still more damage.
