Rachel Reeves is reversing her worst decision – here’s seven more errors she must undo NOW.uk
Imagine a world where Rachel Reeves knew what she was doing – if you can.
I know, it’s a stretch. Pretty much every decision she’s made since becoming Chancellor has ended in disaster, both for the country and for her personally.
Her first big move was scrapping the winter fuel payment for 10m pensioners. It provoked nationwide outrage but saved a piffling £1.5billion.
The aim was to show financial markets that Reeves could make tough calls. Now PM Keir Starmer has reversed it, it’s shown the exact opposite.
Reeves shouldn’t stop with the winter fuel payment. Here are seven more mistakes she should undo now.
1. Scrap her Budget tax hikes. Hitting employers with £25billion of national insurance hikes is destroying jobs and growth, and driving up inflation. What sort of Chancellor puts a tax on jobs, anyway?
2. Reverse the inheritance tax raid on farmers. Slapping IHT on farms and family businesses was spiteful and stupid in equal measure. The long-term damage will be immense. She should just admit she got it wrong.
3. Get her hands off our pensions. Labour’s planning to slap inheritance tax on pensions from March 2027.
Since most families already pay income tax on the money, many will face double tax rates of up to 70%. It’s cruel, unfair, and a deterrent to saving.
4. Stand up to the unions. Reeves set a dire precedent by handing public sector workers £9billion of pay rises last year, with no productivity gains in return.
The unions didn’t even pause to say thank you before plotting their next wave of strikes. Now she’s on the hook for more inflation-busting pay rises this year. Or rather, taxpayers are.
5. Reverse the non-doms raid. Labour activists love nothing more than a tax raid on the rich, but this one is driving them overseas and costing the Treasury billions in lost revenue. Ordinary taxpayers will have to plug the gap.
6. Blowing up her own fiscal rules – twice. Hiking taxes by £40billion and borrowing another £32billion in last year’s Budget has left Reeves with virtually no fiscal headroom. Now she’ll have to hike taxes again this autumn. Whatever she might claim today.
7. Playing fast and loose with the truth. Perhaps her biggest mistake was lying about not raising taxes on working people during the election. The tax hikes duly came in her autumn Budget.
And she’s still at it. Just last November, she claimed there’d be no more tax hikes this year. How can anyone believe a word she says?
If Reeves could wipe the slate clean, maybe the economy would finally start growing again. Maybe voters would stop despising her. Maybe even Labour members would respect her. Possibly even Angela Rayner.
Reeves would certainly feel a lot better. In fact, why stop at seven?
I bet she’d give anything to rewind to those heady days after last July’s election, when she was trilling about the joys of being Britain’s first female Chancellor.
She was full of pomp then. Not the flat and deflated figure she cuts today.
Now imagine if Reeves could undo her biggest error of all, which was convincing herself she was up to the job of running the country’s finances.
She’d be much happier back in the accounts department at Halifax. And we’d all be happier too.
Unless Starmer had appointed Angela Rayner instead. Then we’d be in an even worse place. That’s hard to imagine, but it’s turning into a painful reality.
