The Chancellor has so few achievements of her own, she’ll take the glory for anything going.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves needs to find a few achievements of her own (Image: Getty)
I’ve been so desperate to find any positives from Rachel Reeves, that I resorted to asking ChatGPT to come up some and it said: supporting financial services and fintech, planning the Oxford‑Cambridge Growth Corridor, pushing through the Leeds Reforms to cut red tape, pledging a youth jobs guarantee and visiting the Gulf to promote the UK as a business-friendly destination. That’s the best AI could manage.
In her debit column, drawn up by me, Reeves has crushed growth, pushed us to the brink of recession, driven up unemployment, destroyed high streets and pubs, and hit us with record levels of taxes while still borrowing £150 billion a year because she can’t add up. It’s just one humiliation after another.
Her supposed achievements are vague promises that may pay off years down the line, if they ever do.
All the mistakes she has made are hitting us today and will wreak havoc for years. She’s a disaster, the worst possible chancellor, at the worst possible time.
And now she’s resorted to grabbing glory for the few things that are going right, even though she had nothing to do with them.
Reeves has repeatedly claimed credit for the Bank of England cutting interest rates six times since the last election. The obvious response is that the BoE acts completely independently of the government, so it’s not her decision in any way at all.
In fact, the BoE could have safely cut rates eight or nine times, but didn’t dare because UK inflation is too high, and that’s down to her.
Her £25billion “jobs tax” on businesses has been passed on to customers as higher prices, along with April’s big hike to the minimum wage. The super-sized public sector pay rises she waved through further ramped up inflation.
UK interest rates now stand at 3.75%. By contrast, the European Central Bank, which doesn’t have to deal with Reeves, has slashed rates to 2%.
Reeves should take blame for the UK’s higher interest rates, not glory for the limited cuts we’ve had. Yesterday, she was at it again.
On Friday, the FTSE 100 climbed above 10,000 for the first time. Reeves wasted no time taking credit, calling it “a vote of confidence in Britain’s economy”. Yet any chancellor with half a brain knows they have little say over the Britain’s blue-chip index.
FTSE 100 companies earn more than three quarters of their revenues overseas, so their success or failure says almost nothing about the domestic UK economy.
In practice, Reeves has made doing business much harder by hiking staffing costs and business rates, and creating constant fear over which taxes or regulations Labour will target next.
Naturally, I’d expect any Chancellor to big up their achievements, no matter how flimsy. I’m just worried Reeves thinks she really has cut interest rates and driven up the stock market. If that’s the case, she lives on a different planet to the rest of us.
It’s about time the Chancellor produced a few real-life achievements of her own. Sadly, we could be in for a long wait.
