Rachel Reeves makes ultimate error – and millions of pensioners will be poorer and angrier
The Chancellor has done something she’ll regret. But not as much as the rest of us.
We’ll all need a hard hat if Rachel Reeves crashes the housing market (Image: Getty)
When it comes to Rachel Reeves and mistakes, where do I start? With her pre-election pledge not to hike National Insurance or income tax, now in tatters? The winter fuel payment fiasco? The failed welfare overhaul? The Budget income tax shambles and screeching U-turns that followed? I could rant about the £26billion jobs tax that’s sent unemployment surging or how she’s attacking arguably the greatest asset this country has. Yes, the Tories were useless, but they left something to build on. Reeves has taken a wrecking ball to it. But her latest catastrophe is the biggest of all.
It will hit tens of millions of Britons right where it hurts, making them feel dramatically poorer and angrier, because she didn’t have to do it. But being Rachel Reeves, she did it anyway. So what’s she done now?
Through her endless tax raids, she’s trashed the London property market. That may not sound like your problem if you live elsewhere, but it should. Because where London goes, the rest of the country will follow.
The strange thing is that most people haven’t noticed. But last week, the Labour-friendly New Statesman website ran a stark piece headlined: “The housing market has already crashed.” It’s dead right. Prices are plunging, and this is just the start.
The article noted that someone who bought the average UK property in January 2022 has seen its price rise from £248,031 to £269,862. Nearly £22,000. That sounds fine – until you factor in inflation. Had that home kept pace with rising prices, it would now be worth £330,000. In real terms, it’s fallen 18%.
That’s before stamp duty, maintenance and improvement costs. The myth that property will inexorably rise and create a valuable store of wealth for later life has finally been punctured.
Yet Britons still cling to the notion that it’s a guaranteed winner. Many people build their retirement around it. It gives them huge security, but it’s being steadily whittled away. The Tories started the rot, as ever, but Reeves delivered the ultimate blow by treating homes like everything else she touches: as cash cows to be milked.
On her watch, stamp duty has risen, first-time buyer support scrapped, buy-to-let landlords hammered, a mansion tax lined up, and foreign buyers scared off by Labour’s ideological assault on wealth.
Talented young people are getting out if they can. Entrepreneurs no longer want to set up shop here. London has lost its charm. The result? Prices have plunged a staggering 18% in the past year, according to the Land Registry. And that’s before taking inflation into account. This will spread.
It’s a huge blow for pensioner homeowners, eating into the value of an asset they’ve built up for years. And a nightmare for struggling retirees hoping to release the equity in their home to make ends meet, pay for social care or hand loved ones an inheritance. Downsizing will be harder, as demand for bigger family homes dries up.
The slow-motion meltdown is also a disaster for younger buyers who got on the ladder in the past five years, as they face falling into negative equity. Not just in London. Everywhere.
Half-witted lefties will celebrate house price declines but builders, plumbers, electricians, furniture manufacturers, kitchen makers and household goods retailers will be destroyed. Construction firms are already collapsing.
And here’s the brutal irony. As the New Statesman admits: people still can’t afford to buy. Wages have been “devoured” by inflation. And now Labour’s constant raids on tax and jobs.
For decades, chancellors did everything in their power to protect the property market. They understood how important it was. Then came Rachel Reeves.
Her only hope is that the Bank of England rides to her rescue with a string of interest rate cuts. If it doesn’t, her reputation will be destroyed alongside the single biggest store of personal wealth Britons have ever known. And Labour will never be forgiven.
