The Chancellor threw bucketfuls of word salad at journalists this morning.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves didn’t offer any nourishing Budget tidbits today (Image: Getty)
Rachel Reeves called an unprecedented pre‑Budget press conference today, a move that would normally signal some meaty policy announcements. Sadly, it was not to be. Instead she spoke, faltering and stumbling, without giving us any nourishment.
She began by blaming everyone else for last year’s horror Budget and the one she’s lining up for us on November 26. Basically, whatever she does is everyone else’s fault.
All our woes are down to US tariffs, volatile supply chains, increased defence spending, “high levels of debt left by the previous government” and random “challenges of a global nature”.
No mention of the damage done by her own £25billion jobs tax last year. Or her abject failure to trim the soaring welfare bill, which has so spooked bond markets.
Instead, she blamed the “austerity hammer‑blow” delivered by the Tories after 2010, the “productivity puzzle”, even the local politics of Reform UK in Kent. Once she wound up, the questions started, and that’s when the word salad was served.
Reeves refused to answer the question asked by almost every journalist: will she hike taxes in the Budget? Specifically, will she raise income tax?
She spoke, she talked, her lips moved, syllables formed sentences, the odd coherent phrase spilled out, but nothing of any substance.
Apparently, this morning was only about “setting the context”. Which is that everybody is to blame for the upcoming Budget except the woman delivering it.
Then she scuttled back to her safety zone of blaming others, notably former Tory PM Liz Truss and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng for their disastrous September 2022 mini‑Budget.
She blamed them for today’s sky-high borrowing costs but that’s nonsense.
In August last year, one month after the general election, when markets still believed in Rachel Reeves, 10-year gilt yields stood at 3.77%. Now reality has sunk in, they’ve climbed to 4.42%. And that’s despite five interest rate cuts, that should have driven yields down.
So yet more nonsense from a Chancellor who repeatedly claimed in her speech that she’s “being honest”. No wonder the FTSE 100 crashed as she spoke, while the pound plunged to a seven-month low.
Reeves also refused to answer a question about the £900 rental licence she dodged. If the Chancellor had been really, truly, deeply honest with us this morning, she would have said something like this:
“I’ve gathered you here today because later this month I will break a Labour manifesto promise and hike your income tax bills in the Budget.
“Yes, I know I promised I wouldn’t hike taxes again, don’t keep going on about it. I’ve got no choice because I bungled the economy from day one.
“That £22billion black hole has now rocketed to £50billion solely through my own efforts. There’s no way Labour back‑benchers will allow meaningful spending cuts, so taxpayers will have to foot the bill. Bad luck.
“I will put 2p on income tax raise a whole heap of other taxes to raise anything between £30billion and £50billion. I don’t know how much right now, but hope to have a rough idea by November 26.
“You’re going to hate it, you’re going to hate me, you’ll never vote Labour again but frankly it’s all your fault for swallowing the rubbish we fed you in the election. Goodbye.”
That would have been clear, honest and a lot tastier than the soggy salad we were served. But, of course, the last thing Reeves will ever treat us to is the truth.