The Chancellor will get lucky next week. And won’t we know it.
It’s been yet another week of lies, havoc and chaos for Rachel Reeves. It culminated on Friday with news that the UK economy shrank again in October, pushing Britain to the brink of recession. GDP hasn’t grown for four months in a row. Incredibly, it has shrunk for more than half the time she’s been Chancellor.
And she can’t blame the Tories for that. The economy was growing steadily when they left office. Reeves quickly put to a stop to that, terrifying businesses and consumers with dire warnings of a brutal Budget to come. Astonishingly, she repeated the cack-handed trick in her second Budget, which will go down as the most chaotic in history. The economy shrank again.
We are now staring at a needless recession – or what’s been dubbed a Reeves-cession, because she is the culprit.
The Chancellor is a one-woman disaster. Her strategy appears to be simple: grab all the tax she can from anybody who works, saves or tries to do the right thing, then funnel it into an unproductive public sector and a growing army of benefits claimants.
It is a recipe for decline. And decline is exactly what we’ve got.
Worse, she then insults our intelligence by claiming she has brought stability and “fixed the foundations” of the economy. Lies, lies, lies – and next week we’ll get another whopper.
On Thursday, Britain will get a rare piece of good economic news. And Reeves will take the credit for it, even though it has nothing to do with her, except in a twisted way she won’t mention (but I will).
On 18 December, the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee is widely expected to cut interest rates, offering some relief to hard-pressed households and businesses.
Markets put the chance of a cut at 92%, with base rate likely to fall from 4% to 3.75%. Some economists argue for a bigger move, to 3.5% or even 3%, to prop up the ailing economy.
Lower rates will help businesses by reducing borrowing costs and give homeowners a breather as mortgage rates ease (although savers will suffer).
The cut will also be good news for Reeves. It’s a rare piece of luck but here’s the infuriating part: she will claim it as her achievement.
I know that because she’s done it before. On repeat.
Despite having no say whatsoever over interest rate decisions, Reeves has repeatedly taken credit for them. In her Spring Statement, she claimed her government’s fiscal approach was “giving the Bank of England the foundation to cut interest rates”.
What foundation? What stability?
She repeated the claim in a pre-Budget speech, and again before the Treasury Committee, where she said: “We have returned stability to the economy, which has enabled the BoE to cut interest rates five times.”
Reeves even told Parliament: “We have done three trade deals and cut interest rates five times.”
We? Seriously? That demonstrates her slippery grip on reality. It’s the BoE that cuts rates, not the Chancellor. Although I can understand why she takes the glory for other people’s decisions. She doesn’t have any achievements of her own.
But in one twisted respect, Reeves can take the credit.
We urgently need these rate cuts not because she’s fixed the economy, but because she’s broken it. They’re an emergency repair job to stop Britain sliding deeper into recession.
Reeves won’t tell you that, but it’s true.
