Rachel Reeves is on the ropes. This is the man who helped put her there.
Rachel Reeves is one of the more moderate voices in the Treasury (Image: Getty)
I’ve warned readers about him before. His prime professional ambition is making the older generation pay more tax. And so far, he’s been remarkably successful. On the surface, he looks like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. But he’s on a mission and won’t let anything or anybody stand in his way.
Even basic civility doesn’t seem to matter to him. He swears. Rants. Doesn’t listen. And thanks to the backlash against the Budget he drafted, he’s just helped deliver a killer blow to Chancellor Rachel Reeves. His name? Torsten Bell, parliamentary secretary to HM Treasury.
He’s only been a Labour minister a few months, and he’s already spreading chaos. Last week’s horror show was as much his work as the Chancellor’s. Possibly more.
That tax blitz was just the start. Especially if you’re a pensioner.
Yesterday, an article in the left-leaning Sunday newspaper The Observer confirmed my worries about Bell’s character.
It described the first meeting on September 23 of the so-called “Budget board” in Downing Street, a committee set up by Sir Keir Starmer and the Treasury to oversee Reeves’ Budget. It was a sweary calamity from start to finish.
Torsten Bell (left) helped sink Rachel Reeves with his hardcore tax hiking demands (Image: Kirsty O’Connor/Treasury)
Minouche Shafik, the prime minister’s newly appointed chief economic adviser, began by asking Bell to set the scene. What she got was extraordinary.
According to the report, “speaking fast and furiously, Bell embarked on a foul-mouthed tirade… laying bare the scale of the economic and political challenges facing the government. ‘It was “f*ck this, f*ck that, we’ve got to f*ck them all and then we’ve got to f*ck them some more.’”
Ms Shafik looked “completely shocked,” the source said, but a “pumped up” Bell showed no sign of stopping. The source was left thinking: ‘Please, just stop talking.’
He didn’t. He never does. He just talks and talks… about tax, mostly. And how pensioners must pay more. A lot more.
I first flagged Bell to Express readers in September last year. I said he’d been parachuted into a safe Labour seat and earmarked for rapid promotion. Well, he got it.
Bell spent a decade running the left-wing think tank Resolution Foundation, spending his time at swanky conferences, dreaming up new taxes. Last year I listed everything he wanted to hike, and it was a long list.
Ever since, Reeves has been dutifully working through it.
Bell called for higher inheritance tax (IHT) on farmers and businesses. Last year, she delivered. He wanted capital gains tax (CGT) hikes. She did that too. And applied IHT to unspent pensions, as requested.
She was just as obliging in last week’s Budget, hiking dividend tax, putting more charges on landlords, introducing pay-per-mile road duty for electric vehicles, and hiking council taxes for band F, G and H homes. All demanded by the demented Bell.
But that’s not the end of it. Bell still wants to cut the 25% tax-free pension lump sum, drive CGT to fresh highs and apply it to home sales and inheritances too. He’s also wants to cap tax-free ISAs, scrap the £325,000 IHT nil-rate band, and much more.
There are 20 demands in total. He’s only just getting started. Inevitably, he wants to scrap the state pension triple lock too.
If Reeves is removed, Bell’s power will only grow. And pensioners will be the ones paying in the name of what he calls “intergenerational fairness”. Or most likely, “f*cking intergenerational fairness”. If Torsten Bell shapes the next Budget, or even delivers it, pensioners will be the ones effing and blinding.
