She’s done too much damage already. As growth slows, the pound wobbles, wealth makers flee and President Donald Trump rubs our noses in Labour’s mistakes, the UK is on a fiscal precipice.
I thought I should make a record of all the unforced errors Reeves has made since Keir Starmer lined her up as Chancellor but stopped at 20. I was too annoyed to go on. Here’s what I came up with. You can add your own.
1. Taking us for fools. Reeves claimed she wouldn’t hike taxes on “working people” if Labour won the election when we all knew it wasn’t true.
2. Opening her tenure as No. 11 with spiteful, pompous speeches suggesting she knew it all when it turned out she knew nothing.
3. Slamming the Tories for leaving a £22billion “black hole” in the nation’s accounts then instantly making it much bigger.
4. Handing public sector workers £9billion of pay rises without demanding any productivity improvements. The unions weren’t even grateful. They’ll be back for more.
5. Turning pensioners against her by scrapping the Winter Fuel Payment for all but the poorest. The subsequent surge in Pension Credit claims will wipe out much of the £1.5billion saved.
6. Embellishing her CV and getting friends to pay for all those smart trouser suits. That told us a lot about her.
7. Destroying business and consumer confidence by talking down the UK economy, killing growth on the spot.
8. Her doom and gloom alerted the bond market to the UK’s problems, paving the way for today’s fiscal crisis.
9. Threatening taxpayers with a “difficult” Budget then leaving them to stew for four months. Speculation plugged the gap, spreading panic.
10. As the Budget loomed, Reeves panicked herself. She discovered that her planned hikes would backfire by reducing HMRC receipts as taxpayers took evasive action or simply fled the UK. This forced arguably her biggest mistake.
11. Hitting employers with £25billion of national insurance (NI) hikes. It’s the only option she had left. Employer’s NI is a tax on jobs and companies are axing them as a result. Almost 50,000 in December alone, and the NI charge doesn’t land until April.
12. Lying to businesses. Before the election, Reeves was busily telling industry how great Labour would be for the economy. Now they feel duped.
13. Slapping inheritance tax on farms and family businesses was spiteful and stupid in equal measure. The long-term damage will be immense.
14. Imposing inheritance tax on unused pensions is an “unworkable” move that will cause misery for families by making probate even more complex. And it won’t raise much anyway as pensioners simply spend up.
15. Hiking taxes by £40billion and borrowing a further £32billion has left Reeves with almost no fiscal headroom. If her sums are wrong, we’ll be sucked into a doom loop of tax hikes and still more borrowing. We’re already on the brink of recession.
16. Having scared the life out of bond investors, Reeves then tried to tap them up for almost £300billion of borrowing. How did she expect them to react?
17. I’ll tell you how. Labour is now borrowing record sums at the highest rate of interest this millennium at a time when the economy is shrinking.
18. Taxpayers now pay an extra £10billion in additional debt interest thanks to Reeves, a huge sum that could be much better used elsewhere.
19. Appointing think tank wonk Torsten Bell as Pensions Minister. The man has just one idea in his head: to hike taxes. Now he’s coming for our pensions.
20. Claiming “growth” is her number one mission while having no idea how to deliver it. And when Reeves does hit on a growth idea, she torpedoes its chances by taxing it to death.
I could go and on on, but I’ll stop. It’s too depressing. Even worse, there’s a lot more to come.
