Rachel Reeves has made countless errors. We’ve stuck to just 20 here (Image: Getty)
1. Her first big error was to claim she wouldn’t hike taxes on “working people” if Labour won the election. It meant she had no mandate for October’s horror Budget.
2. Lavishing public sector workers with £9billion of pay rises without demanding any productivity improvements was a swift bung for Labour’s union paymasters, funded by taxpayers.
3. Taking freebies from friends to fund all those smart trouser suits. Not a good look.
4. Embellishing her CV. An even worse look.
5. Axing the for 10million pensioners. Labour’s own research shows thousands will die as a result. She doesn’t seem to care.
6. Scrapping the £86,000 social care cap without putting anything in its place. This will force even more older people to sell their homes to meet long-term care costs.
7. Lying about that £22billion fiscal “black hole” to justify her tough Budget. She knew about it. Everybody did. Reeves takes voters for fools.
8. Overdoing the gloom. By talking down Britain as a place to invest she scared foreign capital away. She also destroyed UK confidence as businesses stopped investing and consumers stopped spending.
9. Terrifying taxpayers by threatening a “difficult” Budget four months before delivering it. This gave time for panic and speculation to grow. The economy instantly stopped growing. .
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10. Her £25billion employer’s national insurance has hammered growth as businesses cut hiring to offset the cost. More than 100,000 jobs could go, Deutsche Bank says. It will really hurt from April when those NI hikes come into force.
11. An estimated 80% of the cost of those NI hikes will be passed onto workers as lower pay, and 20% to consumers as higher prices. This destroys Reeves’ claim that she wouldn’t pile more taxes on “working people”.
12. Front loading state sending for the first two years. Thereafter Reeves will have to cut back hard to balance the books in a return to austerity. Growth will slow to a crawl. If there is any.
13. Having no idea of how to generate growth, aside from bulldozing planning regulations to concrete over the green belt. Growth will be too little and certainly too late. Tax cuts might help but she won’t deliver those. Quite the reverse.
14. Slapping inheritance tax on family farms in a spiteful attack on the countryside. The rebellion will surely grow.
15. Hitting family firms with unaffordable inheritance bills will destroy businesses and deter tomorrow’s entrepreneurs in yet another blow for growth.
16. Fiddling with the fiscal rules to load another £30billion onto the national debt. Yet another election pledge junked, putting the economy on a knife edge.
17. Panicking after her Budget backlash and pledging: “I’m not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes.” Reeves was instantly shot down by her own side. She’ll be back. We all know it.
18. Just when we thought the cost-of-living crisis was over, her Budget . Not to mention and mortgages. This won’t end well.
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19. Higher inflation is adding billions to the cost of servicing the national debt. Bond markets have lost faith in the UK as gilt yields fly past 4.6%. That’s even higher than under Liz Truss, and we know how that ended.
20. Blundering on. Instead of admitting and reversing her many mistakes, Reeves is doubling down on them. I’ll no doubt be drawing up another list of howlers this time next year, if she survives that long.
I’d like to apologise for all of the mistakes I’ve overlooked. There are too many to choose from. Next year, the crunch will come.
Reeves has left herself no room for manoeuvre and will almost certainly breach her own fiscal rules in the Spring, as growth falls and spending climbs.
That will trigger yet more humiliation but as we’ve seen, she’s so arrogant she won’t care.
The rest of us will when we have to pick up the tab.