Fibbing Reeves has taken us for fools – and it’s backfiring spectacularly

Blower Cartoon
Blower Cartoon

It would be tempting to feel a modicum of sympathy for Rachel Reeves. As two-tier Keir gallivants the globe, our neophyte Chancellor has been lumped with defending Labour’s indefensible domestic policy. It cannot be easy coming into a key post like this with no previous experience in government and no detectable political nous. She’s making enemies Left, Right and centre, and may soon discover that even her union chums will desert her when economic reality bites.

But reader, do not give into this urge. Since assuming the role, Reeves has barely uttered a single truth: the claim Labour inherited the “worst set of circumstances” since the Second World War was a nonsense, her promises not to raise taxes on “working people” were hollow. She was at it again this week, justifying her inheritance tax raid on grounds it is necessary in order to “invest in... [our] health services”, as though the NHS isn’t already showered with riches.

Even before the election, Reeves appeared to display a somewhat loose relationship with the truth. She is facing accusations of breaching the ministerial code, after reportedly embellishing her CV to suggest she had worked as an economist for the Bank of Scotland before standing for Parliament. Her LinkedIn profile has been changed to reflect that she had actually spent three years in retail banking at Halifax.

This would be easier to shrug off as a momentary lapse were it not for her proclamations that she “knows how to run an economy”, or the fact that her most recent book pulled chunks of material from other sources, including Wikipedia, without acknowledgement. She joins a long line of LSE graduates whose training in economic theory seems to have drummed any common sense out of them.

Reeves might feel “deeply proud to be Britain’s first female Chancellor” but, for now at least, we still live in a country that values performance over progressivism. And she is conceivably the worst holder of the post, excluding those of very short tenure, since Anthony Barber triggered a wage-price spiral and massive inflation in the 1970s. Of course, from Elizabeth I’s Sir Richard Sackville onwards, the Exchequer has been a poisoned chalice. There’s rarely been a shortage of eager candidates, but few have had much clue about what to do with it and fewer still enhanced their reputation as a consequence of their stint.

Businesses are now warning that Labour’s hike to employers’ national insurance and increase in the minimum wage makes job losses “inevitable”. However innumerate Reeves may at times appear, she must have known that no chancellor can squeeze £25 billion out of the economy without knock-on effects. And bosses are predictably irked: a new survey from even the milquetoast CBI has found that close to two-thirds have a negative view of the Budget.

As pollster Luke Tryl reminds us, pensioners, farmers and small businesses owners – the big losers from the Budget – all “attract significant public sympathy beyond their own numbers and can be highly effective campaigners”. Scrapping the winter fuel payment (WFP) and ending agricultural tax relief might appeal to the bright sparks toiling at the Treasury, but they are politically calamitous.

Yet in Reeves, they have one of their own: a bean-counter who shares their proprietary attitude towards other people’s money. She won’t be stung by the WFP in the way George Osborne was by the pasty tax; it’ll just be another of those supposedly “difficult decisions” such as cracking down on non-doms or slapping VAT on private school fees.

Is it time for Reeves to go? Tough though it would be to hold back a tear, recent Tory experience cautions against switching ministers every five minutes. In 2022, let us not forget, we had four chancellors. And who would replace her? Louise Haigh, the Transport Secretary, would probably try to nationalise the FTSE100. Angela Rayner might force us all into the employ of the state. Shabana Mahmood seems to think women aren’t responsible for the decisions they make, which rather disqualifies her from becoming our next female chancellor. Bridget Phillipson says exam results don’t matter, so neither would growth rates presumably: “happiness, wellbeing and inclusion” being more important.

Five more years of Reeves might fill you with dread. But look around the intellectually challenged nonentities who make up the rest of the Cabinet, and consider the harrowing possibility that things could be worse.

Starmer has made a poor choice. But we’re stuck with her.