If the world really has changed, Chancellor, then drop your tax hikes
Rachel Reeves has one of the most demanding, high profile and exhausting jobs in the country, and so – at the very least – we should forgive her for taking some freebie tickets to a Sabrina Carpenter concert. She’s had very few good weeks since entering office and the least she deserves is a good weekend.
Besides, some of the singer’s song choices at her London show seem to have been made with the Chancellor in mind; Busy Woman made an appearance, as did Sharpest Tool – which feels appropriate in light of Kemi Badenoch describing Reeves as “one of the best they’ve got on the Labour benches.” Unfortunately, the Tory leader didn’t mean it as a compliment.
Regrettably, Carpenter’s 2022 hit, Bad for Business, did not make the billing at the O2, but it would have been a fitting anthem for a Chancellor whose policies have so comprehensively sapped the confidence of employers and consumers. This government’s approach to economic growth can be summed up by the title of another Carpenter hit: Please, Please, Please.
Reeves loaded tens of billions of pounds worth of tax hikes onto businesses and caved to union demands to impose a mass of job-destroying red tape onto employers, and they now have the gall to blame our economic hardship on ‘global events.’ We will hear this excuse a lot today, from the earliest broadcast interview through the Chancellor’s Spring Statement and well into the afternoon; ministers will tell us that “the world has changed” – and that the forces driving up the cost of government borrowing and holding back economic growth are beyond our control. This is sophistry, and voters are beginning to see through it.
A YouGov poll published yesterday shows that 73 per cent of voters (including nearly 60 per cent of Labour voters) believe Labour is making a mess of the economy, with more than half – 53 per cent – saying that the Chancellor is doing a bad job. Encouragingly, most Brits now feel that the government taxes and spends too much: 41 per cent, against 23 per cent who feel the opposite. When Labour came into office last year 35 per cent thought the levels of tax and spending weren’t high enough and just 28 per cent felt they were too high. It’s only taken Labour 8 months to change their minds. Now for the really good news: according to YouGov, the most common combined approach Brits think the government should be taking is to cut taxes, cut spending, and cut borrowing.
Unfortunately, the Chancellor seems likely to disappoint; public spending will be trimmed, but with a scalpel rather than a chainsaw. The most effective action Reeves could take today would be to announce a suspension of her damaging business taxes. How could she get away with such a climbdown? Simple: she just has to point out that “the world has changed.”