Carole Malone has erupted at “incompetent” Rachel Reeves over reports she plans to target the rich in a tax grab to plug an ever-widening black hole in Britain’s finances. The Daily Express columnist also criticised the Chancellor for blaming Britain’s sluggish economy on Brexit, suggesting she was deflecting from her own “catastrophic” handling of the economy.
In today’s episode of podcast Daily Expresso, Carole was asked how many more tax grabs the Chancellor can conjure up to find the £50billion some experts say she needs to balance the country’s books. Carole said: “This is a woman who is fiscally incompetent and yet she is still in charge of our economy. She’s about to hit the top 1% [who] pay 30% of all the tax gathered in this country. She’s going to try and cripple those people.”
Figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies show the share of income tax paid by the top 1% of taxpayers rose from 11% in 1978–79 to 29% in 2023–24.
Carole’s criticism of the Chancellor’s potential tax plan was sparked by reports she is plotting a £2bn tax raid on middle class professionals such as lawyers, accountants and doctors.
Brexit also features in today’s podcast after Ms Reeves said Britain’s exit from the EU had made the economy and productivity “weaker” than initially forecast when the UK voted to leave the bloc.
In another hard-hitting instalment of the daily podcast, Carole fumed: “You know this Government is in deep trouble when it reaches out to blame Brexit, which happened more than 10 years ago.
“To use it as a scapegoat for her own catastrophic mistakes – I mean this woman has been in power for 14 months and inherited one of the fastest growing economies in the G7.
“Now we are £3trillion in debt. The cost of paying off the borrowing is £100billion – that’s just servicing the debt. We’re £11.5bn more in debt now than we were in January and she has done all of this. It’s not Brexit. It’s got nothing to do with Brexit at all. This is to do with the decisions she has made.”
Carole said the Chancellor’s decisions to hike the rate of employers’ National Insurance contributions had led to businesses closing and unemployment rocketing.
The journalist accused Labour of being “pathologically addicted” to public spending, adding the Government should have cut the welfare bill and public service wages, but instead handed out more money that the country can’t afford.
She warned: “Until they learn to cut public spending, this is just going to get worse and worse and worse.”
Carole said nothing the Chancellor does in her Budget on November 26 will make any difference to Britain’s debt and her complaints about Brexit came on the back of polling which suggested leave voters had “buyers’ remorse”.
She said: “It’s a bit stupid. People are forgetting we became independent five years ago round about the time a little virus called Covid took hold and wrecked almost every economy around the world.”
The broadcaster asked why the UK would want to be part of a “failing bloc”, pointing to trade deals the UK has struck since Brexit with the US, India, New Zealand and Australia as well as higher GDP growth than countries such as Italy.
In a wide-ranging episode, Carole also discussed the Labour Government’s faltering national grooming gangs inquiry, the future of safeguarding minister Jess Phillips, Prince Andrew and the monarchy.