When I look at how the UK economy has performed in the 13 long and unlucky months she’s been chancellor, I see only decline and disarray. Yet, in an article for yesterday’s Sunday Mirror, Reeves claimed, incredibly, that Labour has “restored economic stability.”
What? I’ve read that half a dozen times, and still can’t believe she has the gall to say it.
Hasn’t anyone told her the economy shrank by 0.3% in April and 0.1% in May? Or that just about every economic forecaster has slashed UK growth predictions in half since she took charge, including the IMF, Bank of England and Office for Budget Responsibility.
Last week, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research exposed the damage she’s done.
Reeves claims to have inherit a £22billion black hole from the Tories but has somehow turned it into more than £50billion with her wreckless tax-and-spend policies. Taxpayers face more misery this autumn as a result.
This isn’t stability. It’s an economic “doom loop”.
Since Reeves announced her hike to employer’s National Insurance last October, a staggering 276,000 jobs have gone with another 100,000 expected this year. Is this what you call restoring economic stability, Chancellor?
Yes, the Tories left a mess, but everything Reeves has done since has made a bad situation critical. Even the cost of dying is soaring on her watch.
With grim inevitability, Reeves once again claimed to be “fixing the foundations”, as she always does. Yet her record so far reads more like demolition.
She even had the nerve to take the credit for Bank of England (BoE) interest rate cuts. That was the only positive piece of news she could find, and it wasn’t even down to her.
Note to Reeves: It was the BoE that cut rates, not Labour.
And it may have cut harder if Reeves’s employer’s NI hike hadn’t pushed up inflation, as businesses passed on costs to consumers.
The BoE reckons inflation will be back to 4% soon, so there may be no more rate cuts in 2025. The only thing we have to look forward to is higher food prices and yet more tax hikes. Or what Reeves calls “stability”.
She went onto list a smattering of businesses she says she has “saved,” while neglecting the thousands her policies have destroyed, and many more bust thanks to the efforts of cabinet colleagues Ed Miliband and Angela Rayner.
Reeves went on to say Labour is “helping working people by boosting the National Living Wage and Minimum Wage.”
She may have hiked the minimum wage, but it’s businesses that have to pay it.
Many are now reluctant to hire, cutting back on new jobs because they struggle to fund the 6.7% increase Reeves mandated, while revenues and profits grow more slowly.
The result: more job losses, particularly among the young.
Finally, Reeves says she is “impatient for change to be delivered.” Not as impatient as the rest of us, who are desperate for a change of Chancellor, and government.
Ideally, someone who doesn’t treat us like fools. Is that too much to ask?
