Before the election Rachel Reeves said “we don’t need higher taxes. What we need is growth… and I have no plans to increase any taxes beyond those which we have already set out.” Then, Reeves said she would increase taxes by £8.5 billion, spending by £9.5 billion, and borrowing by £3.5 billion by 2028/29. Last week, she raised taxes by £40 billion, spending by £76 billion and borrowing by £36 billion.
This weekend, Reeves justified her broken promise, telling the BBC, “I didn’t know about the state of the public finances” before the election. But this was a lie on top of another lie. In June, before the election, her secret tax plans were reported in the Guardian. Labour sources had blabbed, saying upon arrival at the Treasury Reeves would claim to be surprised by her inheritance and seek a “doctor’s mandate” to raise taxes. “That is not what they are presenting the public with right now,” the sources admitted.
Such was the suspicion that Reeves would do this, she was forced to deny it in a pre-election interview in the Financial Times. “We’ve got the OBR now,” she said, explaining that the independent Office for Budget Responsibility meant “you don’t need to win an election” to know the details of the public finances. Among the tax rises she ruled out in that interview, two – capital gains tax and changes to inheritance tax reliefs – were in the Budget, and proposed in a report written by Reeves in 2018. …
And her claims about the so-called fiscal hole have also fallen apart. Before the Budget, the Treasury briefed the media that the OBR would publish a full breakdown of the £22 billion figure, and justify what Reeves has been saying since July. But that is not what happened. The OBR report identified £9.5 billion of in-year spending pressures – pressures of the kind that arise every year, and were never denied by the Tories – and said the remainder of Reeves’s claim was explained by Labour’s own public sector pay deals. “Nothing in our review,” the OBR Chairman said, “was a legitimisation of that £22 billion.” …
Reeves and her colleagues have taken the ‘art’ of political lying to a whole new level. Before the election the Environment Secretary, Steve Reed, said Labour had “no intention” of changing agricultural property relief for inheritance tax, and said it was “desperate nonsense” to claim otherwise. But the Budget cut the relief for thousands of farms. …<<<Read More>>>...
