She took blows from three fronts yesterday, and there is plenty more to come. Serious establishment figures are aghast at how she\u2019s trashing the UK economy, and they\u2019re no longer holding back. Including a man who’s been described as “the UK’s most powerful non-elected official”.<\/p>\n
These aren\u2019t just political opponents with an axe to grind. These are financial heavyweights who care about the state of the country and are horrified at what Labour has done to it in just over a year. It would have been unimaginable a year ago, but a lot has happened since then.<\/p>\n
Thanks to Reeves, taxes have soared, spending is spiralling, jobs are being destroyed, growth has flatlined and our economic hole is getting deeper by the day.<\/p>\n
And now a string of prominent figures have made it absolutely clear where the blame lies. With last year\u2019s \u00a340billion Budget tax blitz.<\/p>\n
Now Reeves is plotting a potentially bigger tax grab in her autumn Budget on November 26, with between \u00a330billion and \u00a350billion of extra levies being lined up. It risks blowing up the whole economy<\/a>.<\/p>\n Labour has tried to pin the blame on the Tories<\/a>, global turbulence, anything, but it’s now clear where the fault lies. With the Chancellor<\/p>\n Yesterday, the Bank of England (BoE) came out swinging.<\/p>\n BoE governor Andrew Bailey is nicknamed the \u201cturtle\u201d, because he moves slowly and rarely sticks his neck out. Well, he stuck it out yesterday, while sticking it to Rachel Reeves<\/a>.<\/p>\n This was no mock turtle attack. It was the real thing.<\/p>\n In a letter to the Chancellor, central banker Bailey blamed her \u00a325billion national insurance raid on businesses for today\u2019s toxic mix of stubborn inflation, rising joblessness and punishing interest rates<\/a>.<\/p>\n He said the hike in employer contributions and the jump in the minimum wage had delayed the fall in inflation, forcing the BoE to hold rates at 4%<\/a>.<\/p>\n That’s unbelievable. I’ve never seen a BoE governor openly attack the Chancellor of the day like that. And I never expected the turtle to sink his teeth into Reeves like that.<\/p>\n All she could write in response was some flannel about recognising people were still struggling combined with a meaningless promise to keep costs down.<\/p>\n Bailey isn’t the only one to step up. Normally, big business leaders keep their heads down rather than be drawn into politics, but now they can\u2019t stay quiet.<\/p>\n Asda boss Allan Leighton has told Reeves “to stop taxing everything”<\/a>. High-ups at Sainsbury\u2019s and Tesco warn she’s destroying the high street<\/a>. Former M&S boss fears Labour has pushed UK to the “edge of crisis”<\/a>.<\/p>\n Yesterday it was the turn of Next chief executive Simon Wolfson, and he wasn\u2019t holding back.<\/p>\n Wolfson, one of the longest-serving chief executives in the FTSE 100, warned the UK faces years of \u201canaemic growth\u201d as Labour strangles the economy with high taxes and red tape.<\/p>\n Wolfson accused the government of living beyond its means and warned a second Budget tax blitz would destroy even more jobs, particularly for younger workers.<\/p>\n As if that wasn’t enough, the normally sober Institute for Fiscal Studies broke cover yesterday with a warning of the disaster to come. It warned that Reeves is banking on a productivity miracle to keep the books balanced. If that doesn\u2019t happen, she\u2019ll face another \u00a318billion gap in her plans.<\/p>\n One of the first things Reeves did was throw billions at public sector pay deals without linking them to productivity. Now we’re all paying the price.<\/p>\n The establishment is coming out of its shell because it can\u2019t believe what it\u2019s witnessing. Reeves has hit a new and painful low. Savaged by a turtle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She took blows from three fronts yesterday, and there is plenty more to come. Serious establishment figures are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[936,51,1700,147726,619,1523,16,10051,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-435564","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-bank-of-england","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-high-taxes","12":"tag-rachel-reeves","13":"tag-taxes","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-uk-economy","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115229857145726776","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}