Since day one, Rachel Reeves has lurched from one mistake to another.<\/p>\n
Together with Keir Starmer<\/a>, she decided to run down the economy to pin the blame on the Tories<\/a>. In doing so, she wrecked sentiment and Britain\u2019s fragile recovery.<\/p>\n After slamming the Tory’s \u00a322billion “black hole”, she’s created another \u00a320billion of her own, at record speed<\/a>.<\/p>\n Her so-called \u201cpro-growth\u201d tax raids have driven Britain\u2019s wealth creators straight to the airport.<\/p>\n Capital gains tax receipts have plunged by more than \u00a31billion as the wealthy flee to fairer shores, taking jobs, investment and spending power with them.<\/p>\n UK-based businesses, hammered by brutal hikes to National Insurance and the minimum wage, are slashing jobs, freezing recruitment and cancelling investment.<\/p>\n Shops, pubs, care homes and countless small businesses now face billions in extra costs, triggering a wave of closures and layoffs.<\/p>\n Reeves\u2019s \u201cfiscal rules\u201d allow Britain\u2019s \u00a32.8trillion debt to keep climbing, while she pretends she\u2019ll start bringing it down someday.<\/p>\n Now she\u2019s flown to Donald Trump<\/a>‘s US, where the rest of the world is getting a taste of her in action.<\/p>\n Ms Reeves went to Washington thinking she could play at being a global stateswoman. Instead, she instantly blew a hole in Britain\u2019s negotiating position.<\/p>\n Just hours before meeting US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, she publicly declared that Europe was \u201cmore important\u201d to Britain than America.<\/p>\n I wouldn\u2019t want any British leader grovelling to Donald Trump<\/a>, but openly insulting the US, our biggest single trading partner outside the EU, is amateurism on stilts.<\/p>\n Especially when trade with the US has grown ten times faster than with Brussels over the past decade.<\/p>\n Even Sir Keir Starmer<\/a>\u2019s spokesman refused to defend her, slapping it down as a “false choice” and triggering a Labour Party civil war<\/a>. Nice work, Chancellor.<\/p>\n That’s not the only way Reeves has shown her “uselessness” in Washington<\/a>. Her constant clowning now threatens an historic trade deal with the US<\/a>.<\/p>\n Reeves has weakened our hand not just with America, but with Brussels too, by making us look both weak and desperate.<\/p>\n She’s juggling the riskiest diplomatic landscape of any chancellor in decades, and dropping the ball at every turn. But the real pain is still ahead.<\/p>\n Reeves has boxed herself into a corner.<\/p>\n At home, she’s triggered outrage with massive tax hikes and benefits cuts.<\/p>\n Yet if she wants to stick to her collapsing fiscal rules, she\u2019ll have to do double down in her autumn Budget.<\/p>\n Her refusal to face reality leaves Britain facing a grim choice: higher taxes, lower benefits, or continued stagnation. Or probably all three.<\/p>\n Fiscal drag is already forcing even the poorest into paying tax they can\u2019t afford, including millions of pensioners.<\/p>\n