Labour is paving the way for more tax hikes in the October Budget. By talking absolute rubbish.
John Healey claims he (Image: Getty)
Worse, it’s recycled rubbish. Complete nonsense we’ve been force-fed before. Even worse than thatl, it’s Rachel Reeves’s recycled rubbish. Claims that smelled off the first time she tried to dupe us with them, and stink even worse today. I hoped new chancellor John Healey would know better, but apparently not. And he’s making these whiffy claims for the same reason Reeves did: to justify the barrage of taxes heading our way.
A month before Labour won the July 2024 election, Reeves said: “We don’t need higher taxes, what we need is growth.” Straight after winning it, she assumed a look of phoney outrage and claimed the UK economy was in a worse state than she realised. Apparently, she’d discovered a £22billion black hole left by the previous Conservative government that nobody even knew was there, not even her.
It was complete garbage. The strategy was planned before the election and everybody knew it. A shameless attempt to lay the ground for tax rises she didn’t have the courage to tell us about during the election. Reeves’s dishonesty was savaged by independent experts, notably Paul Johnson at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. As he pointed out: “The £22billion ‘black hole’ was obvious to anyone who dared to look.” But Reeves pretended she hadn’t.
That black hole referred to unfunded government spending commitments. Reeves used it to justify a brutal £40billion tax raid in her maiden Budget, followed by another £26billion in her second. The result? Consumers stopped spending, businesses stopped investing, unemployment climbed and we now have a new PM and chancellor.
But just as Burnham is turning into continuity Keir Starmer, Healey is turning into continuity Rachel Reeves. I genuinely expected better of Healey, who even Tory opponents have described as an honourable man.
Incredibly, Healey now appears to be following the Reeves playbook. Hasn’t he learned from her mistakes? He’s repeatedly said that he wants to stamp down on pre-Budget speculation, but now Labour insiders are softening us up for what’s coming. This morning, one briefed the Financial Times that the chancellor “didn’t know” quite how bad things were inside the Treasury before entering Number 11. Which reeks. It really does.
How could Healey not know? Doesn’t he read the newspapers? Didn’t he have a passing knowledge of our £3trillion national debt, the £130billion set to be added to it this year, and the fact that rising inflation caused by the Iran war is set to make everything worse? If not, what’s he doing in politics? And what on earth is he doing in the Treasury?
Either he’s either lying to us and he did know. Or he’s telling the truth and he’s in the wrong job. Or he thinks we’re stupid and will swallow anything. My guess is it’s both one and three. He’s telling porkies, and he thinks enough of us will swallow them to make it worthwhile.
Rachel Reeves thought that was a clever strategy. It didn’t end well for her. I can’t see this ending well for Healey either. Because voters aren’t stupid. Not enough of them, anyway.