What do we do about a Government that was elected on a lie and has become chronically addicted to lying?
How do we cope with a Prime Minister who became leader of the Labour Party on a Corbynista platform and then attempted to portray himself as a moderate, pledging honesty and competence?
What shall we do about a Chancellor of the Exchequer who misrepresented her professional achievements before entering Parliament, and in office has broken promise after promise while invariably blaming the Tories?
A Chancellor who now stands accused of exaggerating the dire state of the public finances in last week’s Budget in order to provide justification for yet another round of tax increases.
What can we do? In one poll, 68 per cent of respondents said Reeves should resign for this latest piece of chicanery. In another, 58 per cent thought her freeze on income tax thresholds breaks Labour’s manifesto promise.
Andrew Sentance, a former interest rate setter at the Bank of England, is one of several economists calling for the Chancellor’s resignation. Sharon Graham, general secretary of the Unite trade union, which is Labour’s biggest donor, says that working people are now ‘unable to trust Labour’.
Sir Keir Starmer will today attempt to ride to Rachel Reeves’ rescue. Who will be persuaded by the intervention of one rogue on behalf of another? Voters know the pair are a political package – the Chancellor said as much yesterday. The two of them will go down together, and it could be soon.
I used to think that Tony Blair’s administration was the most mendacious in modern times. Many were finagled into accepting the invasion of Iraq on a false prospectus.
Several economists are calling for Rachel Reeves’ resignation following her Budget
Yet Blair and his sidekick Alastair Campbell were practically novices in comparison to Starmer, Reeves and the rest of the gang. They employed sleights of hand, and told many half-truths, but they didn’t lurch from one blatant falsehood to another.
This is the most extraordinary thing about the Government: the sheer obviousness of its stratagems. During last year’s election campaign, some people were taken in by Labour’s repeated undertakings that there would be no tax increases except for those on energy companies and non-doms, and VAT on school fees.
A dwindling number may have been convinced when Reeves announced that she had (as she put it) ‘opened the books’ and discovered a £22 billion ‘black hole’ left behind by the Tories.
After she had whacked up taxes to pay for higher public spending in her first Budget, only the naive and trusting, plus Labour diehards, took seriously her assurance that she wouldn’t be ‘coming back’ for more.
In recent weeks, Reeves variously invoked war in Ukraine and the Middle East, US tariffs, the global cost of borrowing and even Brexit to justify new tax rises.
Except that, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), there was no need for such taxes after all. Much as she likes finding black holes in the public finances, the OBR told her before the Budget that there was actually a £4.2 billion surplus under her fiscal rules.
Nonetheless, Reeves chose to go ahead, and increased taxes to a new record level for peacetime, largely so that she could yank up welfare spending, which is expected to be £16 billion higher by 2029.
The Chancellor was trying to curry favour with potentially mutinous backbench Labour MPs. Whether they will rally to her defence, as she is accused of trying to mislead the general public, remains to be seen.
‘Sir Keir Starmer will today attempt to ride to Rachel Reeves’ rescue,’ writes Stephen Glover
Whatever happens, it is clear that, as usual, Reeves is taking us for fools in believing that we wouldn’t see through her ruses.
She is surely the greatest fool of all. For it should have been obvious to her that the OBR’s advice that there was no black hole would soon be made public, as it duly was, and that her machinations would become apparent for all to see.
The Chancellor’s slippery relationship with the truth has become so ingrained that she no longer bothers to cover her tracks. She has become careless or, to be precise, more careless, to the point of recklessness.
Her cavalier approach to the truth was evident when she published a book in October 2023 that contained at least 20 unattributed examples of other people’s work, including material from Wikipedia, The Guardian newspaper and Labour MP Hilary Benn. Did she think that no one would find out?
And did she imagine that no one would notice when her contention that she had worked as an ‘economist’ for the Bank of Scotland between 2006 and 2009 was amended to say that she had been involved in ‘retail banking’. The original entry can’t have been an absent-minded mistake.
Reeves may look stolid and boring, but under that placid exterior, and behind those dark Labrador eyes, there lurks a personality with a risk-taker’s attitude towards literal truth. The markets may think she is dependable but I find her terrifying.
She is, of course, not the only senior minister prepared to bend facts. The Labour Cabinet puts me in mind of an Agatha Christie novel in which outwardly respectable characters conceal decidedly dubious pasts.
First there was Louise Haigh, who was forced to resign a year ago as Transport Secretary over a fraud conviction about which the world at large had been wholly unaware.
The Mail on Sunday reported that Angela Rayner has been accused of trying to avoid paying a council tax surcharge on her grace-and-favour flat in London
Jonathan Reynolds evaded calls for his resignation as Business Secretary last February after being censured for having described himself as a solicitor on his website and during a speech in Parliament in 2014. It is a criminal offence to describe yourself as a solicitor if you are not registered as one.
Tulip Siddiq was required to resign as (this is not a joke) anti-corruption minister after revelations in the Daily Mail that she was facing a major corruption investigation in Bangladesh.
Homelessness minister Rushanara Ali (also not a joke) resigned amid claims that she had ejected tenants from one of her homes, before putting it back on the market for an extra £700 a month rent.
Less significant, though hardly trivial, was the assertion on Wikipedia for seven years that Deputy PM David Lammy had acquired a first-class degree at SOAS, University of London. In 2017 the entry was amended to state that he had in truth achieved a second-class degree. Somebody’s silly oversight, no doubt.
More seriously, waiting in the wings is Angela Rayner, who underpaid stamp duty by £40,000 on the purchase of an £800,000 flat in Hove. Yesterday, The Mail on Sunday reported that she has been accused of trying to avoid paying a council tax surcharge on her grace-and-favour flat in London.
All in all, the Labour Party makes Boris Johnson’s supposedly rackety Tory frontbench look like an unusually well-behaved Sunday school.
I don’t know how soon Starmer and Reeves will be ditched but, when they are, their casual relationship with the truth, their broken promises and their tendency to blame anyone except themselves for their mistakes (particularly the Tories) will feature prominently in the case against them.
Look at the probable successors, though. Look particularly at Angela Rayner. Labour’s election victory was constructed on a lie, and its rule has been marked by a blizzard of lies. Don’t imagine that is going to change.
