Working people betrayed by No11
SO now we know.
Rachel Reeves had a choice to make at yesterday’s Budget: to side with the strivers or the skivers.
Despite the immense damage it will do to the economy, she unforgivably chose the latter.
Overall, Reeves launched an eye- watering £30billion tax raid — much of it falling directly on workers.
Those getting up early to bust a gut in their job, carefully saving for a rainy day or responsibly putting money into their pension were subjected to brutal tax grabs.
In freezing thresholds for three years and dragging almost a million workers into the higher 40 per cent income tax rate — or forcing low-paid workers into paying tax for the first time — Reeves shattered Labour’s chief manifesto promise not to hit working people.
Almost one in five will end up paying the higher rate.
That includes nurses and office workers — by NO means the rich.
And why are so many being forced to make these painful sacrifices?
To fund a disgracefully ruinous welfare splurge allowing the jobless to carry on living easy on Benefits Street.
YOUR taxes to pay for THEIR handouts.
In total, spending on Britain’s welfare state is set to surpass £400billion per year — roughly the same as was spent fighting Covid.
We are still years away from any meaningful welfare reform, which means no changes to soaring Personal Independence Payments and no requirement for five million people on Universal Credit to even try to find a job.
Exercise in self-delusion
The spin the Chancellor put on her speech yesterday — that she is delivering “stability, investment and reform” to get Britain moving again — simply didn’t match reality.
Living standards are DOWN.
Growth forecasts have been SLASHED.
Debt is UP.
She has NOT fixed the economy.
Her claim of saving nearly £5billion in “Government efficiencies” was another exercise in self-delusion.
Meanwhile, businesses were whacked by a big jump in the minimum wage.
The “smorgasbord” of petty tax rises on gambling, holidays and milkshakes will take even more from people’s pockets.
So why would the Chancellor make such terrible choices? In short, to save her skin and the Prime Minister’s.
Having lost control of his party, Keir Starmer’s economically illiterate left-wing MPs — hungry for ever-more welfare — had to be appeased at all costs.
Even if that meant the ugly sight of backbenchers cheering the end of the two-child benefit cap, paid for by raising the tax burden on working voters to the highest level in history.
Starmer and Reeves once pledged to always put “country before party”.
We can now add that to the growing list of their broken promises.
