Chancellor Rachel Reeves may actually have lost all contact with the truth.
The two already do not get on very well, as we have seen several times lately, but the problem appears to be getting worse rather than better.
Her job, as we should not need to point out, is to manage the economy well, so that it sustains enough growth to provide good living standards, just rewards for hard work – and a tax base which can pay for all the things we need, from weapons to welfare.
Ms Reeves’s stewardship so far has failed to fulfil this basic task. She seems unable to see that, beyond a certain limit, tax throttles the economy and makes it produce less. It is a fairly simple proposition, and yet she seems unable to grasp it.
In an interview this weekend, she proclaims that she cannot rule out yet more taxes. Does she really have no other answer to the problem that the Labour government spends more than it earns?
It is sad to have to say so in this season of goodwill, but goodwill, good cheer and normal prosperity are all suffering under her clumsy and ill-considered ministrations, and she seems incapable of grasping this.
Her unwillingness to see any connection between what she does, and the effects on the economy, is actively making this a less festive and pleasing time of year for many.
At Christmas we like to spend a bit more, not least on entertainment, and on visits to pubs and restaurants. And those who own and run these businesses rely on the Christmas period to boost their income, so making it easier for them to weather the troughs and slack periods of the rest of the year.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves on Budget Day outside her office in Downing Street
Rachel Reeves pictured last year in July with The Marsh landlord Martin Knowles and wife Melanie
Pub Landlord Martin Knowles with NO LABOUR MPS sign at Marsh Inn Pudsey in Rachel Reeves constituency on Saturday
No wonder Ms Reeves is no longer welcome at the Marsh Inn at Pudsey, where, soon after coming into office, she posed grinning matily with landlord Martin Knowles and his wife Melanie.
The Chancellor must have known even then that this country’s pub trade is still recovering from the Covid era, with many old-established houses cutting their opening hours to cope with reduced trade.
What the industry definitely does not need is more taxation, as Ms Reeves had already stung pubs and other employers with her famous and disastrous ‘jobs tax’, announced in October 2024, a sharp increase in employers’ National Insurance which makes it far harder to hire new employees, especially in these straitened times.
Now she has added another disastrous impost, through business rates.
The Marsh Inn, for example, faces an extra cost of £2,400 a year, the second business rates increase in two years. Bigger establishments could be forced to pay 20 times as much. This will come from the pockets of Mr Knowles and his customers, and is most unlikely to increase trade or employment.
On the contrary, the dismal numbers of shuttered, closed-down pubs are likely to increase (experts fear that as many as 2,000 could be killed off), and opportunities for employment are equally likely to shrink.
What is it about the Labour Party? Once it was at least in touch with the lives of the striving people of this country, and its MPs in many cases came from among the people.
They managed to inject some common sense into its policies, and hold back the dogmatic Leftists who knew little of the real world and thought there would always be enough other people’s money for their schemes.
Now it seems as if the dogmatists are wholly in charge. One way or another, this cannot last.
