RACHEL Reeves’ Budget was last night blasted as a bonanza for benefit claimants — by critics including her own uncle.
Terry Smith, 73, joined a long line of detractors after the Chancellor announced a £30billion tax bomb putting skivers ahead of strivers.
Mr Smith, whose primary school teacher sister Sally is Ms Reeves’ mum, broke family ranks to brand the Budget “a disgrace”.
Retired construction boss Mr Smith told The Sun: “It is going to cost the working class billions of pounds and leave the country worse off.
“It’s the worst Budget I’ve ever heard — and I’m 73, so I have been around for quite a few.
“Rachel is my niece and is a lovely person, but government is totally out of their depth.”
This Budget is there to help people that don’t really want to work.
Terry Smith, Reeves’ uncle
His comments came as Ms Reeves was accused of driving a horse and cart through Labour’s manifesto pledges not to hit workers.
She froze tax thresholds — which will see millions dragged into either paying for the first time, or being clobbered with higher rates.
She also announced a hit on salary-sacrifice pension schemes, robbing people of thousands when they retire.
However jobless parents hailed her decision to abolish the two-child benefit cap as a “dream come true” — and vowed to cash in by having more kids.
Business backlash
Last night it emerged Labour will try to head off a business backlash by scaling back worker rights plans such as letting them sue for unfair dismissal from Day One.
And Ms Reeves insisted she was going nowhere, declaring: “Lots of people have tried to write me off over the last 16 months, and you’re not going to write my obituary today.”
However, in a stinging verdict, the Institute for Fiscal Studies warmed households faced a “truly dismal” increase in living standards.
Calling for growth-boosting tax reforms, boss Helen Miller said: “This felt mostly like the Budget of a government trying to scrape through.”
Ms Reeves raised taxes to their highest level in history — then warned she could be back for more.
In response, the Office for Budget Responsibility downgraded growth for next year from 1.9 per cent to 1.4 per cent and forecast it would still only be 1.5 per cent by 2029.
The Sun yesterday called it The Benefits Street Budget.
Tory Shadow Chancellor Sir Mel Stride agreed, predicting it would “lead to 25,000 more people going on to benefits as a direct consequence of making them more attractive”.
Budget shambles
By Jack Elsom, Political Editor
What we are currently witnessing is without precedent – and the biggest Budget shambles in history.
In an extraordinary clanger, the OBR accidentally published the entirety of Rachel Reeves’ measures half an hour before she was due to deliver them.
The Budget is meant to be top secret until the Chancellor delivers her speech because so much of it is market sensitive.
Not only that, but the leak has stolen Ms Reeves’ thunder given we now all know what she is about to announce.
It is a bungle for the ages and one that will forever haunt the Treasury memory. Thoughts with the person responsible…
And Mr Smith added: “This Budget is there to help people that don’t really want to work.
“I know people in Manchester with three or four children who are just going to have more as the state will reward them.
“If they can have another child and get more money, that’s exactly what they’ll do.”
Mr Smith heaped praise on his niece for becoming the first female Chancellor after studying philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford.
But he added: “I don’t think she had the qualifications or the experience to be Chancellor.”
