For a Labour Chancellor, Rachel Reeves has a very resentful view of the workers on whom this country’s prosperity depends.
Having wriggled on the hook for more than a year over her definition of a ‘working person’, after promising not to raise taxes for such people, finally, she has an answer. It is anyone earning less than £46,000 a year.
For the rest of us, we are too well-paid to be called a ‘worker’, which is profoundly disrespectful and economically damaging.
No question, this is a decent amount, but hardly Jeff Bezos territory. Yet for churlish Labour it is enough to lift you out of the worker bracket, presumably into the ‘rich capitalist’ class.
What tripe, for the supposedly non-workers would include many teachers, lorry drivers and police officers. Captains in the British Army would swell the ranks – and they might well be shocked if the thanks for their service is a bull’s-eye on their back for tax.
Labour’s crude classification tells us our efforts are valueless and that we somehow deserve our earnings, savings and pensions to be plundered. But this slur is not an isolated incident.
Sir Keir Starmer said last year that a ‘working person’ wouldn’t ‘have the wherewithal to write a cheque to get out of difficulties’. I am guilty on that count as well, having been prudent and saved some money.
Treasury officials now apparently define a ‘working person’ as anyone in the bottom two-thirds of earners. What a soul-destroying way to think.
Coupled with the attacks on private schools and inheritance, along with the job-destroying hikes in National Insurance, it is no wonder so many of us are in despair.
For a Labour Chancellor, Rachel Reeves has a very resentful view of the workers on whom this country’s prosperity depends, writes Ruth Sunderland
The divisive and resentful socialist ideology is bad enough in itself but an attack on modest earners would be sheer economic illiteracy.
It is not clear what Reeves might do to those who fall into the non-worker category. No doubt it will involve grabbing even more from them in tax and perhaps National Insurance.
She’s already doing it, in a vast stealth raid, so compelling middle earners to pay even more would be a devastating blow.
At present, the threshold for the 40 per cent higher rate for income tax kicks in at just over £50,000. It has been frozen at that level for several years and is set to remain on ice until 2028/9. By that time 3.5 million more people will have been pulled into the higher rate net. Reeves might extend the freeze for longer or lower the threshold to £46,000, or both.
It is anti-aspiration on steroids. It would bring yet more complexity to an already labyrinthine tax system and put an even lower ceiling on achievement as people who earn near the threshold would seek to keep their salaries below £46,000.
The country is in the grip of a productivity crisis. We have more than nine million economically inactive people and nearly a million youngsters neither in work nor education.
Reeves seems bent on making a bad situation worse. This raid on the middle class would reduce the incentive to climb the career ladder and demonise anyone who dares try.
