Don't underestimate the anger of voters facing tax rises that they were promised more than 50 TIMES wouldn't happen, writes JEREMY HUNT
Daily MailThis week we got two very big clues about the kind of government that was elected on July 4. A mere 26 days after being elected, the new Chancellor Rachel Reeves revealed to the News Agents podcast: ‘I think we will have to increase taxes in the Budget.’ Secondly, we have witnessed the ruthlessness with which Labour will attack anyone who challenges its official ‘narrative’. After I explained to the House of Commons why the Chancellor was wrong to claim she had inherited ‘the worst set of economic circumstances since the Second World War’, a claim no respected independent economist is prepared to defend and why there was no £22 billion ‘black hole’ – according to the figures she had given parliament days earlier – she chose not to answer the questions I had asked. The biggest element of the ‘black hole’ is a sum of more than £9 billion – caused by Reeves’s decision to give three-times inflation pay awards to public sector workers. The Chancellor wants us to believe that these figures can be blamed on her economic ‘inheritance.’ But the numbers presented to parliament in a budget are approved by civil servants – who would have been breaking the Civil Service Code if there had been an undisclosed ‘black hole’.
Discover Related