Soaked: Chancellor Rachel Reeves could have spared us a lot of grief by being honest (Image: Getty)
And you know the worst thing? It wasn't necessary. Reeves didn't have to put us through this pain, she really didn’t.
If only she and PM Keir Starmer had been brave and honest during the general election, we’d have avoided it.
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People would be less anxious over which taxes Reeves will target, and how much damage she'll do.
Wealthy Britons would be far less likely to flee the country and take their tax revenue with them.
Voters would have more respect for Labour. Starmer and Reeves would have more respect for themselves.
But the outgoing Conservative Party lad a simple, stupid trap for Labour, and they fell into it.
Labour's big mistake was to promise it wouldn't hike three key taxes if it won power – income tax, national insurance (NI) and VAT.
By doing so, it backed itself into a corner.
Income tax makes up 28% of all UK tax revenues. NI is in second place at 18% and VAT third with 17%.
That’s 63% in total, almost two thirds of the ￡1trillion HMRC got in the 2023/24 tax year.
By refusing to increase them, Reeves left her scratching around for ways to fill her ￡22billion fiscal black hole.
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If Labour hadn't made that promise, plugging the black hole would have been easy as pie. Which brings me to that Tory trap.
Former PM Rishi Sunak and chancellor Jeremy Hunt cleared up the mess left by “Calamity" Liz Truss by freezing income tax and NI thresholds all the way to through to 2028.
That was a far more brutal tax hike than anything Reeves will do on Wednesday.
With electorial annihilation looming, Hunt made a desperate last-minute bid to backtrack by slashing 2% off NI, on two occasions.
Yes, it cut tax bills but it didn't convince voters who gleefully annihilated the Tories anyway.
But it put Labour on the spot by leaving a huge tax shortfall.
Now here's what Reeves and Starmer should have done.
They should have called Hunt out, claimed he was playing silly buggers with the nation’s finances – which he was – and said they would reverse the NI cuts.
And that’s it!
Reversing his NI cuts would have saved ￡20billion a year, enough to plug her original ￡22billion black hole, with a few bits and bobs on top.
But Labour didn't dare.
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Yes, the Tories would have howled about Labour tax hikes, but they'd still have been annihilated. And Reeves would have started her tenure on much firmer ground.
Instead, she chose to scrap the Winter Fuel Payment for 10million pensioners, saving just ￡1billion while turning half the nation against her.
Now she's looking to hike capital gains tax, hike inheritance tax and a host of other levies.
Worst of all, she will raise NI through the back door, by imposing it on employer’s pension contributions. As ever in life, one lie leads straight to another.
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All Reeves had to say was this: “I will reverse Hunt’s bogus NI cuts, and that's it.”
But she wasn't brave enough. Or honest enough. And now look at the mess we're all in.