Rachel Reeves's Budget tax raid has shot down Angela Rayner's housebuilding plans (Image: Getty)
We knew Rachel Reeves would be a disaster after she kicked off her tenure by making the politically inept decision to rob 10million pensioners of their Winter Fuel Payment. She thought it made her look tough but instead she just looked out of touch.
Reeves, in collusion with PM Keir Starmer, then made another awful decision: to talk down the UK economy and warn of Budget tax hikes.
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This terrified businesses and consumers and stopped the economic recovery in its tracks.
Labour's Budget in October was even more brutal than expected, with ￡40billion of tax hikes and an extra ￡30billion worth of government borrowing.
There's so much to criticise but I'll focus on the misfiring decision that will soon see Angela Rayner hopping around in agony.
Reeves loaded ￡25billion of extra national insurance (NI) charges onto employers, while increasing the national living wage by an inflation-busting 6.7%.
Everybody from the Bank of England to the Confederation of British Industry has been warning that this will squeeze business profits, drive up inflation and knock growth.
It will also destroy the only idea Starmer and Reeves had for boosting growth. They pledged to “to get Britain building again”, by constructing 1.5million homes in five years.
Rayner was charged with delivering that, in her role as Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government. And Reeves has just wrecked her slim chances of success.
The chancellor's Budget NI raid and minimum wage hike will drive even more construction companies out of business because they can't afford the added cost of employing the necessary workers.
Contractors are already falling like dominoes.
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More than 4,200 building firms have gone bust so far this year, according to property development body the Considerate Constructors Scheme (CCS).
Construction firm ISG, which held government contracts worth billions of pounds, is just the latest to collapse. There will be many more once that NI raid bites next April.
CCS executive chairman Amit Oberoi said Budget NI hikes are making it "harder for smaller firms to hire staff, offer pay rises and create jobs".
Developers are on a "knife edge", he told the Daily Telegraph. "We won’t see the depths of this until probably the middle of next year."
This won't just stop private housing developments in their tracks. It will also destroy the social housing boom that Rayner is desperate to engineer.
Reeves is a one-woman wrecking ball.
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Labour's plan to build 1.5million homes was always pie in the sky.
Back on July 22, I wrote that Starmer didn't stand a chance of hitting that fanciful target.
Four months later, on November 20, planning minister Matthew Pennycook belatedly admitted this would be “more difficult” than Labour thought in opposition.
You don't say.
What exactly was Labour thinking in opposition? Whatever it was, it's collapsed at the first collision with reality.
There's already a desperate shortage of workers in the construction industry. Now Reeves has made employing them even more expensive.
House completions will fall as a result. More builders will go bust. Rayner will fail. The housing crisis will drag on.
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This is partly Rayner's fault, by the way.
Her flagship workers' rights reform will cost businesses far more than the ￡5billion ministers originally claimed, leading to wage cuts, job losses and even failed companies.
That will also sink Labour's house building plans. So first, Reeves shot Rayner in the foot. Then Rayner shot herself in the foot. It would be funny if it wasn't such a disaster.