Let me be quite clear. Although Rachel Reeves has spent her entire time in office explaining that her mission was to improve productivity and UK competitiveness, it’s her actions that have made things worse. Much worse.
And it’s you (and me) who are going to pay for her mistakes in less than a month from now.
In her first budget, she raised taxes by an eye-watering £40billion while promising ‘’not to come back for more’’. That has turned out to be a straightforward lie.
Her ludicrous and damaging decision to pile most of the rise on employers in the shape of increased NI payments dealt a huge blow to business confidence, which is showing in rising unemployment, with companies simply not being prepared to hire staff at these prices.
Last year, she stuck by the view of the independent fiscal watchdog, the OBR, that our productivity growth was poor but not a disaster.
She knew that wasn’t true but stayed schtum because it would have meant NI going even higher. And that wasn’t politically acceptable.
On November 26, that will change. She must cough. The OBR has now said they are sorry, but the growth will be three per cent lower than they had predicted. Each one per cent means the hole in our finances will be between £7-9million.
That’s a complete catastrophe. An enormous hole of anywhere up to £27billion. No amount of making your acca at the betting shop more expensive can deal with a number like that.
Five nightmare numbers will empty our wallets on November 26. I wish I hadn't done the math - Kelvin Mackenzie
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But the Reeves errors don’t stop with our nation’s productivity. That is about to be compounded by a costly package of reforms to workers’ rights, which even this clapped-out government costs at £5billion a year.
Reeves also failed to build in enough headroom into our finances to deal with unforeseen shocks. Our headroom in her Spring Statement was put at £9.9billion - a minuscule amount in the overall context of public spending.
She must also find another £5billion as the price of abandoning proposed cuts in welfare spending.
The idiots on her own benches would much rather tax the hard workers in our society than the lazy sods claiming they can’t find work (Reeves' fault) or inventing mental health issues which give you better benefits – and a decent car under the Motability scheme.
Then there’s £1.3billion to be found for the government’s reversal on means testing the winter fuel allowance.
All this adds up to substantial tax rises. She could collapse the upper end of the housing market with some kind of mansion tax. That word mansion makes me laugh. Clearly, people like Treasury minister Torsten Bell have never lived in London.
A townhouse in Hackney can cost that. So can an apartment. The very rich can either pay it or leave for Dubai or Italy, but the middle classes are forced to suck it up until we throw Reeves and chums out in 2029.
I’ve been working out at my local gym, but I can assure you my shoulders are still not broad enough to carry the SKIDS (Skint Idle Dim Socialists) who demand their lives are subsidised by others.
The reality is that we don’t work hard enough in this country – and working from home will not help.
The bosses are as guilty as the workforce. We think work is something you do between your days off, your holidays and your weekends away.
It isn’t. It’s essential to make the country economically great. Everybody keeps banging on about work-life balance. You can have that, but you can’t have the standard of living as well.
All this means that, despite all the promises, income tax will have to go up. Politically difficult, but with the size of the hole, it’s the only solution.
I saw a YouGov poll showing Labour were at 17 per cent, just ahead of the quite mad Greens at 16 per cent. Once the Budget secrets have been revealed, that number will be down to 12-13 per cent.
The effect on the Labour benches will be electric. Somebody will have to go. It should be Starmer, but my bet is that it will be Reeves, the most hated Chancellor in my time.
She wasn’t good enough. Too obsessed with explaining how great it was to be the first woman Chancellor.
All this became clear as our economy collapsed.
Reeves won’t be missed, although the money in my pay packet will be.
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