Reeves isn’t ‘underestimated’, she’s doing a bad job and should resign
Rachel Reeves has no mandate for taking money from taxpayers to hand to benefits claimants and her self-pitying defences are an insult to the people who are paying for her weakness, writes Alys Denby
Rachel Reeves’ position has been untenable from the start. Her promises, during the election, that she would “end austerity” (increase public spending) without raising taxes on “working people” were either mendacious or incompetent. Both should have been resigning offences.
Now that she has broken a manifesto pledge and misled both her own cabinet colleagues and the public about why, she has lost all credibility. A Prime Minister as powerful as ours ought to be with a 148-seat majority should sack her. Instead he says he is “proud” of her and that “this is what a Labour government is for”.
Keir Starmer is “proud” to be reaching into the pockets of his own citizens – about the most serious coercion a government can inflict on its people short of sending them to war. Freezing income tax thresholds is often framed as a “stealth” tax, but having lived with it since 2021 British people are no longer being fooled. No one will be convinced that Reeves is sticking to the spirit of the manifesto pledge when they see their take-home pay eroded and when 4.8m more are paying the higher rate.
Vague and deceptive
As well as trying to extract revenue by legerdemain, she has been vague at worst and deceptive at best about her reasons for doing so. Journalists and the public were given the clear impression that her hand was forced by OBR forecasts. That was not true. Now the Prime Minister and the Chancellor admit that this was a political choice to end the two-child benefit cap.
“Look, I’m a Labour Chancellor. I want to reduce child poverty. I make no apologies for that,” she said in a wince-makingly defensive interview with the BBC over the weekend. The Chancellor is speaking here of ‘relative’ rather than ‘absolute’ poverty, that is the number of children in households with incomes below 60 per cent of the national median. But nobody wants to increase child poverty, however it is measured.
There is a good argument that the cap unjustly punishes children for the circumstances of their birth. But that is not an argument Labour has made until now. The manifesto mentioned the word ‘welfare’ just twice, both times in relation to being nice to animals. One of its first acts in government was to remove the whip from seven of its own MPs for opposing the cap just last year.
The manifesto mentioned the word ‘welfare’ just twice, both times in relation to being nice to animals
Reeves may claim that she is motivated by her “Labour” principles, but all the evidence suggests she is driven by expediency. Having proved herself completely incapable of cutting a single penny of public spending, she is instead taking money from taxpayers to hand to people on welfare and the low-paid. The self-titled first female Chancellor is providing powerful incentives for mothers to stay at home and have large families instead of pursuing fulfilling careers. When people voted for a government that would protect “working people”, is this really what they wanted? This was a Budget for Labour MPs, not voters, with whom the cap is popular. She has no mandate for it.
But perhaps most offensive is the petulant and self-pitying tone she has adopted throughout this bizarre Budget process. Her claims of being “underestimated” and “mansplained to” are an insult to the people who are paying for her weakness and bad decisions. She has not been “underestimated”, she has inflated her own CV, plagiarised a book and now tries to use her gender to deflect criticism. From the second most powerful person in the country, that’s just pathetic.
Reeves boasted about “stability” but is making unpredictable U-turns while appearing increasingly emotionally fragile. All her ambitions for growth have crumbled into dust. By definition, only a man can “mansplain”. So I can’t be accused of sexism when I say: it’s time for her to go.
Alys Denby is opinion and features editor of CityAM