Growth down, stocks down, jobs down, inflation up! Labour has already botched the economy_Nhy
Budget box or Pandora’s box? Rachel Reeves has unleashed terrors (Image: Getty)
In last week’s Budget Reeves stunned the nation by hitting us with £40billion of tax hikes and an extra £32billion of additional borrowing. It looked horrible at the time, and looks even worse today.
We’re already suffering blowback from her tax and spend spree. Instead of driving growth, as PM Keir Starmer promised, it appears to be destroying it.
Everything is heading south thanks to the Budget, with the notable exception of inflation. That’s going up.
On 15 May, one week before Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called a shock election, the FTSE 100 stock index was riding high and looked set to smash through 8,500 for the first time ever.
Today it’s sliding towards 8,000, as investors panic and sell.
The sell-off began the moment Starmer and Reeves took power and started telling everyone how hopeless the UK economy was.
Having sunk they stock market, they moved onto the economy.
GDP grew by a healthy 1.2% in the first half of this year, faster than any country in the G7.
Today, the International Monetary Fund forecasts it’ll grow just 1.1% across 2024. Which suggests that instead of growing in the second half of the year, the UK economy is going to shrink.
If true, that’s a lousy return on all the taxpayer cash Reeves is preparing to blow.
There’s bad news for jobs, too.
In the run-up to the Budget, Reeves floated a host of possible tax hikes, only to see them shot down one by one.
Eventually, it left her with just one option. To hike the amount of National Insurance (NI) employers have to pay when hiring staff.
This was a twisted way of avoiding breaking Labour’s pre-election pledge not to increase NI on working people. Companies are working out the cost and it’s huge.
The supermarket sector is a major employer and will be particularly hard hit. The NI hike will cost Sainsbury’s £140million a year, while Asda will pay an extra £100million and Marks & Spencer £60million.
Reeves also hiked the minimum wage, so we can basically double those numbers.
Imagine that repeated across UK employer. Labour has stripped £25billion out of corporate Britain. No wonder investors are pulling out of UK shares.
The left won’t care. They see big business as evil, rather than a source of jobs and growth. Or in the case of the supermarkets, keeping people fed and watered.
Workers will ultimately pay the price, as employers cut jobs or slow wage hikes to make the books balance. So Labour is driving our pay down too.
One thing is going up though. Inflation.
In September, consumer price inflation fell to 1.7%. Now the Bank of England is warning that Labour’s splurge will force it towards 2.5%.
It said inflation won’t fall back to its 2% target until 2027. So Labour has given the cost-of-living crisis fresh legs too.
Homeowners should be looking forward to cheaper mortgages, after the BoE cut base rates to 4.75% yesterday. But they won’t
BoE governor Andrew Bailey has warned interest rates will slow from here. Again, thanks to the Budget.
So far, Labour has been able to blame the useless Tories for the mess they inherited, but the Budget is all their own work. And it’s proving to be a disaster.
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Sorry Donald! The 6 Labour giants who will be regretting these brutal words on Trump
Sir Keir Starmer and Donald Trump (R) (Image: Getty Images)
Leaders across the UK’s political spectrum have congratulated Donald Trump as he claimed victory in the US presidential election.
Sir Keir Starmer said the UK-US special relationship would “continue to prosper”, but the Prime Minister and other top Labour politicians have not always been so complimentary about Mr Trump…
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer
In 2021, Sir Keir declared himself to be “anti-Trump but pro-American”.
Last year he likened the Conservative Party to Mr Trump as he accused the Tories of falling far from Churchillian values. He asked: “Is there anybody in the Government now who feels a sense of obligation to anything other than their own self-interest? To democracy, the rule of law, serving our country?
“An entitlement to power unchecked by any sense of service or responsibility – that’s the cultural stain that runs through the modern Conservative Party.”
He added: “These aren’t Churchill’s Tories any more. If anything they behave more and more like Donald Trump.”
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy (Image: Getty)
Foreign Secretary David Lammy in 2017
Mr Lammy called Mr Trump a “racist KKK and neo-Nazi sympathiser”.
A year later, referring to Mr Trump’s first official UK visit, the Tottenham MP wrote in Time magazine that he would be protesting against the then government’s “capitulation to this tyrant in a toupee”.
He added: “Trump is not only a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath, he is also a profound threat to the international order that has been the foundation of Western progress for so long.”
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner (Image: Getty)
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner
Ms Rayner has publicly criticised Mr Trump in posts on X, formerly Twitter, more than once.
On the day of the Capitol Hill riots in January 2021, she tweeted: “The violence that Donald Trump has unleashed is terrifying, and the Republicans who stood by him have blood on their hands.”
Later that month she said of the inauguration of Joe Biden as president: “I am so happy to see the back of Donald Trump.”
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper (Image: Getty)
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper
In 2017, Ms Cooper said Mr Trump’s approach to politics was “normalising hatred”.
Referring to his use of Twitter, she said: “This is the bully pulpit of the most powerful man on the planet.”
A few months later she said Britain could not “simply roll out a red carpet and give a platform” for Mr Trump to “sow discord in our communities”.
In July 2019 she signed an open letter from Hope Not Hate in solidarity with four US congresswomen told by Mr Trump to “go back” to the “broken and crime-infested places from which they came” – calling his words “racist attacks”.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband (Image: Getty)
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband
Mr Miliband said of Mr Trump in 2016: “The idea that we have shared values with a racist, misogynistic, self-confessed groper beggars belief.” He told the BBC: “And I think we should be deeply worried about the implications for many of the things that we care about. Tackling climate change…His attitude to Russia. And then this fantasy about trade. I mean, this guy is anti-trade. He’s an odd combination of protectionism, plus the old trickledown formula that has got us into a lot of this mess in the first place.”
Health Secretary Wes Streeting (Image: Getty)
Health Secretary Wes Streeting
In 2017, Mr Streeting called Trump an “odious, sad little man”, adding on X: “Imagine being proud to have that as your president.”
