Reeves Invented a £30 Billion Shortfall

Rachel Reeves justified £26 billion in tax rises with a £30 billion fiscal “black hole.” Inflation had already erased it through higher VAT yields and fiscal drag pushing workers into higher brackets. She converted the resulting surplus into £16 billion more for benefits.

Official accounts omitted this revenue windfall. The OBR noted wage growth offsets to productivity weakness before the Budget, creating headroom Reeves ignored. Her narrative pinned blame on predecessors, Brexit, and economic decay while concealing inflation’s fiscal boost.

Tax hikes exceeded manifesto pledges. Labour promised rises only on private school VAT, non-doms, and energy firms—totaling far less than £40 billion delivered. Reeves called it a “one-off” to “wipe the slate clean,” but new levies hit employers, savers, and investors hardest.

Benefits Claim Twenty-Five Percent of Budget

Spending on welfare now consumes a quarter of state expenditure. This marks a shift from pre-pandemic levels, where government spent 39 percent of GDP and eyed surpluses by 2022. Borrowing hit £150 billion annually as total spend climbed to 45 percent.

Labour MPs blocked even mild curbs on rising long-term sickness claims. Backbenchers, shaped by anti-austerity campaigns, rejected slowing the acceleration. The result entrenches one in ten working-age adults as too ill for work.

Employers face a 15 percent cost surge for minimum-wage hires, per Centre for Policy Studies data. National Insurance rises and wage mandates compound this. Firms respond by curbing jobs, amplifying welfare dependency.

Two-thirds of recent emigrants fall under 34, per ONS figures. Young workers flee rising income tax, student loans, and rents alongside employer penalties. Net migration falls not from border controls but talent exodus.

This forms a doom loop. Higher taxes shrink the tax base via emigration and unemployment. Lower growth swells welfare rolls, demanding yet more revenue Labour refuses to cut.

Pre-1976 governments balanced budgets without partisan Budget rhetoric. Lawson and Howe avoided naming opponents at the dispatch box across 11 statements. Today’s leaders weaponize fiscal woes for advantage.

Institutions enable the deceit. Fiscal rules bend to inflation mechanics and selective data. Chancellors across parties exploit them—Labour now drains private wealth to fund public largesse.

Responsible families forgo children amid costs, while claimants access Motability cars for obesity or intolerances. Incentives invert: work penalised, idleness rewarded. Growth, once proclaimed priority, yields to redistribution.

Citizens voted for targeted tweaks to a private economy intact since 1976. Labour delivered socialism’s return: peacetime high taxes as policy choice. The betrayal accelerates economic sclerosis.

High spending persists regardless of party. Tories expanded the state post-pandemic without reversing course. Labour locks it in, prioritizing clients over recovery.

This exposes power’s true mechanics. Leaders promise restraint, seize surpluses, face no reckoning. Voters bear the exodus, stagnation, and bills—while elites shift liabilities forward.

Britain’s decline hardens into policy. Tax-funded idleness erodes the working base that sustains it all. Collapse looms as arithmetic overtakes ambition.