BORIS JOHNSON: Rachel Theeves has taken aim at the UK economy and, with extreme, cold tolerance, hit it squarely in the bedrock. | Contact Conce

he is Labor The budget has me so angry I hardly know where to begin. But let’s start with the duplication.

Keir Starmer y Raquel Reeves They said again and again before the election that they would not raise taxes on “workers”. In fact, it seemed – as strong as their refusal was – that they had little intention of raising taxes.

When we all went to the polls last July, that claim seemed vaguely plausible. We knew the Tories were tamed inflationand that we had the fastest growing economy in the world. G7. After the terrible costs of the fight against Covid and the expansion of the State, it was the ideal time to reform and reduce the public sector, and it was certainly the time for private enterprise to encourage

Labor seemed to accept that analysis. Starmer spoke of the need to bet on “growth.” He said he would not spend another hundred on them National Health Service – if there was no reformation. Millions of people believed in Labour’s promises and voted accordingly.

It is now clear that they were lying through their teeth. They have gone through the motions of finding an unexpected ‘black hole’ in public finances, although to the extent that such a hole exists, they dug themselves out after the elections with their dramatic public sector wage increases that stopped inflation. workers.

Now they have used this important excuse to raise taxes on ordinary people in the biggest and worst attack, money-wise, since records began. They didn’t need to do it. Rachel Reeves (or Theeves, as she will be known) has no mandate for this £40bn tax hike, especially as £25bn is coming from the same people as her and Starmer sworn to protect.

If employer contributions to National Insurance are reduced, workers are hit directly; indeed he is affected. It makes it more expensive for employers to hire them, and that means millions of businesses across the country, big and small, have to choose. They can raise prices, cut profits, cut investment or simply cut their wage bill.

I’m afraid many of them will find it easier to pay Theeves by giving their workers less money, either by laying off workers or cutting wages . However, Starmer and company have the fortitude to say that this is not a “tax on workers”.

After four months of driving, in which the headlines have largely been dominated by his slick performances, he was funded by £2,485, or Taylor SwiftLike the motorcycle supporters, Starmer’s first major political act was to target the the UK economyand he hit him squarely in the chest. It is now clear that the Labor Party is not even interested in “growth” or “campaign” – which is why the markets panicked as soon as the Chancellor sat down.

You can see what’s happening, as costs after costs pile up at UK PLC. First came Starmer’s strange new employment laws, with strict guidelines about allowing his staff to work from home and not calling them out of hours. We now have higher taxes on almost every private company in the country, which reduces investment and growth.

On top of this, Theeves will borrow an additional £140bn over the next five years. Looking at what Labor is doing for businesses and the prospects for future tax revenues, it’s understandable that markets have been We are worried if the Government will be able to return everything. So they want higher interest rates on gilts, or loans, which will translate into higher mortgage rates and higher borrowing costs for businesses, and deal another blow in the teeth to investment and growth.

What makes it worse is the poor tolerance with which Labor has been receiving this punishment. Starmer’s party has obviously decided that farmers won’t vote for them, so they have hit the rural interest, making it much more expensive for farmers to pass their livelihood on to their children.

Farmers must “do more with less”, Labor Agriculture Secretary Steve Reed said after the budget.

I know Steve Reed. I used to be the leader of Lambeth Council when I was mayor London. He has no idea of ​​the difficulties and uncertainties involved in farming, or how much farmers hope that their children will take over the business. Shame on him for taking such delight in this attack on the very sector he is supposed to represent.

This tax on agriculture recalls, in its short-sighted cruelty, Stalin’s attack on the kulaks, and will in fact have the same result: driving people off the land and reducing the there is food we grow in this country.

I predict that if they do not reverse this policy, the new Labor Government will be literally (if not literally) buried up to their necks in farmyard manure.

Ask yourself, finally, what Theeves really proposes to do with all this money. They are just going to get water cannons on public services, with no reform, no productivity improvement, no guarantee that any of these work-from-home public services will serve the public better.

British farmers are like any other British business they are called upon do more with less, and increasingly large armies of civil servants are being asked to do less with more.

With this budget, Starmer and company are suddenly taking this country in the wrong direction. They seem determined to bury the British dream in a high-tax, high-cost version of Eurosclerosis, at the very moment when we should be using our new freedoms after Brexit to get things done the different way, to attract investment from all over the world. , and make them better (Check out my memoir Unleashed, available in all good bookstores, and still this week’s Sunday Times bestseller!).

It is a pity that the Labor Party now has the majority; and while that result was, of course, completely useless (as I said, see Unleashed), there is one consolation. Today the guardians You’ll eventually have a new director, and whichever of the two wins, I’m sure he’ll have the ability to do an outstanding job.

So now is the time, for God’s sake, for everyone in the middle to get behind that person and give him as much support as possible to hold the Labor Party accountable.

Over the past four months, there has been politics in the UK dominated by incessant debate over Lord Alli’s donations to Starmer and other Labor MPs.

This is because the Labor Party has not put forward any new ideas or agenda for the country, and because everyone has been holding their breath and waiting for it the Budget, see exactly how they were to the left.

Now we know. These are not Blairites. They are very far to the left. They have no ideas but the same old taxes and charges, and everything comes as it always has.

Let’s go back to the new Conservative leader oppose this theft and stop it as soon as possible.