Rachel Reeves finds new excuse for her mistakes – it’s the weakest yet | Personal Finance | Finance
Recovery in inflation, increase in bond yields, increase in unemployment, record levels of borrowing. None of it has anything to do with Rachel Reeves. Slow economic growth? It’s not his department. Businesses are closing, jobs are disappearing, growth is stagnating. Don’t blame the chancellor. It all depends on global market conditions, Nigel Farage, Brexit, the Tories and even Donald Trumptariffs. Not that..
In the Chancellor’s mind, the deterioration of the UK economy has nothing to do with his disastrous budget, his £25bn jobs tax or his failure to cut spending. Nor are rising debt and deficits and ever-expanding £40bn or £50bn black holes. How unfair to blame Rachel Reeves. He’s the only one responsible.
The blame is always elsewhere. This time Reeves came up with the most ridiculous excuse. She blames the men, or rather the “insulters”.
It sounds ridiculous, but that’s what he does. He told The Times he was “tired of people explaining how to be Chancellor”. She said she felt pressure to prove herself to “the kids who write newspaper columns now” and label herself as “Rachel from accounts.”
He doesn’t strike me as a natural Express reader, so I don’t know if he’s referring to my critically inclined columns. I am a financial journalist. It’s my job to analyze the Chancellor of the Day.
I’m not a guy and I don’t call her “Rachel from Accounts” because yeah, I think that’s a bit sexist. I don’t tell him how to do his job either. This is a terrible job. In his case, this is impossible because Labor’s supporters won’t allow him to make tough decisions on spending. All I do is point out where he went wrong, which is pretty much everywhere.
This has nothing to do with gender. I dug up my old posts about former Tory Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who identifies as male, and was harsh on him too.
While smiling as he clamped down on the country with austerity policies, I told him that power had blown his mind. I accused him of playing the role of “stupid bastards” by freezing income tax thresholds and then duping us with pre-election National Insurance cuts. Was this a statement? Or is it man to man explanation?
I also checked my opinions on Liz Truss. I named her Calamity Liz and declared her duped. None of this was because she was a woman.
Reeves killed growth, raised taxes, destroyed jobs, destroyed thousands of businesses, imposed inheritance taxes on farmers and family businesses, and threatened to freeze out 10 million retirees.
If any man did this, I’d be doing my crazy thing too. It’s in my job description.
I hammered Reeves’ political hero Gordon Brown for destroying pensions with a secret tax raid, selling off Britain’s gold reserves for a song and fueling an unsustainable spending boom to get into 10th place. He is a man. It didn’t stop me.
I sympathize more with your other comments. Elsewhere in the interview he says: “There are a lot of people who say they cut taxes and the economy will grow, but what spending would they cut?”
No politician has an answer to this. Cuts are painful. The Conservative Party failed despite all these austerity policies. Nigel Farage will also compete.
But I will continue to appeal the Chancellor’s decisions. Not because she is a woman, but because she makes mistakes and blames others. And now he’s done it again.
