Rachel Reeves to grab glory for something she hasn’t even done – again | Personal Finance | Finance
It’s been another week of lies, turmoil and chaos for Rachel Reeves. This culminated on Friday with news that the UK economy shrank again in October, pushing Britain to the brink of recession. GDP has not grown for four consecutive months. Incredibly, this rate shrank for more than half the time he was Chancellor.
And he can’t blame the Conservatives for that. When they left office, the economy was growing steadily. Reeves quickly put a stop to this, scaring businesses and consumers with dire warnings of a brutal budget to come. Surprisingly, he repeated this clumsy trick in his second Budget, which will go down as the most chaotic budget in history. The economy shrank again.
We are currently facing an unnecessary recession, or what has been called Reeves’ decline, because he is to blame for it.
The Chancellor is a one-woman disaster. His strategy seems simple: take all the taxes he can from everyone who works, saves, or tries to do the right thing, then funnels those taxes to an inefficient public sector and a growing army of welfare claimants.
This is a recipe for decline. And the decline is exactly what we have.
Worse, he insults our intelligence by claiming to stabilize the economy and “fix the foundations” of it. Lies, lies, lies – and next week we get another big one.
On Thursday, Britain will receive some rare good economic news. And Reeves will take the credit for this, even though it has nothing to do with him, in some perverse way that he doesn’t mention (but I will).
On 18 December, the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee is expected to cut interest rates, providing some relief to struggling households and businesses.
Markets predict the probability of a rate cut at 92%, with the base rate likely to fall from 4% to 3.75%. Some economists are advocating for a bigger move to 3.5 percent, or even 3 percent, to support the struggling economy.
Lower interest rates will help businesses by reducing borrowing costs and give homeowners a breather as mortgage rates ease (though savers will suffer).
The cut will also be good news for Reeves. It’s a rare chance, but here’s the annoying part: he’ll claim it as his own success.
I know because he’s done this before. It is repeated.
Although he had no say in interest rate decisions, Reeves repeatedly took responsibility for those decisions. In his Spring Statement he claimed that his government’s fiscal approach was to “provide the basis for the Bank of England to cut interest rates”.
Which basis? What stability?
He repeated the claim in his pre-Budget speech and before the Treasury Committee, saying: “We brought stability back to the economy, which allowed the BoE to cut interest rates five times.”
In fact, Reeves told Parliament: “We’ve made three trade deals and cut interest rates five times.”
We? Really? This shows his slippery grip on reality. It is the BoE, not the Prime Minister, that reduces interest rates. Still, I can understand why you glorify other people’s decisions. He has no achievements of his own.
But from a twisted angle, Reeves can take the credit.
We urgently need these interest rate cuts, not because they improve the economy, but because they ruin it. These are urgent repairs to prevent Britain falling deeper into recession.
Reeves won’t tell you this, but it’s true.
