The Chancellor stands accused of pushing up borrowing, spending and taxesand delivering stagnant progress.
Shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride (Picture: PA)
Britain has simply been handed a warning, and it couldn’t be clearer. This week’s OECD downgrade is not only one other gloomy forecast. It’s a nice massive flashing pink gentle for an financial system that’s weak and shedding confidence and route. On the very second the world is changing into extra unsure, Britain has been rendered fragile. That isn’t dangerous luck. It’s the direct results of Labour’s dangerous selections.
Rachel Reeves has pushed up borrowing, spending and taxes, but delivered stagnant progress. We’re getting poorer. Inflation stays excessive. Unemployment is rising. The deficit is swelling. Debt curiosity is double what we spend on defence – and consuming into the nation’s funds.
That is the fact of Labour in energy – and it’s a clear signal of what’s going to occur if Reform get anyplace close to Downing Road.
Whereas Reeves is wildly out of her depth, Reform are financial fantasists whose sums by no means add up.
However provided that Reform ‘aren’t within the numbers’, that’s no shock.
Nowhere is our financial ache felt greater than on our excessive streets. The most recent figures from the Workplace for Nationwide Statistics reveal a disaster in hospitality.
Closures surged from greater than 6,000 on the finish of 2024 to almost 8,000 within the first three months of final yr. They stayed alarmingly excessive all through 2025, with an additional 6,485 companies shutting their doorways final winter.
Behind each closure are misplaced jobs, a shuttered pub, a struggling household. Our communities are being hollowed out in actual time as a result of companies are being squeezed from each route by crippling taxes, punitive enterprise charges, hovering vitality payments, and limitless pink tape. And now Labour need to make it worse.
Their deliberate gas responsibility hike will hammer motorists, households and corporations already battling a price of dwelling disaster.
For 14 years, the Conservatives discovered the assets to freeze Gasoline Obligation, taking greater than £100 billion off the price of driving. After years of stability, Starmer and Reeves are delivering a direct hit on those that can least afford it.
On the identical time, Labour’s ideological obsession with web zero is weakening our financial system and our nationwide safety. As an alternative of utilizing our personal North Sea oil and gasoline, we have gotten reliant on imports.
That isn’t simply economically reckless it’s strategically naive. Power safety is nationwide safety.
It doesn’t must be this manner.
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Scrap the gas tax hike. Ditch the online zero dogma. Drill the North Sea. Again British enterprise. Revive our excessive streets by chopping enterprise charges, slashing vitality prices, tackling crime and releasing enterprise from forms.
Britain will be stronger. However provided that we modify course now.
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