Fiscal Drag, Indeed

Rachel Reeves is a purely titular Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose Cabinet colleagues ignore her and deal directly with a Prime Minister who does not rebuke them. Still, she is the Second Lord of the Treasury to his First, so they must both take responsibility for the £149 increase in energy bills, for the 22 to 44 per cent increase in water bills, for the zero growth in GDP, for the mere 0.3 per cent retail growth, for the steepest September reduction in consumer confidence in 48 years, for lower investor confidence than there was under Liz Truss, and for the five per cent increase in the number of firms at risk of collapse.

Male life expectancy has fallen by 266 days, yet Reeves plans to put up the pension age. The capital expenditure rules have been scrapped, which may or may not be a good thing depending on the details, but which is a clear breach of the Labour manifesto. As is the straightforwardly bad abandonment of the commitment not to increase National Insurance contributions. Fiscal drag is also a directly manifesto-breaching increase in income tax.

And neither Reeves nor anyone else knows whether VAT on school fees is supposed to be a permanent source of income, or a means of closing those schools. It cannot be both. During this Parliament, the measures that it had been supposed to fund will be deemed to have been achieved, and the tax will be discontinued. If that required both a new Chancellor and a new Education Secretary, then those there would be.