TalkTV presenter Ian Collins has taken a savage swipe at Rachel Reeves’ Budget, calling her “inept” as she faces fresh criticism after saying that tax rises in this year’s Budget didn’t breach Labour’s manifesto. Addressing her appearance in front of the Treasury Committee on December 10, he said: “This morning (she told the committee) that she met the Prime Minister two or three times a week and agreed the tax rises as a team.
She’s accused of breaching Labour’s manifesto with a three-year threshold freeze, of course, and faces calls to quit over claims that she inflated that fiscal black hole to justify the big 30 billion tax rate to fund welfare. After showing clips of the Chancellor a year apart in which she appeared to contradict herself, he addressed political commentator Chloe Dobbs, who was his guest on the show.
“Now we don’t like to use the word lie, but clearly inept might be there somewhere. Or could she just fess up and say, ‘Do you know what?’ It got a bit rough. I had no choice,” he said.
Dobbs agreed with his appraisal, responding: “I mean, she seems completely incapable of this woman having any humility, of taking any accountability whatsoever.
“Every single U-turn that she’s made. She’s not really been able to just put her hands up and say, ‘Look, I’m sorry I made a mistake. ‘
“She’s been completely incapable of accepting that any of the tax hikes that we are seeing now are a consequence of her budget or any of the issues in the economy…we’ve got unemployment at its highest since the pandemic.
“That is clearly, clearly as a result of hikes to the National Insurance contributions from employers and the minimum wage, which is completely unwilling to accept that,” she said.
The Chancellor has been summoned to answer questions from the House of Commons Treasury Committee about leaks in the run-up to her Budget on November 26.
She became angry when Conservative Dame Harriet Baldwin criticised her claim that tax rises were the fault of the Tories. Reeves insisted she had inherited a £22 billion “black hole” from the last Conservative government.
But Dame Harriet said that claim “has been discredited by the Office for Budget Responsibility”, the official Treasury watchdog.
