Rachel Reeves should resign.

And if she does --we might be about to witness the implosion of the Labour Party

---

Matt Goodwin’s newsletter goes to 90,400 subscribers from 181 countries. Like our stuff? Then become a paying supporter. Help us while gaining access to exclusive posts, the archive, events, discounts, comments and support independent writers making a difference. Join us on YouTube, Insta, TikTok, X and Facebook.

---

Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves should resign and if she does then we might be about to witness the implosion of the Labour government.

For months now, Rachel Reeves has falsely claimed there was a multi-billion-pound black hole in the public finances.

She consistently exaggerated the fiscal shortfall that she faced.

She then used this claim to justify another £30 billion of tax rises for the hardworking British people, after the £40 billion of tax rises Labour dumped on them last year, not to mention sweeping tax rises for property owners and businesses.

Labour, we can now all see, has not only broken its manifesto promises; it has done so in the most underhand, disingenuous way.

Rachel Reeves then used those tax rises not to cut our spiralling debt or drive growth. No. She used them to go on one of the biggest welfare splurges in history, rewriting the social contract in some truly shocking ways that I will come onto.

Just look at the detail that has come out.

The Office for Budget Responsibility, the OBR, we have learned, told Reeves there was no deficit in the public finances.

In fact, we learn that at the very same time she was scaring the life out of the British people, holding unprecedented press conferences in the early hours of the morning, she had already been told there was a surplus of some £4.2 billion.

She was safe, in other words. She did not need to do what she did.

Reeves told the country that a downgrade to its predicted economic productivity would make it much harder for her to meet her fiscal rules.

Yet this was not true.

And, last night, we learned that she also told the Labour Cabinet that the country’s finances were in such a dire state that manifesto-breaking tax rises were needed.

In reality, the OBR had already told her the downgrade was more than offset by higher than expected tax revenues —news that was not shared with the Cabinet.

For this reason, quite rightly, she has now been reported to the Prime Minister’s independent ethics adviser. There will almost certainly be an urgent question on Monday, alongside a panicked speech on welfare reform by Keir Starmer.

And Nigel Farage and Reform UK have, rightly, written to the ethics adviser to ask him to investigate whether the Chancellor has broken the ministerial code.

Because, most likely, she did.

Sources close to the Chancellor were repeatedly briefing about a £20-30 billion black hole when the OBR said Reeves never faced a shortfall of more than £2.5 billion. Days before her startled morning address, we now know she was told she had a surplus.

This is why, as I watched Rachel Reeves make her way around the Sunday politics shows yesterday, grilled by one presenter after another, only one word kept popping into my head: “liar”. Because that’s what I think Rachel Reeves is.

I think she is a liar.

She lied about her CV. She lied about not raising taxes last year. And now she has lied about a “black hole” to bring in huge tax rises through the back door.

Even worse, what she then did is use her tax rises to put party before country, to put her fellow Labour MPs before the British people.

Instead of slashing spending, instead of paying down debt, instead of going for the one thing Labour said they would prioritise in government –growth—she decided to go on an enormous welfare spending spree that will only further erode the social contract.

Just look at some of the truly shocking things we discovered over the weekend, courtesy of the highly respected and rigorous think-tank, the Centre for Social Justice.

A single parent of three children with one child receiving a welfare allowance for a condition like ADHD or anxiety will soon receive £38,000 a year –that is £17,000 more than the take-home party of somebody on a living-wage job.

Or consider this:

---

We cannot do what we do without YOU. If you would like to support our work and help spread our message then upgrade now to remove all paywalls and support a community that speaks up for the forgotten majority.

---