Don’t shift the blame for failing economic system, Reeves advised: Chancellor prepares to unveil £15bn in new spending cuts – and can say world chaos is at fault for her tearing up her fiscal guidelines

Rachel Reeves will today blame world events for Britain’s faltering economy – as voters in a bombshell poll say it is her fault.

The beleaguered Chancellor will publish official forecasts this afternoon showing the outlook for economic growth has halved to around 1 per cent.

Following her controversial tax-raising Budget in October, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) is also expected to warn living standards are set to stagnate for the rest of the decade.

The gloomy forecasts put Ms Reeves on course to break her own ‘fiscal rules’ and unveil £15billion in cuts in today’s Spring Statement on the economy, triggering a Labour backlash over whether she is pursuing austerity. 

In a thinly veiled swipe at Donald Trump, the Chancellor last night tried to blame global challenges for the British economy‘s stuttering performance on her watch.

‘We can see that the world is changing, and part of that change is increases globally in the cost of government borrowing – and Britain has not been immune from those challenges,’ she said.

But a damaging poll reveals most voters no longer believe the Chancellor’s economic claims – and are increasingly blaming her for the country’s financial woes.

The More in Common survey found Ms Reeves is facing a credibility crisis, with more than half of voters (53 per cent) saying Labour lied about its economic plans to win power and ‘always knew they weren’t going to keep to these promises‘.

Rachel Reeves (pictured on March 25) will publish official forecasts this afternoon showing the outlook for economic growth has halved to around 1 per cent

In a thinly veiled swipe at Donald Trump (pictured on March 25), the Chancellor last night tried to blame global challenges for the British economy’s stuttering performance on her watch

More than half of voters think Labour is spending too much time blaming the Tories for the predicament in which the country finds itself (Pictured: Kemi Badenoch on March 25)

Just 13 per cent say Labour has stuck to its pledges on the economy. Voters are also tired of Labour’s constant attempts to blame the last Conservative government, with only 30 per cent saying they believe the Chancellor has been honest about the scale of the fiscal challenge she inherited.

More than half of voters think Labour is spending too much time blaming the Tories. Some 31 per cent now blame Labour for Britain’s growth crisis, compared with 27 per cent blaming the Conservatives and 18 per cent citing global events.

Remarkably, a majority of voters would now rather have former chancellor Jeremy Hunt or Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride at the Treasury. Voters also fear Ms Reeves will fail in her stated ambition to turn around the economy and deliver a decade of renewal. With tax rises and increases in utility bills set to come in next month, 49 per cent think the cost of living crisis may never end.

Almost a third of voters (31 per cent) believe Britain is heading back to austerity, while 23 per cent think it never ended.

Seven in ten say Labour will not improve the country’s public finances, while three-fifths (62 per cent) think the Government will also fail to improve public services.

The damning assessment came as:

• Ministers were braced for a mutiny when they release figures today showing welfare cuts will cost a million people on disability benefits around £5,000 each. 
• Public health experts writing in the British Medical Journal urged the Chancellor to abandon her welfare cuts, saying they would ‘result in more premature deaths’. 
• The Treasury tried to put a positive gloss on today’s statement by revealing the Chancellor will find an extra £2billion for defence to fund laser weapons for Navy warships. 
• A separate YouGov poll found that three-quarters of the public think Labour is managing the economy badly. 

A separate YouGov poll found that three-quarters of the public think Labour is managing the economy badly.

Following Ms Reeves’ controversial tax-raising Budget in October, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) is expected to warn living standards are set to stagnate for the rest of the decade (Reeves, centre, is pictured above with the treasury team on March 25)

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch (pictured on March 18) claimed that in ‘any other field of work’ Chancellor Reeves would have been sacked

Ms Reeves had originally pledged to make no major interventions today. But the plunge in Britain’s economic fortunes since the Budget has forced her hand, with the OBR warning her privately that she would break her own fiscal rules unless she acts.

The Tories said Ms Reeves had been forced into an ’emergency Budget’ by her own mismanagement. Kemi Badenoch said that ‘in any other field’ of work the Chancellor would have been sacked for presiding over a collapse in Britain’s growth prospects.

The Tory leader said: ‘This is not something that’s reacting to world events, she made errors, problems have been caused and now she is going to try to fix them.’ 

Last night the Chancellor insisted she was acting responsibly to deal with a surge in government borrowing costs which are now higher than in the wake of Liz Truss’s controversial mini-Budget in September 2022.

She added: ‘The OBR will set out their verdicts on growth and on the public finances today, but we will continue to meet the fiscal rules I set out in the Budget last year.

‘Economic stability is non-negotiable, I will never play fast and loose with the public finances like the previous government did.’

Ms Reeves will confirm plans to trim £5billion from the bloated benefits budget. She is also expected to reduce planned public spending by a further £5billion, triggering a Cabinet row over where the axe should fall.

Further savings will be found by laying off thousands of civil servants and deploying Treasury accounting tricks.