Britain deserves much better than this fiscal fantasy: Shadow Chancellor MEL STRIDE on the farce of the Spring Statement

On Tuesday, Rachel Reeves will deliver her Spring Statement. With any luck, it will be her last fiscal statement as Chancellor. Thanks to her choices, unemployment has been soaring. Yet, despite the growing numbers losing their jobs, somehow Reeves still has hers.

By all accounts she wants Tuesday to be a low-key affair, after the shambles we have seen on her previous outings. If the briefings are to be believed, the message on Tuesday will be: ‘Steady as she goes’. ‘Our plan is working’. ‘Nothing to see here’.

If you just listened to what Reeves and Keir Starmer say on a daily basis about the economy, you’d be forgiven for thinking everything was going swimmingly. 

The Chancellor and the Prime Minister like to say they’re bringing down the cost of living, they’ve ‘created the conditions’ for growth, and there’s a prosperous future just around the corner.

As anyone who has paid any attention to the state of our economy will know, that is utterly delusional. Labour are frantically hunting for green shoots to point to, while quietly ignoring the dead wood piling up around them.

Deluded: If you listen to what Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer say, you’d be forgiven for thinking everything was going swimmingly

The hard reality is this: national output as measured by gross domestic product per head is shrinking. We are getting poorer. The Bank of England has downgraded growth for this year and next. Unemployment is rising. Business confidence is at record lows. We have the highest borrowing costs in the G7. This is not a moment for deluded self-congratulation. It is a moment for honesty.

Reeves claims she is bringing down the cost of living, but inflation is up on when Labour came into office. She claims credit for interest rate cuts, but interest rates have stayed higher than was expected when she came to office, because her policies have fuelled inflation. Her decisions have meant higher prices in shops and higher mortgage rates.

Concern: Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride

The Chancellor will no doubt claim borrowing is down, that she has restored stability. But again, look beneath the spin and the story unravels. When she took office, the Treasury expected borrowing this year to be £77 billion. So far, she has borrowed £112 billion. By the end of the financial year, that figure is expected to hit £138 billion. That is nearly double the deficit she inherited – to pay for irresponsible spending, increased welfare spending, serial U-turns, and a refusal to take difficult decisions.

We are told to believe that her plans are prudent, that the books add up, that she will quickly get the deficit back down again. Yet her entire fiscal strategy relies on assumptions that nobody seriously believes: sharp spending restraint in future years, and yet more tax rises pencilled in for just before the next Election. It is a fiscal fantasy, designed to get her through the next forecast rather than fix the country’s problems. Reeves is putting her career before the welfare of the hardworking men and women of the UK.

How can we believe she will deliver when we have seen so many U-turns from this government? Even in the short space of time since the last Budget we’ve seen U-turns on the pubs tax, family farms tax, employment rights and possibly an imminent student loans change as well – all after pressure from the Conservatives.

The reason Reeves wants a low-key Spring Statement is obvious. She doesn’t want scrutiny. She doesn’t want challenge. She is too weak to take any meaningful action. And perhaps she has realised that whenever she does something it tends to go very badly wrong – so her strategy this time is to simply do nothing at all.

The fact is even if the Chancellor wanted to change course, she couldn’t. This is a weak and chaotic government, paralysed by its own divisions and hostage to its backbenchers. Tough decisions on welfare? Kicked into the long grass. Serious action on competitiveness and energy costs? Ed Miliband is taking us all for fools.

Instead, we get higher taxes on work and enterprise, the world’s highest energy prices and a spiralling benefits bill. Managed stagnation, dressed up as stability. Britain deserves better than this drift.

With Kemi Badenoch as leader and me as Shadow Chancellor, the Conservatives have been clear. We would get spending under control, grip welfare reform so that work always pays, restore competitiveness with cheaper energy.

We would cut the deficit with discipline, not deception – and use the proceeds to back growth: abolishing stamp duty, scrapping business rates for thousands of High Street pubs and shops, cutting tax for young people starting work, investing properly in apprenticeships and fixing student loans. That is a plan. It is costed, credible, and focused on fairness and growth.

In two days, Rachel Reeves will try to say – as quietly as possible – that everything is going fine.

The truth is we are poorer due to the choices she has made. Borrowing is higher. Growth is weaker. Confidence is lower. Our economy is on its knees – and it is clear that there is no path to recovery while we are stuck with this weak and chaotic Labour government.