DAILY MAIL COMMENT: This downturn is of Labour’s personal making

It’s an old political maxim that when you’re stuck in a mess of your own making the best thing to do is create a diversion. If you can persuade the public to look the other way, even temporarily, they might not realise the full extent of your failings.

However, as Rachel Reeves is finding out, it doesn’t always work. She has already tried blaming the Tories for her own ham-fisted ineptitude. Yesterday, she blamed geo-political uncertainty for the UK’s woeful new growth figures.

Contrary to expectation, GDP shrank by 0.1 per cent in January, with pubs, manufacturing and hospitality showing the sharpest downturn. According to the Chancellor, this was largely down to global turbulence.

But how much genuine turbulence was there in January? True, the war in Ukraine was still grinding on and there was a threat of US tariffs, but nothing dramatic had actually happened. 

Indeed, the markets were positively buoyant following the election of President Donald Trump.

The real drag on growth, as every dog in the street knows, is Ms Reeves’ disastrous October Budget, which saddled the country with £40billion in extra taxes and paved the way for a public spending splurge of £72billion by 2030 – most of which will have to be borrowed at crippling rates.

And that’s before most of the changes have even happened. 

Rachel Reeves has already tried blaming the Tories for her own ham-fisted ineptitude

The markets were positively buoyant following the election of President Donald Trump

Hospitality outlets and other businesses are already bracing for the triple hit of higher National Insurance payments, a minimum wage hike and the costs and obligations involved in Labour‘s new workers’ rights charter.

When all those measures come in next month, the likelihood is that prices will rise, employment will fall and growth will take an even greater hit.

None of this is truly down to Mr Trump or Putin. If we do slide into recession, it will be a recession conceived and executed by a Labour Chancellor who is clearly out of her depth. 

Blaming imaginary Tory black holes and trying to distract attention by shouting ‘Look over there!’ just won’t work.

Out of order!

With a salary of £171,106 plus lavish pension rights, an elegant grace and favour home with one of the best views in London and a staff to do his bidding, Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle’s life is worlds apart from those of his constituents in the old Lancashire mill town of Chorley.

Yet it seems he’s far from satisfied with these blessings. On top of his normal income, Mail investigations have shown he enjoys an extraordinary amount of luxury travel and accommodation at public expense.

Since October 2022, he has splashed out more than £250,000 on ‘non-regular’ foreign jaunts. It took his predecessor John Bercow, hardly a shrinking violet, ten years to run up a similar bill.

Sir Lindsay commissioned a portrait of himself for close to £50,000, the Mail can reveal

John Bercow, former Speaker of the House of Commons

Today, we reveal Sir Lindsay also commissioned a portrait of himself for close to £50,000 including frame and appointed a former lobbyist who provided him with all-expenses-paid junkets to Gibraltar as his ‘adviser on overseas territories’, giving him a coveted parliamentary pass. 

The Speaker’s job is to preside over Commons debates. Why on earth should he need a foreign adviser?

Sir Lindsay’s activities appear more dubious with each new revelation, yet not a single MP has raised the slightest note of criticism. Neither is there any formal mechanism for an inquiry into these clearly excessive expenses. 

For such a senior public official to be effectively beyond scrutiny is simply wrong. Democracy requires transparency.