Chancellor Rachel Reeves

• IT would not matter so much that chancellor Rachel Reeves lied in her CV about being an economist if she had shown any grasp of economic reality in her budget.

Her promise to “fix the foundations” of the economy by a massive raid on the private sector, and then pouring the proceeds into the public sector, represents the discredited and outdated economics of doctrinaire socialism, not responsible stewardship.

Reeves announced the discovery of her fictional black hole with suppressed glee. It gave a green light to Labour to ignore the repeated promises it had made before the election that there would be no tax rises.

It is now clear that, if you are lucky enough to discover a black hole, or have your fingers crossed behind your back, Labour promises made in parliament and to the public do not count after winning an election.

Tax rises which end up benefiting the public at large are one thing. That this will not to be the case was signalled even before the budget by the immediate removal of the winter fuel payment, hitting hundreds of thousands of the poorest members of society.

At the same time inflation-busting settlements, with no changes to restrictive working practices, were agreed with public sector unions, deliberately digging another black hole and one which will undoubtedly increase in size, depth and cost.

Along with his famous inability to define a woman, Sir Keir Starmer now finds it impossible to define “working people”, though his definition clearly excludes small business people and pensioners who have worked all their lives.

In contrast, his “working people” seem above all to be public employees, notably civil servants. Indefensibly the government as an employer is exempting itself from the employer’s NI it is imposing. Although in the first instance paid by employers (except the government) not employees, the tax rise is bound to affect the latter detrimentally. Labour itself admitted this explicitly when in opposition.

Government employees are also to be allowed to work four days a week without any reduction to their pay, while farmers and the self-employed, who often work seven days a week, are to be penalised.

And Reeves announced she was providing yet another billion pounds to the fiasco of the HS2 project to bring it to Euston. HS2 sums up in itself the total inability of the public sector to run complex projects. Pouring taxpayers’ money into HS2 is throwing yet more good money after bad.

For an overall cost of £67billion, three times the size of Reeves’s black hole, only destruction and misery have so far been achieved. If the line is ever completed it will run at a huge loss.

It is a great pity that a government which had the chance to consolidate its claim to be a natural ruling party has alienated even those who wished it well within six months of being elected.

Combining incompetence and incontinence, it has shown in its tax rises a blithe disregard for the taboo of lying to parliament, for which Boris Johnson was hounded out of office.

MARTIN SHEPPARD, NW1