The whole story of this week’s budget can be summed up in one sentence: taxes raised on working people to pay for welfare handouts. It was a smorgasbord of new taxes that, when taken together with her budget last year, means Rachel Reeves has raised the tax burden to the highest on record.
There can be no doubt in anyone’s mind that Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have now broken their manifesto commitment not to raise taxes on working people. This budget raised taxes on savers. It put taxes up on people putting money aside for their pension. It created an extra tax on family homes. It put a new tax on landlords, which will be passed onto tenants.
There’s now additional taxes on your taxi, on your bet, even on your milkshake. And of course, a freeze in income tax thresholds that will leave millions of Brits paying higher tax bills.
You may think this or that tax might not affect you directly. But the combined weight of all these tax raids will leave families facing even greater pressure, and at a time when inflation is expected to stay higher for longer because of Labour's choices .
Let's take the Chancellor's decision to restrict the ISA limit for cash savings.
This will hit the people doing exactly the right thing: taking responsible steps to prepare for a rainy day or for their retirement.
Or look at the attack on so-called ‘salary sacrifice’ schemes for people trying to build up a pension.
Rachel Reeves is making it much harder for people to do the right thing by putting money aside to make sure that they are not a burden on others as they get older.
Many of the family homes that will be affected by the Chancellor’s new property tax will be lived in by families who've been in those homes for decades.
For families on fixed incomes or trying to make ends meet on a pension, this will be yet another bill to face at the end of every month.
Labour’s landlord tax will only lead to higher rents, as landlords sell off their properties. How does that help a family who can’t yet afford to buy their own home and are trapped renting?
It isn’t fair, and it didn’t need to be like this. At this budget Rachel Reeves had a choice. Her decision to hike our taxes again wasn’t because she thought it would be good for our economy or for economic growth - something Labour used to claim was their “number one mission”.
No. The decisions taken by Starmer and Reeves are solely because they’re worried about their own political survival.
They’ve put up taxes to try and appease Labour MPs to try and save their jobs.
There is an alternative. It’s the Conservative way and it starts by living within our means.
That means bringing down the welfare bill and cutting government spending instead of raising your taxes.
The Conservatives are now the only party in British politics committed to bringing back the two-child benefit cap, because we believe it’s only fair that families on benefits have to make the same decisions about having children as everyone else.
Labour, Reform, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens disagree – they are all committed to even more welfare.
The Conservative plan is simple. Cut spending, cut tax, back business and get Britain working again. We are on the side of people who work hard, save hard, and do the right thing by preparing for their retirement.
