Rachel Reeves’s days are numbered – leave us a nasty parting present | Personal Finance | Finance

Latest figures confirm what a disaster she’s been. Her policy of taxing, spending and borrowing to the max has blown up in her face. In fact, it’s blown up in all of our faces. Reeves convinced herself she could restore stability and deliver growth by taxing the life out of the economy. She’s living in a parallel universe. Now the bill is about to land and it will sink her reputation for good. It’s only a matter of time.

Despite hammering taxpayers harder than ever, Reeves still can’t balance the books. HMRC collected a staggering £87.3billion in April, up £6.3billion on a year earlier. Yet the monthly deficit still hit £24.3billion, billions more than forecast. It’s the worst opening to a financial year since the Covid pandemic. Even official forecasters underestimated how fast the hole is widening.

Reeves has targeted workers, businesses, investors, landlords and savers. The more she taxes, the less growth she gets. The less growth she gets, the more she borrows. It’s a vicious cycle and now she’s slammed straight into a brick wall.

Her number isn’t just up economically. It’s up politically too. Reeves reached No 11 thanks entirely to Keir Starmer. During the election campaign they presented themselves as an inseparable duo, joined at the hip politically and economically. Everybody always assumed that if Starmer fell, Reeves would come tumbling after.

That moment may be approaching fast. If Andy Burnham wins a seat in Westminster at the Makerfield by-election on 18 June, he’ll be swept into No 10 by desperate Labour MPs. Starmer knows it too. He’s scrambling to carve out some kind of legacy before the curtain comes down.

Reeves is grimly battling for her job. There’s a slim chance Burnham could keep her in place temporarily to reassure the bond markets, who now bizarrely see her as the safest pair of hands Labour can offer.

That says everything about the party. Reeves now counts as the moderate option because everyone else, including Burnham, would tax, borrow and spend even more than she has. But Reeves’s economic failures are piling up too quickly now. The reckoning is getting closer by the day. She’s left Britain dangerously exposed just as the global outlook darkens.

The OECD has warned that the UK is the advanced G20 economy most vulnerable to Iran crisis. Thanks to Reeves, business activity has slumped to a one-year low. Job vacancies are at a five-year low too. Britain simply isn’t prepared for another inflation shock.

Donald Trump talks optimistically about peace deals and reopening supply routes, but there’s no guarantee of any lasting breakthrough. Oil shortages will bring the UK to a grinding halt and send our borrowing costs still higher. That would completely obliterate Reeves’s fiscal rules.

If Burnham becomes PM, he’ll inherit a nightmare of her making. Britain can’t tax anymore, the IMF says. We can’t borrow more, with gilt yields the highest this century. And the Labour left won’t tolerate spending cuts. We’re completely cornered.

So Reeves leaves behind the worst possible inheritance. No growth. No money. No fiscal headroom. No escape route. She’ll vanish into political obscurity claiming she restored stability. The truth is she’s left Britain on the brink of economic oblivion. It could finish Andy Burnham before he’s even begun.