Rachel Reeves and Ed Miliband just went barking mad – burning money | Personal Finance | Finance
The Chancellor is adding £650million to Britain’s national debt every single day. By the end of the summer, our total debt will smash through the £3trillion mark for the first time ever. Yet instead of panicking and cutting back, Labour MPs are demanding the party spends even more money. So does PM-in-waiting Andy Burnham. We all know Labour is addicted to taxing us. It’s addicted to spending too. This can only end one way.
Reeves claims she wants growth. But instead of cutting taxes and slashing red tape, she’s crushing businesses and bringing the economy to a crashing halt. At the same time, she’s decided our dysfunctional state knows better than the private sector how to invest. So she’s pumped £28billion into a so-called National Wealth Fund, supposedly designed to back the industries of the future. In practice, it will simply throw money at the party’s pet projects, often in Labour-voting seats.
Taxpayers are already on the hook for £388million, invested in struggling broadband company Gigaclear. It’s only the start. In total, the fund has poured £1.7billion into high-risk telecoms stocks. We’ll be lucky to see any of that again. Would you trust Reeves to invest your money? She even lavished the fund’s boss with a stunning £550,000 salary.
Unbelievably, Reeves is now plotting to revive the totally discredited Private Finance Initiative scheme from the Tony Blair years. PFI locked taxpayers in eye-watering long-term contracts to build schools and hospitals. Each £60billion invested will cost us £300billion. We’re still paying the bill decades later. Now Reeves wants another go. It’s loopy.
She isn’t the only one chucking cash around. Ed Miliband is indulging his personal hobbyhorse, using your money. His breakneck Net Zero crusade could cost Britain a staggering £9trillion. At the same time, he’s blocking North Sea oil and gas drilling, wiping out revenues and jobs alike.
Miliband is also throwing cash at Great British Energy, Labour’s state-owned energy quango. Taxpayers will hand over £8.3billion just to get it started, despite no guarantee it will ever generate meaningful returns. He’s also planning to throw £22billion at carbon capture and storage technology, which has never worked anywhere. It’s sheer ideology. Things could get even scarier if Andy Burnham reaches Number 10.
Burnham wants even more state spending and even more nationalisation. Bringing Thames Water back into state ownership would cost taxpayers up to £100 billion. Nationalising the railways would swallow tens of billions more. Where does he think the money comes from?
Britain’s debt pile now roughly equals the country’s entire annual economic output. The last time it hit this level we’d just fought the Second World War. The difference is that debt was falling then. Today, it’s rocketing. We spend more than £100billion a year purely on servicing the interest.
Reeves didn’t create all this alone. Our debt problems began under Labour’s Gordon Brown, and intensified during the financial crisis. Former Tory PM Rishi Sunak famously blew £15billion on useless Covid PPE supplies. But Labour has taken the madness to another level. This splurge cannot continue forever. Eventually reality will catch up with. The IMF will be called in and force brutal spending cuts and tax rises.
Reeves and Miliband don’t seem to care. They know they won’t be in office much longer, and are hungry to spend big while they can. Their lunatic spree will haunt us for decades.
