Rachel Reeves was handed a golden goose – now she’s just throttled it | Personal Finance | Finance

Labour chancellors never do. That’s because, deep down, they don’t like the economy at all. It’s a capitalist economy, and lefties have never made their peace with capitalism. To them, it remains a 19th-century system of exploitation, a rigged game where bosses fleece workers and must therefore be restrained, regulated or brought down by worker power.

It’s the only way to explain Reeves’s constant assault on businesses, large and small. In Labour’s imagination, every employer is a cigar-smoking plutocrat in a top hat, grinding ordinary people into the dust. It doesn’t matter if they’re actually managing a struggling pub, small café, a couple of buy-to-let flats or a family-run pharmaceutical firm like this one. They’re still a boss, and their power must be curbed.

So the instinctive response is always the same. Tax them harder. And if that pushes them out of business, well, it probably serves them right.

Then comes regulation. Because if no boss can ever be trusted, then every worker must be wrapped in every possible protection, from day one.

Hence the upcoming Employment Rights Bill, which will cost businesses an estimated £5bn, on top of everything else Labour has piled on.

Here’s the thing Labour never seems to grasp. A capitalist economy is fragile. Building wealth is hard. Encouraging people to start businesses, grow them and take risks isn’t easy.

Entrepreneurs aren’t cartoon villains. There will always be cowboys but most are people with drive, ambition and a willingness to bet on themselves. But Labour doesn’t trust them. Activists despise them.

That’s why Reeves keeps getting it wrong. She allows endless speculation about which taxes will rise next, shredding incentives and confidence in the process. She slapped a £25billion ‘jobs tax’ on employers in her first Budget, a move even Labour-friendly tax expert Dan Neidle called the “worst tax of all”.

The result? Unemployment has soared under Reeves, from 4.1% to 5.1%. At the same time, the public sector has added roughly 62,000 posts. Who funds those? The hard-pressed private sector.

While private enterprise is treated with suspicion, the state is indulged. Nationalisation remains the left’s ultimate fantasy, despite the awkward fact that public sector productivity hasn’t grown this millennium.

She also doesn’t understand wealth. Too many on the left talk as if it’s all inherited, hoarded by aristocrats and landowners. Again, wrong century.

These days, most of it has been earned. People want to pass it on. They want private pensions so they’re not reliant on the state. Then Labour raids them, repeatedly, while leaving gold-plated public sector pensions untouched.

We live in a brutally competitive world. China may call itself communist, but it practises capitalism ruthlessly. We’re the ones crushing it.

Labour pledges world-class public services and a strong military, but fails to grasp that first, we need a thriving private economy to fund them. And no we can’t just print the money, as many on the left seem to believe, includingGreen Party loon Zack Polanski.

Capitalism isn’t perfect. It’s not always pretty. But it pays the bills.

Reeves was handed a golden goose. An economy that still, just about, produces wealth. Instead of nurturing it, she’s throttling it, and killing the very thing that keeps the country going.