Rachel Reeves is driving a runaway train – and running out of track | Personal Finance | Finance

The warning signs are everywhere. Britain’s economy shrank again in May, following a drop in April, with retail sales collapsing as cash-strapped shoppers stay home. Gilt yields are climbing to financial crisis levels, the pound is sliding, and markets are betting on emergency interest rate cuts as the Bank of England battles to save the economy.

How does Reeves respond? By robotically insisting she’s “fixed the foundations”, while they crumble like a rickety wooden railway bridge. The country feels broken. Petty crime runs rampant, while the police are nowhere to be seen. Illegal immigration is surging and PM Keir Starmer has caved into France over immigrant returns, just like he’s caved into every foreign government he’s dealt with, starting with the mighty Chagos islands.

Militant junior “resident” doctors are preparing yet another crippling strike, demanding a 29% pay rise on top of last year’s 22%. That will swallow up much of the extra cash Reeves has thrown at the NHS.

Britain is now a land of strikes, surging welfare, and collapsing public trust.

Millionaires are fleeing in droves and the tax base is shrinking. As public services fail, anger is building. Debt is soaring and the interest bill costs us £9billion a month. Someone needs to take charge. But who, exactly, is in control?

It certainly isn’t Rachel Reeves.

Our hapless Chancellor is pushing buttons and pulling levers, but always the wrong ones. Instead of getting the train back on track, she’s accelerating the decline.

Labour’s national insurance hikes have destroyed hundreds of thousands of jobs. Now the National Trust has blamed the policy for axing 550 roles.

Reeves has presided over one U-turn after another. On the winter fuel payment, disability benefit cuts, and now her absurd plan to slash the Cash ISA allowance.

Now she’s going to hit us for at least £20billion of new taxes in her autumn Budget, despite promising she wouldn’t.

She should stamp out all talk of a wealth tax, as should Keir Starmer. Neither have. Instead, we face months of damaging speculation, driving yet more wealth out of the country.

That’s on top of Labour’s inheritance tax raid on non-doms, which has already triggered an exodus of high earners – leaving ordinary taxpayers to plug the gap.

Why would anyone with money want to stay here, as the Labour left wages class war and Angela Rayner drafts rival tax policies from the wings?

The Deputy PM is demanding fresh crackdowns on landlords, employers and the better-off, while pushing through a workers’ rights bill that hands even more power to the unions. And all Reeved does in response to all this is spout yet more nonsense.

The Chancellor is paralysed at the controls, too scared to touch anything in case it blows up in her face. The buffers are approaching fast.

Meanwhile, the global economy is slowing, just as investors drive stock prices to record highs. Many analysts now expect a crash in August, a jolt that could send Britain over the edge.

Like the darkest days of the 1970s, we face industrial chaos, tax flight and a hostile environment for business. Labour has done it again. But this time, there’s no Margaret Thatcher waiting in the wings.

Rachel Reeves is still in the cab but the brakes have failed, the controls aren’t responding, and the warning lights are flashing red.

Everything she touches only makes things worse. There’s only one place this runaway train is going to end up. And it’ll take us all with it.