The Chancellor has good reason to be thankful to the King. His Majesty’s decision to consign his brother to a life without titles in Norfolk swept Rachel Reeves’ housing contortions off the headlines.
It has become the Chancellor’s habit, whether dealing with personal indiscretions or great economic matters, to find others to blame when something goes wrong.
An aide was deemed responsible when Reeves’ CV was found to contain falsehoods. Initially, Reeves assured the Prime Minister that she was ignorant of the need to acquire a licence to let her South London home after Daily Mail disclosures.
Reeves then regretted misleading Sir Keir. She couldn’t leave it there and shifted the blame to letting agents and husband Nicholas Joicey.
The Chancellor’s hope will be that the rapid and incurious exoneration by the Prime Minister and his ethics adviser Sir Laurie Magnus will be sufficient. The rapidity of her clearance falls far short of what was required.
A full-scale probe might be over the top, but the neglect of Reeves and her spouse is very surprising, especially as the Chancellor has been an advocate of a letting licence in her Leeds constituency.
Not my fault: As Rachel Reeves contemplates a sharp rise in income tax, she doubtless will be seeking to place the blame for broken promises elsewhere
As Reeves contemplates a sharp rise in income tax, possibly balanced by a cut in employees’ National Insurance, she doubtless will be seeking to place the blame for broken promises elsewhere.
All her financial statements are laced with venom for Liz Truss and the harm her unaudited 2022 mini-Budget did to Britain. Those of us who thought the Truss tax cuts could ignite growth misjudged its impact.
But it was not just the mini-Budget, but the energy subsidies demanded by Labour after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which caused mayhem in the public finances.
Reeves is the no-fault Chancellor. In her skewed, blameless view, responsibility for driving a coach and horses through manifesto pledges – a sacred contract with the electorate – rests elsewhere.
She and her team are disparaging of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) for deciding at this juncture to update its productivity forecast widening the chasm in the public finances.
Yet it was the Chancellor who weakened her budgetary latitude when she gave new powers to the OBR.
The revisions from the watchdog simply bring it in line with the Bank of England and the IMF. The real mistake was to leave herself so little fiscal space. Trumpian tariff turmoil and higher-than-forecast bond rates alone gobbled up most of the headroom.
The revival of anti-Brexit rhetoric is another example of Reeves’ ‘not me, guv’ approach. The Chancellor echoes the plumber called in to sort out the leak who accuses a predecessor of a botched job.
Putting aside the rights and wrongs of the Chancellor’s initial dissembling, she and Labour have a real housing problem. It is not just the unreality of the 1.5m target for new homes.
She is the fourth minister to have messed up in the housing market. Homelessness minister Rushanara Ali behaved like a latter-day Rachman.
Treasury minister Tulip Siddiq was living in an apartment owned by an allegedly corrupt Bangladeshi relative. And Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner underpaid stamp duty on her fancy Hove flat.
All these ministers resigned, apart from Reeves – who holds an office which demands maximum credibility.
The rental mistake, worth an estimated £41,000 – that’s more than the median average wage – casts a lingering shadow.
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