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. Impractical, it will simply throw money at pet projects, often in Labour-voting seats. And nearly all of that money will end up going to waste.
Taxpayers are already on the hook for £388million, invested in struggling broadband company Gigaclear. It’s only the start. In total, the fund poured around £1.7billion into high-risk telecoms and broadband stocks. We’ll be lucky to get any return on that. Would you trust Reeves to invest your money? She even paid the fund’s boss a stunning £550,000 a year.
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 unproven carbon capture and storage technology, which has never worked anywhere. 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. The Conservatives spent wildly during the pandemic and Ukraine energy crisis. But Labour has taken the madness to another level. This splurge cannot continue forever. Eventually reality will catch up with us. The IMF will step in and force brutal spending cuts and savage 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, spend, spend while they can. Their lunatic spree will haunt us for decades.