Now Keir Starmer is telling porkies in vain attempt to defend Rachel Reeves

The rising debt and higher debt interest payments that could and should have been cut. The injustice of treating different generations differently – protecting over-65s but punishing under-35s with more taxes or charges, often by stealth.

Then there’s the blatant pandering to the votes of those receiving state benefits rather than those paying state taxes. The many examples of how benefits are being uprated to keep up with inflation – yet those contributing their taxes to pay for these benefits are not having their tax threshold increased to keep up with inflation.

By freezing the income tax thresholds, inflationary growth will see an increasing share of people’s earnings going towards tax – with some being dragged into higher tax bands.

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An imaginary black hole

But for all the Budget’s bad news (and I’ve not even got on to the corporate and business taxes), it was much as we expected, after all the Chancellor – with the full participation of the Prime Minister – had been warning us incessantly to expect tough measures, with difficult and painful choices. Why, we even had the highly unusual spectacle of the Chancellor making a rushed broadcast during the breakfast television schedules to explain how we should expect to share the pain as she would ask us to pay a little bit more.

She told us a downgrade in productivity estimates from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility would result in the appearance of a black hole in the public finances.

Politicians of all colours took the Chancellor at her word – some wanted more taxes, others wanted savings in public spending. Financiers, investment analysts, investors, hedge-fund managers all started to make calculations on whether to buy, sell, invest, withdraw, emigrate, reach for the nearest bottle of Scotch (or maybe the revolver kept in their drawer).

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Real people made real decisions; why wait until the Budget was announced, the Chancellor was giving due notice and why should we not believe her? After all, she has consistently said she would be honest with the British people.

Now we know it was, at best, an incompetent shambles, because the Chancellor, to paraphrase glam rockers Sweet, “doesn’t have a clue what to do”. Or worse, it was a pack of lies because, as I wrote previously, to maintain political support when taxes were going to rise would require sweeteners for the backbenchers – which would mean having to increase taxes even higher still. After all, Reeves’ own narrative was that there was no money.

(By the way, when there has been no government surplus since 2001, all additional spending is financed by borrowing or raising taxes – which is why, after decades of bribing the public with benefits and ‘free stuff’ in return for votes, we are where we are. Debt is officially £3 trillion, but £5 trillion if liabilities like pensions are added – while debt interest is over £112 billion a year).

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A political choice

In the end, thanks to the OBR publishing its correspondence with the Treasury regarding its estimates, we can see what Reeves knew when she spoke and that we were being told lies rather than the Chancellor saying honestly her numbers were improving.

It should be noted the Chancellor did not volunteer this information – it only became public because the OBR thought we should know the tax increases were a political choice by Starmer and Reeves, rather than an economic imperative required to save the country from imminent bankruptcy.

The Prime Minister is still trying to say Reeves told the truth and that falling productivity would result in a downgrade of income of some £15.8bn – so taxes had to rise. This is highly disingenuous, because while it is true the OBR did indeed estimate a loss of £15.8bn, it is not the whole truth because the OBR also uprated government revenues in other columns by £31bn.

So, having been mugged by the Chancellor in plain sight, we have now witnessed a cover-up by the Prime Minister live on television. For Labour, it’s not enough to tell porkies about imaginary black holes; oh no, Starmer has to insult our intelligence by telling us further porkies about how we were not lied to.

If politicians lose their moral compass about telling the truth and are shameless when exposed to reasonable accusations of lying, then democracy is at risk. We need honourable politicians with a healthy degree of self-respect. There’s nothing honourable about Starmer and Reeves’ approach to politics, they are behaving shamelessly. Goodness, we now know they didn’t reveal the truth to fellow Cabinet members.

Trying to fool the public

Here’s the unvarnished truth. Starmer and Reeves – and their supporters – clearly believe the end justifies the means. By their choices, we know them.

The end they had in mind was buying the crucial support of Labour backbenchers for their continuation in power – by abolishing the two-child cap on universal credit payments. The means was to fool the British public in accepting another £26bn of taxes after increasing tax by £41bn last October.

We have all been taken for mugs; the media, the markets, the taxpayers but also the British public. This was not a Budget for the people or the economy, it was all about keeping Starmer and Reeves in power – and it is why they must be shown the door at the earliest opportunity.

Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European parliaments and senior adviser to the Tax Reform Council