𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Let’s play a game of: Who Wants to Plug a £40 Billion Black Hole? Contestants can choose from three thrilling options: raise income tax (boo), slash welfare, or squeeze the dwindling number of people with enough means to flee Britain like bats out of hell. These are the unenviable choices facing Rachel Reeves, and none of them is pretty. For weeks, journalists have camped outside No. 11 trying to sniff out which unlucky group the Chancellor plans to clobber in her first full Budget. There’s no need for suspense: taxes will go up. The only question is by how much, and for whom.

Until November 26, we’re stuck in an exhaustive existence of waiting to see which economically illiterate policy the Chancellor will trot out to save her own hide. Will it be a mansion tax? A hike in income tax? Or heaven forbid, welfare cuts? Perhaps she’ll tax loo roll next? Thank goodness, I recently invested in a bidet. This is what passes for economic strategy in Britain today: a national guessing game, with everyone hoping no one notices the raffle tickets are worthless.

Reports suggest Reeves is toying with an annual 0.1% levy on homes above £2million. Others say she’s mulling a 2p rise in income tax, taking the basic rate from 20% to 22%. None of it inspires confidence. After fifteen years of muddled tinkering, Britain’s economy looks less like a plan and more like a panic dressed up as policy.

If nothing else, the Government could make a good case to the public to keep calm and carry on if it didn’t feel like we were living in an increasingly dysfunctional fishbowl.

If there were even a glimmer of improvement in public services, or if infrastructure investment went up – or even if GDP growth came from genuine productivity rather than importing cheap labour to pad the numbers – we might be persuaded to grin and bear it.

Patriotic, hardworking and productive young people of my generation might be persuaded to stay rather than seek greener pastures in the US or Dubai, if we lived in a country that felt safe, competent and optimistic. But we don’t.

I no longer take the train at night, like many women I know, because I don’t trust the safety of public transport. I don’t believe the police can adequately protect me, or that the NHS could cope if anyone in my family fell seriously ill. And as for education, if young people don’t come home identifying as a farm animal, I consider that a win.

This isn’t just pessimism; it’s fatigue. We’re paying more, getting less, and losing faith in the idea that anything will change. Reeves talks about “tough choices”, but she’s making them in a country already squeezed dry.

The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts that interest payments on our debt will hit around £111billion in 2025-26, which is over 8% of Government spending and nearly 4% of GDP. Incredibly, 77% of this year’s borrowing will go solely to service old debt. That’s not “managing the economy”; that’s borrowing hope on a credit card that’s already maxed out.

And yet, Reeves’ instinct, like so many Chancellors before her, is to dig deeper into taxpayers’ pockets rather than ask why we’re in this hole to begin with. The UK now devotes roughly 20% of its GDP to social spending, quadruple what it spent in 1960, yet our public services are among the least efficient in the developed world. Bureaucracy devours billions that never reach the genuinely needy, while a culture of dependency hardens into permanent expectation.

Meanwhile, public confidence is in freefall. A new YouGov poll shows Labour and the Tories neck-and-neck in mutual extinction. Reform UK now commands nearly a third of the vote, while both major parties languish on 17% apiece. Half of those who backed Starmer in 2024 have already deserted him, and his Chancellor hasn’t even opened her red box yet.

The sad irony is that Reeves could have used this moment to reset the tone: cut waste, streamline the benefits system and actually make work pay. Instead, she’s recycling the same stale mantra of tax more and spend even more. It’s a doom loop that feeds on itself, and the public knows it.

So here we are, waiting for the next Budget like contestants in a bad reality show. “Who will she tax next? Tune in to find out!”. The only certainty is that the numbers will be worse than forecast, with vaguer promises than ever.

Until then, I’ll be over here, grateful for my bidet. Because if the rumours are true, loo roll might soon come with a luxury tax.