Britain’s new finance minister Rachel Reeves has just announced the biggest tax increases in three decades in her first budget on Wednesday, even as she accused the former Conservative government of breaking the country’s public services.
Reeves who has also made history as the first woman in the Chancellor role to deliver a budget had made a historic speech, saying she also paved the way for higher borrowing for long-term investment to accelerate an economy hit by the 2007-09 global financial crisis, Brexit, COVID and inflating energy prices.
Reacting to Reeves’ opening remarks, The Guardian newspaper’s senior political editor said the Chancellor had emphasised the big political challenge at the centre of her budget: “Making people feel they are better off, and with better public services.”
Consequently, the former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, who was dismissed in 2022 by then-Prime Minister, Liz Truss after his own mini-budget threw the UK into market and political turmoil, has reacted to Reeves decision in a column on iNews, saying that the situation Reeves inherited was structurally difficult.
“Conservatives, like myself, should be honest. The highest tax take since the 1940s occurred under the Conservative government in 2019 under Boris Johnson,” he had said.
The budget had come as no surprise and most of what Reeves outlined was expected, according to The Spectator. The paper however, said that the tax increase did not mean that the budget “won’t make today’s fiscal event any less memorable – or painful,” it wrote, warning Labour’s policies that it would “crush growth.”
Variety had written on how the budget might affect the entertainment industry, saying that the film and TV industry had welcomed “an increase in the tax incentive for (visual effects) spend” but for the grassroots music venues, they would now have to deal with “a huge reduction in the amount of tax relief they enjoy.”
