
How Labour plans to justify its tax hike
Oh, the suspense. It seems that we will have to wait until next week to discover the details of the £20 billion ‘black hole’ which chancellor Rachel Reeves has supposedly discovered in the public finances. Don’t get too excited, though. The revelation will be no greater a surprise than the ending of James Cameron’s blockbuster film Titanic (spoiler alert: a large ship hits an iceberg and sinks). As Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies pointed out before the election and has done so again: the state of the UK government’s finances are not exactly a secret – they are already open to anyone who cares to examine them. You
