Budget 2025 Fallout: Reeves should be prosecuted for Misconduct in Public Office (MiPO)
She lied to Parliament. She lied to the public. She stood up and told untruths to everyone. She should be charged with misconduct without question.
The political drama surrounding Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s budget has taken a confusing and potentially misleading turn. While confirming a major policy shift, her timeline seems to be completely at odds with what the official government forecaster says she knew.
The evidence
Earlier this week, the Chancellor told The Guardian’s political editor, Pippa Crerar, that during October and early November, she was seriously considering a major fiscal manoeuvre: raising the basic rate of income tax while simultaneously cutting National Insurance.
When asked about this potential manifesto breaching U-turn, Reeves defended the move, stating, “that was a responsible thing to do, because we didn’t know the size of the downgrade, the productivity.”
In her narrative, this uncertainty about the economy’s key figures justified the need to prepare the public for a tax rise.
However, less than two hours after Reeves’s interview hit the wires, the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) published a crucial letter. The letter, from OBR chair Richard Hughes to the Treasury Select Committee, delivered a stinging rebuttal to the Chancellor’s defence.
The OBR informed the Treasury of the 0.3 percentage points reduction in the medium term productivity growth forecast on August 7th.
Crucially, the OBR notified the Treasury of the consequential negative impact this would have on the public finances on October 3rd.
This is where Reeves’s story completely unravels. The OBR’s timeline shows the Treasury was fully aware of the negative economic “productivity” news weeks before the Chancellor claims she was still in the dark.
Even if Reeves’s use of “the productivity” was shorthand for a whole basket of economic “swing factors,” the OBR confirms that all pre-measures fiscal numbers were “totally locked down” by October 31st.
Yet, just four days later, on November 4th, the Chancellor held her now infamous Downing Street press conference. This event was widely and, it seems, correctly, interpreted as a strategic move to soften up media, voters, and investors for the very income tax rise she had been secretly considering.
She even continued to use the economic uncertainty as cover days later, telling the BBC on November 10th that sticking to the no-income-tax-rise pledge “would require things like deep cuts in capital spending.”
In sum, the Chancellor’s public justification for considering a major income tax hike, that she didn’t know the full extent of the productivity downgrade, is totally inconsistent with the dates and information the OBR confirms it provided to the Treasury. The question remains: Why was the threat of a tax hike still on the table weeks after she knew the facts?
Why did she lie?
I think the answer is that Reeves lied to the public, to parliament and to the markets for two reasons.
Firstly, she was in fear of backbench MPs who wanted more spending on welfare including lifting the two child benefit cap and hold the power to remove her and Starmer from their jobs. Basically, fear of being fired.
Secondly, local elections are coming up and those within our communities who hold the balance of power, who can swing a result, would probably be the main benefactors of not only these but previous benefits announced by this government.
British born parents have a birth rate of 1.4 and many give the reason they just cant afford to have more, if any. It’s uncomfortable but we cant ignore that children born to foreign parents in the UK are much higher at over 2.
The largest families (parents and children) in the UK are most frequently associated with the Muslim and Hindu populations, largely due to higher fertility rates and a cultural preference for extended family households. These households are therefore more likely to be beneficial of these changes, from the little that the Government reveal on such figures. Families affiliated with Christianity and No Religion generally have smaller family sizes, closer to the national average.
Reeves made the decision to tax the working public more, close more businesses, put more people in financial hardship, redistribute that money to those who don’t work, then lie about it for no economic reason according to the OBR becauise of one reason; protecting her own future.
For the lies alone, she should be prosecuted for Misconduct in Public Office (MiPO).