Pain is inevitable for Rachel Reeves
Coffee House Shots
The Spectator
4.4 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 7 November 2025
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A year ago, the Chancellor called her £38 billion tax rise a ‘one-and-done’ move. Now she looks set to rinse and repeat, with reports that a 2p increase in income tax is on the table. According to The Times, she has informed the Office for Budget Responsibility that a rise in personal taxation is one of the ‘major measures’ she will announce. This is the strongest signal yet that she will break Labour's manifesto pledge not to increase income tax rates. What does this mean for the Chancellor, and taxpayers?
Elsewhere, David Lammy suffered a disastrous Deputy Prime Minister's Questions after dodging questions on whether there had been another prisoner let out by mistake. To discuss all the different headaches Labour is facing, Michael Simmons is joined by Tim Shipman and James Heale.
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Transcript
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| 0:48.8 | James, another day and more kites from the Treasury about what's going to be happening in the budget, |
| 0:55.2 | allegedly, but also some political reaction and infighting. What's going on? |
| 1:00.1 | Yeah. So the time of splash today is that Reeves has informed the OBR in an official of |
| 1:04.1 | submission that she intends to raise his income tax, she's preparing a rise in personal taxation, |
| 1:08.7 | and so therefore it would be a surprise if she does not go back on that. |
| 1:13.1 | And really, it's all about getting everything out there ahead of the budget to ensure that it doesn't really surprise the markets too much. |
| 1:20.0 | Hence why we saw the press conference at the beginning of this week. |
| 1:22.3 | This story is now coming out today. |
| 1:23.9 | And really, it's about trying to sort of prepare the ground roll the pitch because yesterday for |
| 1:28.1 | instance the leverage deputy leader lucy pal gave an interview in which she said she was wise to go |
| 1:32.6 | back on the manifesto pledges of 2024 and for me there was a slight echo there of Tory MPs who've |
| 1:39.6 | sort of circa 2021-22 were despairingly saying we should stick to our manifesto everything Everything we wanted to do was in there. But of course, circumstances have changed. And things have got, I think, worse. I think everyone would acknowledge the global circumstances are not as fortuitous. They might have been, say, 16, 17 months ago. As a result of that, she's going to find, you know, as John Major said, politics is a choice between the unpalatable and the disastrous, rockland a hard place. And so she's having to decide whether to break her manifesto pledge |
| 2:04.0 | in order to get the money that she needs to pay and close that gap on the fiscal headroom. |
| 2:08.9 | But how seriously should we take this latest kite? This is one of the more detailed ones where you'd put the rate up on every band |
... |
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