Reeves Budget snowstorm of discontent
Planet Normal
Louisa Wells
4.7 • 2.9K Ratings
🗓️ 26 November 2025
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The rocket of right thinking is back for a crucial Budget Special as Chancellor Rachel Reeves unveils her second major fiscal statement. Her new £30 billion tax rise means a staggering £70 billion increase in just two years, the most "punitive tax raising budget in more than three decades".
Joining the co-pilots to dissect the numbers is the brilliant Telegraph columnist, Roger Bootle. Roger reveals why he thinks the budget will land "very badly with business" and discusses the "scandalous" leak of the Statement beforehand.
Co-Pilot Pearson calls it a "death knell budget for Labour" and argues that by funnelling huge amounts of money into the welfare bill, Reeves has confirmed it is now the party of the "Shirking class".
Whilst Co-Pilot Halligan identifies the "ghost" of the Employment Rights Bill looming over the budget, dubbed by some as the "Unemployment Rights Bill," warns that this "back to the seventies" extension of rights will be disastrous for hiring.
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Read Allison ‘Dear Rachel, do you have any clue how much hard-working people are struggling?’:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/26/allison-pearson-on-rachel-reeves-budget/ |
Read Allison ‘I asked people if my Reform badge made me look like a Nazi and they howled with laughter’:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/25/allison-pearson-reform-badge-nazis/ |
Read more from Allison: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/authors/a/ak-ao/allison-pearson/ |
Read Liam ‘Reeves’s endless tax scaremongering is killing off animal spirits’: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/11/23/rachel-reeves-scaremongering-taxes-killed-off-spirits/ |
Read more from Liam: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/authors/liam-halligan/ |
Read Liam’s Substack: https://liamhalligan.substack.com/ |
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Telegraph. |
| 0:09.1 | Good parents for all time have managed to pour a bowl of shreddies in the morning, haven't they? |
| 0:16.0 | Four. |
| 0:17.2 | I think it's going to have a devastating effect on the employment market. |
| 0:20.9 | Three. |
| 0:22.6 | Four pounds better off, which very few of us are after this budget. |
| 0:29.3 | There are less overburdened Mexican pack mules, then there are British taxpayers. |
| 0:34.7 | One. |
| 0:38.2 | We have left off. One. We have lift-off. |
| 0:41.2 | Welcome once again to Planet Normal, the Telegraph podcast with Alison Pearson. |
| 0:45.2 | Hello. |
| 0:45.9 | And me, Liam Halligan. |
| 0:48.2 | In May 2020, Rachel Reeve said, |
| 0:51.3 | Taxes are at a 70-year high. |
| 0:52.8 | I don't have plans to be a big tax-raising |
| 0:55.6 | Chancellor. Yet in October 24, Labor's first budget in 14 years raised taxes by a massive |
| 1:02.8 | £40 billion, the most punitive tax-raising budget in more than three decades. The Chancellor |
| 1:09.7 | said she was fixing the foundations of the economy. |
| 1:12.5 | Her tax rises were once in a generation. I won't, she said, be coming back for more. |
| 1:18.2 | And yet here she is, with this 2025 autumn budget raising taxes by another 30 billion pounds. |
| 1:25.1 | That's the equivalent of around four pence on the basic rate of income tax or more. |
| 1:30.3 | But instead of this manifesto busting rise in the basic rate of income tax, we've had a two-year |
... |
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