I'm John Betts with Joseph Sternberg. He's in London for the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

He sees the London media. I just have to read a couple of headlines and you'll get the drift here.

Three former conservative MPs defect to reform UK. Did Rachel Reeves rely and will she resign? Another question.

And this one, Rachel Reeves, tax rises, will hold back growth. OECD warns UK economy to

suffer highest inflation in G7, making it hard to cut interest rates while unemployment predicted

to remain at post-pandemic high.

I can't imagine it getting any gloomier than this, but there will be a way.

Rachel Reeves is the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Why is she right now the subject of everybody's blaming finger?

What did she do wrong, Joe?

Well, what we're talking about here, John, is the

annual budget plan that she unveiled last Wednesday, which covers the coming five years. That's

the British budget window when the government does these exercises every year. And the key

takeaway from it was enormous tax increases of tens of billions of pounds every year in additional

tax revenue, taking the revenue share of GDP up to a record setting 38%. So that means that

38% of Britain's annual economic output is going to be finding its way into the government coffers

in one form or another.

As a result of all of the tax increases in this budget, it was 33% before the pandemic.

And so there are two levels to this controversy.

First is people have figured out pretty quickly that this is awful for the economy on the merits.

I mean, the British

economy already was lagging. There's a chronic inflation problem. Productivity continues

...