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Kemi Badenoch Keir ready to urge Starmer to be sacked Rachel Reeves If she increases taxes in next month’s budget.
Tory leaders will demand that chancellor “If she taxes, ax her”.
Ms Reeves is widely expected to raise taxes next month as she seeks to plug a more than £20bn funding gap in her spending plans.
On Wednesday, the Prime Minister refused to reiterate his commitment to the Labor Party’s manifesto of not raising income tax, National Insurance or VAT.
Speaking before a pre-Budget rally on Thursday, which will mark Ms Reeves’s first financial appearance in a year, Ms Badenoch said: “Nobody voted for higher taxes and out-of-control spending, but that’s what they’re getting from this weak prime minister.
“After her budget last year, Rachel Reeves promised she was ‘not coming back with higher taxes.’ “But that now appears to be a lie as she prepares to enact even more punitive tax increases.”
Shadow Chancellor Sir Mel Stride, who is also expected to address the rally, said: “My message to Sir Keir is simple: if Rachel Reeves breaks her promise again, she has to go.”
Ms Reeves faces another challenging budget on November 26 as she finds her spending plans being hit by weak economic growth, persistent inflation and a potential downturn in the Office for Budget Responsibility’s productivity forecasts.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned that it will need at least £22 billion of tax increases or spending cuts to restore the £10 billion “headroom” left before meeting its borrowing target.
But the figure could be even higher if the OBR’s downgrade is larger than expected, and if it needs to pay for the expected abolition of the two-child benefit cap.
Some economists have argued that while raising income taxes would be the easiest way to close the gap, imposing alternative taxes would be likely to cause greater economic damage.
But doing so would break a key pledge in Labour’s 2024 manifesto, which promised not to raise income tax, National Insurance or VAT.
A Labor spokesman said: “We won’t take any lectures from the Conservatives – they collapsed the economy, sent mortgages skyrocketing and left NHS waiting lists at record highs. Yet they have yet to apologize and they have done nothing to rebuild their economic credibility.
“Kemi Badenoch is pretending she can get a £47bn cut without any explanation, to fund a tax cut she can’t pay for. The Tories are not serious at all and have learned no lessons.
“This choice by the Labor government has led to 5 million additional NHS jobs, pay rises and hundreds of billions of private investment into the UK. We know there is still more to do but we are focused on repairing the long-term damage to our economy so we can get Britain back on the path to renewal and put money back into people’s pockets.”