Rachel Reeves dealt huge blow as TalkTV star fumes 'they're ripping the streets apart'
Chancellor Rachel Reeves came under fire on Talk TV as she is expected to announce the biggest spending cuts since austerity in next week's spring statement.
TalkTV guest Dan Hodges took aim at Chancellor Rachel Reeves ahead of next week’s spring statement. She is expected to announce the biggest spending cuts since austerity after ruling out tax rises as a way to meet the financial rules she set in the October budget. Ms Reeves is expected to tell MPs that she intends to cut Whitehall budgets by "billions more than expected."
Her spending cuts could mean reductions of as much as seven percent for certain departments over the next four years, according to The Guardian. Journalist Dan Hodges appeared on Mike Graham’s Thursday morning show and compared Ms Reeves’s expected announcement to “ripping the streets apart”.
"It’s not Rachel from accounts, it’s Rachel from the madhouse! This is not going to work!"
— Talk (@TalkTV) March 20, 2025
Mail on Sunday's Dan Hodges on the Chancellor’s plans to cut public spending in her spring statement next week.@DPJHodges | @Iromg pic.twitter.com/qBYPsNjEri
He continued: “Rachel Reeves has said that her priority is stimulating growth. Now, this isn’t a political point, if we have a Chancellor who thinks that the way you stimulate growth is to simultaneously load £40 billion taxes on business, introduce a huge new framework of red tape and workplace regulation, say to British businesses, ‘you have to get to a point where you have zero emissions in net terms and simultaneously start to slash public spending.
“If you think that is the way to stimulate growth... it’s not Rachel from accounts, it’s Rachel from the madhouse! This is not going to work.
“Even the most junior economic student knows that is not how you can possibly stimulate growth.”
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Host Mike Graham chimed in: “And she is an economist so she should know better.”
The Chancellor is set to deliver her statement next Wednesday. It is understood that changes to the tax regime are not expected next week.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer had failed to repeat the Chancellor's commitment not to extend the freeze on income tax thresholds ahead of next week's statement.
In the autumn budget, Ms Reeves decided not to extend the freeze on the thresholds at which people start to pay different rates of income tax. Thresholds were initially frozen by the previous Conservative government until April 2028.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch had asked the Prime Minister to affirm the pledge during Prime Minister's Questions.
Speaking on Wednesday, Mrs Badenoch said: "The Chancellor promised a once-in-a-parliament budget, that she would not come back for more.
"And in that budget, she said there will be no extension of the freeze in income tax thresholds. Ahead of the emergency budget, will he repeat the commitment that she made?"
Sir Keir replied: "She's got such pre-scripted questions she can't actually adapt them to the answers that I'm giving. I think she now calls herself a Conservative realist. Well, I'm realistic about the Conservatives.
"The reality is they left open borders and she was the cheerleader. They crashed the economy, mortgages went through the roof. The NHS was left on its knees, and they hollowed out the armed forces.
"This Government has already delivered two million extra NHS appointments, 750 breakfast clubs, record returns of people who shouldn't be here, and a fully funded increase in our defence spending. That is the difference that a Labour Government makes."
