Rachel Reeves doesn't even know the economic basics - she is so out of her depth

Tuesday morning's speech from the Chancellor was a textbook example of how much this government enjoys gaslighting the British public.

Reeves looks far and wide to explain the state of this country's finances, from supply chains and inflation to geopolitical uncertainty and tariffs. But the one place but she refuses to look is in the mirror.

The Chancellor's tax-raising Budget last year has crippled the economy. It's that simple. This is a government with no idea of the basics of business or economics.

Its tax rises have wiped out the incentive of running a business for many and have made it almost impossible to turn a profit for others. Worse, countless firms have been put out of business since the last Budget.

Good businesses, too, but ones that couldn't take the extra fiscal strain. And Reeves talks about growth, against an economic backdrop that is thoroughly anti-growth - a backdrop that she and her party have created.

As for inflation, the tax rises this Government introduced have been inflationary, deeply so. Our inflation is the highest on record versus the current median of the 20 largest nations in the world.

Our gaslighting Chancellor, of course, makes out like for every country everywhere things are this bad. They're not. Across the pond, as just one example, US growth has been revised up from 3.2% to 3.8%. They are growing, not contracting, against the same global backdrop the Chancellor laments.

Our economic collapse, because that's exactly what it is, started when Labour got into power in July 2024.

That was the month when this country started going downhill at speed due to wholesale economic mismanagement.

We now live in a country where running a business has become an immense burden rather than a source of excitement, a country that entrepreneurs are fleeing at scale, and a country where people no longer have an incentive to earn beyond a certain level, as, from a tax perspective, it's just not worth it.

Oh, and a country where you're not considered to be a working person if you earn more than £45k.

Most worrying of all is Reeves' verdict on the OBR forecasts, which suggests that what's coming could be far worse than expected.

Make no mistake. The way the FTSE and Pound responded to the speech shows one thing and one thing only: this country is on the brink.