Rachel Reeves’s claim that she is Britain’s ‘Iron Chancellor’ has been demolished by a torrent of public spending in the first half of this financial year.

Reeves says she has been fixing the foundations of the economy. Yet nothing she has said or done since coming to power has moved the dial – not in a positive direction.

Instead, this government has made a bad situation even worse – which is why next month’s budget will be even tougher and more destructive than predicted.

The latest figures show that government borrowing soared to a fraction under £100billion in the six months to September. We are £11.5billion further in debt than at the start of the year, despite the unprecedented £40billion tax-raising budget of 2024.

What good did all that painful medicine do us? None at all, it would seem.

Britain now faces a further round of tax increases as the Treasury tries, somehow, to close a budget ‘black hole’ now estimated at £30billion.

Far from taking an ‘iron’ grip, Reeves is presiding over record outlays – a level of spending never before seen in peacetime aside from during the pandemic.

Spending by central government and local authorities is set to hit an unsustainable 45 per cent of Britain’s total economic output this year.

Far from taking an ‘iron’ grip, Rachel Reeves is presiding over record outlays – a level of spending never before seen in peacetime aside from during the pandemic, writes Alex Brummer

Despite Reeves’s contention that she has put an end to Tory profligacy, the chancellor’s stewardship – in particular her failure to control soaring bills for welfare and interest payments – has been an economic catastrophe.