Reeves has gone from cosying up to business to confrontational – and it will be disastrous

The very people the chancellor attempted to woo in the lead up to the election have now become her target, writes Chris Blackhurst. And they know something’s amiss

Rachel Reeves urgently needs a new script – and some pizzazz. Her current spiel about the government inheriting a £22bn black hole from the Tories and having no choice than to raise taxes is feeling extremely tired. Worse, in some quarters it is being greeted with derision and anger.

Those, of course, are the ones singled out for the increases – among farmers, private school parents, non-doms and businesses. Today, it was the turn of the latter to listen to another airing, as the chancellor addressed the annual CBI conference.

They were told she had no alternative. Worse, though, was that Reeves and her speechwriter displayed political naivety. No alternatives had been offered to her. The chancellor insisted she had “drawn a line under the inheritance I faced” from the Conservative government and stressed “we’re never going to have to do a Budget like that again”. She added that the difficult decisions that were made would provide the “stability and platform we need to move forward”.

That’s not as assertive as saying there is no alternative, it’s saying there could be one – but it’s not reached my ears.

Oh dear. Proclaiming that to an audience of highly opinionated, corporate leaders who are not your natural friends, who you went out of your way to woo in the run-up to the general election, only to slap them in the face with your first Budget, is a gift. This, when they are also questioning your credentials to hold such a senior role, as people who put great store by CVs, wondering if the doubts about your own stated background are true.

In office, Reeves and her boss, Sir Keir Starmer, are displaying a brittleness that does not behove them, that stands in sharp contrast to the warm, cuddly image they presented only a few months ago. Seemingly, in barely any time at all, they’ve gone from being everyone’s best friend to being confrontational. The whole point of those myriad cups of tea, lunches and dinners with the City and captains of industry was to assure them that their incarnation of Labour was different; they were on the side of commerce – they could be trusted. Then they clobber them with an employer national insurance rise.

They did it, says Reeves, to fix the NHS and rebuild Britain, while avoiding hitting working people in their payslips. The trouble is, Reeves accompanies this mantra with precious little else. How, exactly the NHS will be fixed and Britain rebuilt is not spelt out. Meanwhile, those bosses who are already reeling from higher energy bills, geopolitical pressures on sales and supply lines, business rates and red tape, find their burden is even heavier.

The feeling they were seen as fair game, that they could pay for it (same as the other Budget targets), is hard to dislodge. In their case, it takes no account either of tightened profit margins and the impact on their workforces of seeing public workers threatening to strike and receiving pay rises. It smacks of one rule for them and one for everyone else.

Nor is there any sign of something positive. There is airy talk of economic growth without any hard detail as to how that will be achieved. The only facts being delivered are raised levies for those Labour deems can afford them.

The sense of disillusionment among business chiefs is palpable. They never wanted Brexit; they deplored it. No government since has found a replacement. Now, they’ve had Andrew Bailey, governor at the Bank of England, where Reeves likes to say she was once an economist, saying exiting the EU has “undermined” the economy. They’ve waited in vain for the promised replacement major trade deals, with the likes of the US and India, and there’s no sign.

Meanwhile, they’re being told to stump up more. Again, it’s simplistic, not considering the possible consequences. As Reeves was informed today by CBI chief executive, Rain Newton-Smith, the result of the employer’s NI hike will make it harder for firms to “take a chance” on hiring new people. “Across the board, in so many sectors, margins are being squeezed and profits are being hit by a tough trading environment that just got tougher. And here’s the rub, profits aren’t just extra money for companies to stuff in a pillowcase. Profits are investment… When you hit profits, you hit competitiveness, you hit investment, you hit growth.”

Reeves must be careful, too, as to what she promises. Part of her attempt to soften the tax measures is to say they’re a one-off: “I do not plan to have another Budget like this. I have wiped the slate clean.” Wiser political heads will rear up at that one. As they know too well, events have an annoying habit of disrupting the best-laid plans. Declaring “never again” is dangerous.

Rain-Smith opened the gathering with a reference to three years ago, and Boris Johnson’s address: “We’ve got a brilliantly full schedule – with hopefully not a Peppa Pig in sight.”

That’s when Johnson lost his place in his script and went off on a tangent about a trip he had made at the weekend to the Peppa Pig World theme park. He was met with incredulity and annoyance. Sadly, for Reeves, today’s reaction is similar – but for quite different reasons.