Cast your mind back to last year's general election. Do you remember Rishi Sunak telling anyone who would listen that Labour was planning big tax rises?

And the way Labour kept swearing it would do no such thing? 'Let me be absolutely clear,' said Rachel Reeves, 'all of our plans are fully costed, fully funded - no ifs, no ands, no buts'.

The only tax rises, she assured us, were the three flagged up in Labour's manifesto: a tightening of the non-dom rules, a windfall tax on energy companies and VAT on school fees.

The moment she took office, Reeves dropped her promises, freezing thresholds, widening the scope of inheritance tax and, disastrously, extending National Insurance contributions.

She claimed these raids were a one-off, occasioned by the supposed £22 billion 'black hole' she suddenly discovered after the election.

Well here we are, 12 months later, facing yet more tax rises to fuel Labour's spending habits. Yesterday, on Sky TV, she was forced to admit she was considering them in the November Budget.

Nothing has changed in those 12 months except that ministers have carried on firehosing money about. They have given more to welfare claimants, more to public sector workers and now plan to give more to people who want child benefit in larger families.

The moment she took office, Reeves dropped her promises, freezing thresholds, widening the scope of inheritance tax and, disastrously, extending National Insurance contributions. She claimed these raids were a one-off

Delusional

Despite having been on deck solidly for the 16 months since the election, Reeves is blaming everyone else. It's all the fault of the Tories! Of Liz Truss! Of Brexit!

Sorry, Chancellor, but no one is falling for it. Just as no one is falling for your delusional claim - made before you left for this week's IMF meeting in Washington - that you are 'delivering national renewal built on the rock of economic stability'.

This is the same IMF, incidentally, which pointed out yesterday that Britain is raising taxes at the fastest pace in the G7. The IMF whose monetary and capital markets expert, Athanasios Vamvakidis, warned this week that 'markets are concerned about the UK economy' and that there was 'more volatility in the UK compared to other advanced economies'. It's true that lockdown played havoc with public finances. But it is worth reminding ourselves that, before 2020, the budget was heading towards balance. The huge deficit Gordon Brown left in 2010 had been repaired and, according to the OBR's official forecast in 2019, we were due to be back in surplus by 2023.

Then came the Covid wrecking ball. For nearly two years, we paid people to stay at home. The consequences were predictably calamitous. Prices, taxes and debt surged.

Having spun the spending taps open in 2020, the Conservatives struggled to screw them shut again. Lockdown had increased expectations of government intervention and introduced millions of people who had never before claimed from the state to an alternative way of living.

All countries had the same problem, but it was worse in Britain in two ways. First, people were much more reluctant to return to work, and the numbers claiming long-term sickness benefits continues to soar.

Second, those who have returned to work are more insistent than in other countries on working from home. This is especially true of public sector workers, whose productivity has still not recovered to where it was at the start of 2020.

These are remediable problems. But Labour shows no interest in remedying them. On the contrary, it has exacerbated them, spending money with abandon. The previous Government was trying, however inadequately, to bring spending closer to where it had been before the pandemic.

A plan to bring civil service numbers back to pre-pandemic levels was abandoned when Labour took office. So were changes in the welfare rules to make it harder to slow the rise in incapacity and invalidity benefits claims.

So was public sector pay restraint. Striking doctors were given a 29 per cent wage increase, which not only sparked strikes from other public sector workers but, predictably, led to more strike threats from the same doctors, who concluded that that was the way to earn more.

Reeves has placed herself in a doom loop. The more she taxes, the slower we grow. There is only one way to break the cycle - and that is to cut spending

Terrifying

We have now reached the terrifying point where more households are net claimants from the state than are net contributors to it - and this shapes Labour's electoral calculations.

The idea that any of these problems was caused by Brexit is too silly to merit serious refutation. During the 2016 referendum, all manner of alarmist claims were made about a Leave vote. It would sink the stock exchange, cause a recession, prompt emergency tax rises, push unemployment up and blah-blah fishcakes.

In the event, the opposite of all these things happened. The stock exchange rose, the economy handsomely outperformed that of the EU, more people found jobs than ever before. That was the period when every grudging BBC report on good economic news was prefaced with the phrase: 'Despite Brexit...'

Nonetheless, a minority of Remainers blamed every reverse - bad weather, delayed flights, England's semi-final defeat in the World Cup - on Brexit, and it is these voters whom Reeves is targeting with her blame deflection.

In fact, she is dealing with the consequences of her own policies. In June, we watched as Labour dropped even its meagre attempt to slightly slow the growth in sickness benefits. We have watched public sector pay settlements create a spiral of demand, just as we have seen the National Insurance claims and the coming changes in employment rights bring to an end our three decades of structurally low unemployment.

DANIEL HANNAN: Without spending cuts or growth, Britain will be taxed into poverty and irrelevance

Now we see the consequences. According to the IMF, we will again have the highest rate of inflation in the G7. We will also have the lowest growth rate per capita.

Collapse

Reeves has placed herself in a doom loop. The more she taxes, the slower we grow. The slower we grow, the more people there are claiming benefits and the fewer paying tax. Which creates an even bigger deficit - and means even higher taxes.

There is only one way to break the cycle - and that is to cut spending. I am not talking about going back to the spending levels of the late Thatcher era, though that would turbo-charge growth and make us the fastest-growing economy in Europe.

No, simply going back to the levels we had under Tony Blair would do the trick. The Government then spent 34p in every pound of national income; today it is 45p.

Heck, just going back to where we were on the eve of the pandemic would obviate the need for any new taxes and allow us to cut some of the levies on employment and investment, the ones that do most damage to growth. Can that really be so hard? Wasn't the extra spending supposed to be a one-off emergency?

But no, rather than even doing that, Reeves is going to keep taxing us until we collapse under our own weight. Heaven help us.

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere is president of the Institute Of Free Trade.

DAN HANNAN: No one believes a word Reeves says any more. She's deluded