Rachel Reeves is facing a backlash over her tax-hiking Budget – from her own family.
The Chancellor’s Tory-voting uncle, Terry Smith, said of the monumental measures introduced this week: ‘It’s tax, tax, tax, – that’s all they’ve done.’
The retired businessman, who reads the Daily Mail, said he did not believe Ms Reeves’ claims of a £22billion black hole in public finances, which has been used as an excuse to bring in the likes of an inheritance tax raid on pensions and the ‘scandalous’ decision to hammer businesses with higher National Insurance contributions for employees.
While proud of his niece’s success, as the first woman to deliver a Budget, he added: ‘I disagree with her principles. I think they (Labour) fit all the wrong sort of people.’
Mr Smith, 72, the brother of the Chancellor’s mother, Sally Reeves, said of the suggested Government cash shortfall: ‘I’m a Tory and I don’t understand why suddenly there’s this black hole. I don’t believe there is a £22billion black hole.’
Vintage car enthusiast Mr Smith, a retired construction company owner, called the decision to include pensions in the scope of inheritance tax ‘totally and utterly wrong’. He added: ‘I am dead against it.’
Turning to the impact of Wednesday’s Budget for businesses, he hit out at the rise in National Insurance contributions – particularly for smaller firms.
He said: ‘It’s scandalous. You’ve got the rise in the National Living Wage and all the other things businesses have got to pay.’
Mr Smith revealed his son is also against her policies because he is a private landlord, who will be hit by higher stamp duty of five per cent, up from three per cent, if he chose to expand.
He said: ‘My son is a headmaster and he’s also against all this.
‘He has a property that he rents out, and now he’s going to get caned – he’s worked hard, he’s invested money.’
Overall, his view of the Budget is that far too much money will be taken in tax, he said: ‘Everything has been about tax, hasn’t it?’
But Mr Smith declined to join the chorus of outrage which greeted the decision to axe the winter fuel allowance for pensioners unless they already claim pension credit.
He said: ‘People who are earning a lot of money shouldn’t get it – it should be means tested. One of my brothers is a millionaire and they were getting it, they don’t need it.’
Despite opposing Ms Reeves’s political views, Mr Smith added: ‘I’m proud of her, I’m totally proud of her, because she worked for the Bank of England right out of university, I’m proud of everything she’s done.
‘But, I disagree with her principles.’
The pensioner, speaking from his semi-detached home on a 1960s housing estate in Chatham, Kent, added: ‘She’s got what she wanted (even though) she didn’t go to private school, but if you’re clever enough…’
‘She’s very, very brainy – she was a child chess champion,’ he added.