The Budget is turning into a ‘financial horror show’ designed to ‘demonise’ the wealthy to fulfil Labour’s ‘socialist fantasy’, one of the country’s top bankers warns today.
Writing for the Daily Mail, City grandee and philanthropist Ken Costa cautioned that ‘just about anyone with aspirations is being made to feel unwelcome in Rachel Reeves’ Britain’.
And hitting out at her ‘confiscatory policies against the rich’, he accused the Chancellor of treating companies as ‘bottomless pools which can be tapped indefinitely’ to pay for her lavish spending plans and expansion of the State.
The comments are just the latest from a senior business leader ahead of next month’s Budget which looks set to include another round of punishing tax hikes on households and the private sector.
Marks & Spencer CEO Stuart Machin last week urged Ms Reeves to ‘change course’ to escape an ‘economic doom loop of ever- higher taxes and lower growth’.
Blasting the ‘catastrophic’ £25billion increase in National Insurance announced in her first Budget, Mr Machin called on the Chancellor to ‘spend less, borrow less, tax less, regulate less, reduce inflation and enable growth’.
Stuart Rose, a predecessor of Mr Machin at M&S, recently warned Labour has pushed Britain to ‘the edge of a crisis’ while Tesco boss Ken Murphy said ‘enough is enough’ with regard to further tax rises.
Mr Costa, whose investment banking career involved spells at SG Warburg and UBS before he became chairman of Lazard International, said: ‘We are still a month from the Budget and yet already it is developing into a financial horror show.’
Writing for the Daily Mail, City grandee and philanthropist Ken Costa cautioned that ‘just about anyone with aspirations is being made to feel unwelcome in Rachel Reeves’ Britain’. Pictured: The Chancellor at the Regional Investment Summit in Birmingham this week
Mr Costa (pictured) said: ‘We are still a month from the Budget and yet already it is developing into a financial horror show.’
He said an increase in income tax would leave the Chancellor ‘no option but to resign’ given Labour’s manifesto vow it would not do so.
The banker, who has donated to the Tories in the past, said Ms Reeves is ‘targeting groups she thinks are unpopular with her party’s voters and are therefore politically dispensable’.
Mr Costa pointed to speculation of tax hikes on professionals such as lawyers and GPs as well as people in finance, which he said risked driving them ‘into the welcoming arms of other European countries or the Gulf states’.
He added: ‘The professions join property investors, tech entrepreneurs and just about anyone else with aspirations in being made to feel unwelcome in Rachel Reeves’ Britain.
‘The destructive effects are everywhere to be seen.
‘To set up and grow businesses requires huge effort, but sadly those who are in the business of doing so do not fit the Chancellor’s socialist definition of working people.
‘For her, wealth creators are merely the fabled broad shoulders on which she believes she can hang an even heftier share of the fiscal burden.
‘She still wants crushing the wealthy to be part of the story of her Budget. A horror story.
‘To demonise wealth is to demonise the creators of wealth, and to go after them is to go after jobs.
‘Only the public sector, in her socialist fantasy, can create jobs and make the country richer.’
