We have plenty of criticisms of Rachel Reeves’ Budget but her fuel duty freeze was on the money

Fools on fuel

HOW typical of out-of-touch London think-tank types to sneer at the fuel duty freeze won by The Sun.

Well-heeled metropolitan policy wonks who flit around the capital on the Tube cannot remotely grasp what lumping 7p on a litre of petrol or diesel would have meant to working-class drivers, especially beyond the M25.

AFP

How typical of out-of-touch London think-tank types to sneer at the fuel duty freeze won by The Sun[/caption]

We have plenty of criticisms of Rachel Reeves’ Budget.

But when she realised that ending the 14-year freeze would hammer the “working people” she had pledged to protect she was, well, right on the money.

Instead she spared them the pain of paying £4 more every time they fill up.

That, for many Sun readers, is a sum they can ill afford.

It’s pocket change, of course, for economists at the Institute for Fiscal Studies who branded the Chancellor’s decision “absurd”.

Huge fans of higher taxes, the IFS reckons duty should rise with inflation each year to help balance the books.

In other words, on top of all other tax hikes and rising costs families face, the Treasury should fleece them yet further at the pumps and hand the lot to the public sector. Genius.

Ms Reeves was copping much flak yesterday, plenty of it justified.

On fuel, though, she trusted her instinct — and The Sun’s. And she was right.

EPA

Rachel Reeves spared ‘working people’ the pain of paying £4 more every time they fill up[/caption]

Farm harm

THE Chancellor would be wise to reverse Labour’s betrayal of Britain’s family farmers before it’s too late.

Anyone who has watched TV’s Clarkson’s Farm knows how pitiful their profits can be.

Our Jeremy has other wealth, of course.

The vast majority of farmers don’t.

They own land — but are very far from the millionaires or greedy tycoons caricatured by sniggering class warriors yesterday.

Rachel Reeves’ dramatic changes to their inheritance tax rules will prevent many from passing their farms down through the generations.

To pay the bill the farmer’s children will have no choice but to sell part of, or all, their land.

Yet family farms are vital to our food supply . . . unless we import far more at greater cost to the environment or have it all produced by mega-farms, both of which the Left will ALSO oppose and which will make food pricier.

Steve Reed, now Environment Secretary, calmly assured farmers last year that Labour “have no intention” of changing the rules on Agricultural Property Relief.

Keir Starmer, the concern etched on his face, told them: “Losing a farm is not like losing any other business.

“It can’t come back.”

Farmers’ rage now is entirely understandable.

Even in a Budget full of broken promises, this is up there with the worst.