Rachel Reeves said all she wanted for Christmas is economic growth, but her gift to British people is low growth, higher inflation and crashed business confidence – a return of the dreaded “stagflation”.

She appears to have taken the UK back to the dark days of the 1970s with her horror show budget.

Her punishing jobs tax, death tax combined with Labour’s job destroying union charter seem intent on crushing businesses and wealth creators across the country rather than inspiring the best in Britain’s economy.

Her cruel policy to snatch away winter fuel payments from vulnerable pensioners to lavish inflation busting pay rises for her union friends with no strings attached is rightly seen by the public as a morally wrong choice.

We all know governments don’t create growth, businesses do. So the best new year resolution of this socialist government is to get off the backs of british business.

But don’t hold your breath – there’s barely a shred of business experience in the entire Labour cabinet.

Labour has only been in power for a matter of months, but the damage they have already done could take years to undo. Just this week, we have learned the economy is smaller than when Labour took over.

It’s no wonder fewer than a quarter of businesses who publicly backed labour before the general election still stand by them.

This is a government of broken promises. Having promised not to tax working people when they needed their votes – they hiked the tax paid through work.

Having promised not to touch inheritance tax before polling day, they went and did exactly that. And having promised not to fiddle the fiscal rules, they fiddled them to allow record borrowing.

The fruits of this approach are now becoming clear: no growth, higher inflation and record taxes.

No wonder Sir Keir Starmer has quietly dropped his pre-election pledge that the UK would have the fastest growth in the G7.

Starmer must make it his new year’s resolution to change course and support business generating growth.

Or we will be here again next Christmas with Reeves doing nothing but hopelessly hoping for growth while families across the country pay the price for the damage she has done.