Destroying The Economy

Jim Chimirie

January 8, 2026.

A Chancellor who invents fiscal crises, misrepresents the numbers, and presides over the removal of the watchdog chairman cannot expect markets to believe her reassurances.

There are many ways a government can wreck an economy. Rachel Reeves chose the most reckless: terrorising its own investors.

The figures published this week should end the pretence that November's Budget was merely "controversial" or "misjudged." British investors pulled £6.7 billion out of equity markets last year – more than double the capital flight triggered by Brexit.

Not by a referendum. Not by a global crash. But by months of deliberate uncertainty engineered by the Chancellor herself. This was not a response to policy. It was a response to threat. For months, Reeves and her Treasury drip-fed rumours of pension raids, capital gains hikes, allowance freezes and emergency tax rises. They briefed. They backtracked. They floated worst-case scenarios and let them fester. They softened the public up for a fiscal ambush that never fully materialised and then acted surprised when investors behaved rationally and ran.

The Calastone data is damning because it shows cause and effect. Money poured out in the run-up to the Budget and stopped the moment the noise stopped. That tells you everything.

The damage was done not by what Reeves announced, but by what she threatened. Capital fled not from legislation, but from fear. Brexit created uncertainty because the country chose a different path. Reeves created greater uncertainty without a vote, without a mandate, and without necessity.

She talked Britain's own market down for months, then tried to claim credit when the FTSE recovered on foreign money while domestic investors stayed away. That is not confidence. It is denial. And note where the money went.

Not into British businesses. Not into long-term growth. It went into cash. Investors didn't chase opportunity; they sought shelter. That is the behaviour of people who no longer trust the referee to enforce the rules.

A Chancellor who invents fiscal crises, misrepresents the numbers, and presides over the removal of the watchdog chairman cannot expect markets to believe her reassurances. Trust, once broken, does not return on command.

This is the deeper scandal. Reeves didn't just raise taxes. She destroyed credibility. She treated uncertainty as a political tool. A way to frighten, to soften, to manage expectations.

Markets understood the message immediately: if the government is prepared to bluff its own economy, it cannot be trusted to steward it. The cost will not show up in a single quarter. It will show up in stalled investment, higher borrowing costs, weaker growth and fewer jobs.

Businesses do not plan in atmospheres of menace. Savers do not invest when the Chancellor treats their capital as prey. An economy cannot thrive when its own government behaves like an adversary. Reeves will say the panic is over. The money will come back. Confidence will return. It won't.

Capital has a memory. And what investors learned in 2025 is simple: this government is prepared to manufacture instability for political convenience.

A Chancellor who frightens her own markets has already failed. And a government that causes greater capital flight than Brexit without a crisis has forfeited the right to be called competent.

© Jim Chimirie, 2026

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