I despair of Rachel Reeves. Every time I think things can’t get worse, she hits new levels of daftness. And so do the people behind her. Their ideas are just as batty, and they’re destroying the economy. Not only that, they’re smashing livelihoods. Around 1,000 British jobs vanish every single day, all thanks to Labour. The party that pledged to back “working people” is now waging all-out war on them. Not just by hammering them with record taxes, but by making them too costly to employ.

When Reeves entered number 11, unemployment was 4.1%. Today it’s 5.2%, wiping out almost half a million jobs. JP Morgan forecasts it will hit 5.5% by spring. Its chief UK economist Allan Monks blames two disastrous decisions. First, Reeves’s employer’s National Insurance hike in her October 2024, which he says “disproportionately affected businesses employing lower-paid workers”, especially in retail and hospitality.

Second, two bumper increases to the National Living Wage, which have made entry-level staff almost as costly as seasoned employees. Shops, pubs and restaurants have been hammered. Even the Bank of England is alarmed. Chief economist Huw Pill slammed the double tax hit as a driver of rising joblessness.

It’s all part of a plan. And worryingly, it was first cooked up by Torsten Bell, a rising Treasury star and the most potty-mouthed man in politics. His ideas are potty too.

Bell spent a decade running left-wing think tank the Resolution Foundation. He churned out proposal after proposal for higher taxes, producing a list of more than 20 ways to squeeze more from workers and businesses. Many on his long list are aimed directly at pensioners.

Now he’s in government and pressing ahead. Those who challenge him get both barrels. Bell has gained a reputation for colourful language when pushing his crazed ideological views. I suppose if he explained them calmly, without all the F-words, they’d be much easier to pick apart.

His effing and blinding may raise eyebrows, but the thinking behind it is hair raising. Bell has long argued that squeezing low-wage sectors can somehow boost productivity elsewhere. Drive up costs in hospitality and retail, shrink those industries, and workers will magically flow into higher-value jobs.

Now we’re seeing the reality. In practice it means lost shifts, shuttered venues and fewer chances for young people to get a foot on the ladder. Worse, Bell isn’t the only one with this unhinged view.

Last year, Reeves appointed a so-called “entrepreneurship star”, Alex Depledge. Incredibly, she’s just declared that Britain doesn’t “need any more restaurants”. She wants the focus on tech and other growth sectors, not hospitality. Tell that to the millions who rely on pubs, cafés and restaurants for work.

But it looks like she’s getting her wish, as pubs four pubs close a day, and whole restaurant chains collapse.

With NI, the living wage and business rates rocketing, the sector has been hit again and again. Yet inside the Treasury, there’s little sympathy.

Labour has launched a war on jobs and unlike everything else it’s tried, this one is actually working. Retailers are cutting staff at the fastest pace for nearly three years. It’s a jobs bloodbath.

The idea that crushing one part of the economy will somehow revive another defies common sense. You don’t make the country richer by deliberately destroying livelihoods.

Reeves and her circle aren’t just presiding over economic pain. They’re wilfully inflicting it and ordinary working people are paying the price. They’re right about one thing though. To revive Britain, some jobs have to go. We should start in the Treasury.