He’ll need a massive shovel to clear up the mess left by Rachel Reeves. She’s pushed taxes to record highs, making it harder for him to push them even higher. She’s maxed out the nation’s credit card too, with plans to borrow another £130 billion this year. Healey daren’t borrow more. Not with gilt yields nudging 5% and the national debt heading for £3 trillion. He’ll be sad about that.

Every Labour Chancellor wants to tax more and spend more, and Healey is cut from the same cloth. But he can’t. Reeves got there first. And he has another problem. Reeves blamed the Conservatives for absolutely everything, constantly banging on about the “black hole” she’d inherited. But Healey can’t blame the previous Chancellor. Because it’s Rachel Reeves. She may be nursing her wounds on the back benches, but she’s still in the Labour Party. So who does he blame instead?

His first choice of scapegoat worries me. Healey has turned his fire on retailers saying: “We’ll be watching closely for any suggestions that customers are being taken for a ride at the pump or the till.”

Healey did praise companies’ willingness to work with the Government throughout this crisis. He even admitted that “there has been no significant evidence of so-called price gouging”. But he still couldn’t stop himself issuing baseless threats saying: “I want to be blunt in reassuring the public that our regulators have the powers to clamp down on it if it happens.”

So it’s not happening. Healey has no evidence. But he’s on the warpath anyway.

It’s straight out of the Reeves playbook. She previously raised the spectre of retailer “price gouging” and “profiteering”. As Kemi Badenoch pointed out, Reeves is the one doing the gouging via fuel duty. Reeves has also been gouging Britain’s supermarkets. Repeatedly.

Tesco is the UK’s biggest private sector employer, with more than 300,000 staff. Reeves’s disastrous employers’ National Insurance hike costs it a brutal £250million extra a year. Her two inflation-busting minimum wage hikes further squeezed the bottom line. The supermarkets have absorbed much of the cost, but have been forced to pass the rest onto shoppers. Don’t blame them. Blame Reeves.

And it doesn’t stop there. Labour’s £1.5 billion grocery packaging tax will add another £56 to shopping bills. So who do Reeves and Healey try to divert the blame onto? Retailers.

Supermarket bosses reacted to Reeves with fury. M&S said they’re battling hard to keep prices down as red tape and regulations rise. Tesco boss Ken Murphy urged Reeves not to make life harder for them. Asda’s chairman took aim at her tax policies, warning of the dire impact on businesses and families.

Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda operate in one of Britain’s most fiercely competitive industries, fighting constant price wars while working to wafer-thin margins with German discounters Aldi and Lidl breathing down their necks. In the 2024/25 financial year, Sainsbury’s reported a retail operating margin of just 3.3%. That’s now fallen to 2.7%.

Our brilliant supermarkets shame our governing class. If Whitehall ran them the staff would be surly, the shelves mostly empty and the prices sky high.

Here’s another reason Healey should ease up. In its last financial year, Tesco paid a staggering £6.7 billion in tax. These include corporation tax, business rates, VAT, employee payrolls, customs and fuel duty. That’s almost four times its £1.8 billion statutory profit. Tesco works harder for the Treasury than for its shareholders.

Healey has also attacked petrol stations, just like Reeves did. Forecourt workers then reported increased abuse from motorists who suddenly blamed them for rising fuel prices caused by war in the Gulf.

British business has had enough of Labour. FTSE 100 giant BP is pulling out of the North Sea. Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, our second biggest company, is possibly considering shifting its stock market listings to New York. That would be a body blow for the City, tax revenues and economy. Healey is playing with fire.

My early hopes for him have been dashed. He’s turning into Rachel Reeves before my eyes. Just like Reeves, he’ll now leave us sweating for months before his Budget on October 28, while speculation spirals. Reeves dug the UK into a hole. Now Healey has grabbed her shovel and is digging an even deeper one.