Inflation is back with a bang and the experts agree – Rachel Reeves is making it worse

Labour chancellor Rachel Reeves has seen to that. While we can’t blame her for today’s figure, her Budget tax and spending hikes will drive prices even higher when they come into force next year.

Consumer price inflation climbed to 2.6% in November. That’s the second monthly increase in a row, after October’s 2.3%.

September’s slump to just 1.7% is now a distant memory. The cost-of-living crisis haunts us still.

The inflationary surge has sunk any hope of the Bank of England (BoE) cutting interest rates tomorrow.

Experts saw this coming. Last month, BoE governor Andrew Bailey warned said the Budget’s “substantial” increase in public spending and taxes that “clearly raise the cost of employment” will drive prices higher.

For the next three years. Heaven help us.

Shortly afterwards, more than 80 of the UK’s biggest retailers wrote to warn Reeves that her Budget made both higher prices and job losses a certainty.

Today, business economist Andrew Sentence warned of worse to come. “We’ve yet to see the full impact of higher public spending, borrowing and NI. Inflation headed for 3% plus next year.”

That’s the last thing we needed.

Reeves will hit businesses with a punitive £25billion in extra national insurance (NI) charges from April 6 next year, and they’ll pass on the cost by hiking prices.

Which will drive inflation higher still.

The chancellor also increased the national minimum wage by an inflation-busting 6.7%. It’s good that lower earners get more but combined with the brutal NI hike it’s just more fuel on the inflationary fire.

Reeves also used the Budget to announce another £30billion of public spending, funded purely by borrowing money after she fiddled with the fiscal rules.

That flood of borrowed cash will further drive up inflation, in a relentless vicious cycle.

Some factors are beyond Labour’s control. The energy price cap increased by 10% from October 1, pushing up gas and electricity bills.

But even here, Labour is pursuing the wrong policy. Energy secretary Ed Miliband’s lunatic dash into renewables will drive energy bills higher. Especially since he’s canning North Sea oil and gas projects at the same time.

As inflation returns, economic growth fades. Output fell 0.1% in September and another 0.1% in October.

Economists reckon our GDP could slump by another 0.3% in December. We’re being pushed towards recession.

That’s all down to Starmer and Reeves spreading doom and gloom ahead of the Budget – and afterwards when we saw what she’d done.

Slowing growth and rising prices means only one thing: stagflation. Labour is taking us back to the darkest days of the 1970s. That’s what happens you get for pursuing 1970s policies.