It’s now confirmed: the current Labour Government does not favor those who generate wealth. Their disdain isn’t limited to the exceptionally affluent but extends to those who strive through hard work and savings to provide for their families.

Rachel Reeves, in her somewhat disjointed and muddled Budget speech, expressed a desire to lure entrepreneurs to the UK with tax incentives.

However, any international entrepreneur venturing into Labour’s Britain might find themselves misguided, akin to being escorted away by medics to join the Chancellor in a metaphorical padded cell.

Even prior to the Budget announcement, surveys indicated that about one in eight business leaders was contemplating leaving the UK. Following Reeves’ unveiling of various anti-wealth initiatives, it’s likely that this figure has increased.

For billionaires and the ultra-wealthy, relocating is relatively straightforward, as evidenced by many who have already departed. Notably, earlier this week, reports surfaced that Lakshmi Mittal, the Indian-born steel magnate, has decided to leave Britain and will be spending more time in Dubai.

Those who are far less rich – but nonetheless firmly in Rachel Reeves’ sights – may find it more difficult to cut their ties to this country.

The young can doubtless more easily flee our shores. The older may have to stick it out in Labour’s dystopia.

The Chancellor’s speech was full of falsehoods and overflowing with self-delusion. Apparently, it is the Tories, not Labour, who are the authors of all our tribulations. How odd, given that this shower have already been in office for nearly 18 months.

Reeves also targeted landlords, hitting them with an extra two per cent on property income from April 2027

But she did speak the truth on one occasion when making it clear that she will ensure that ‘the wealthiest [would] contribute most’. The burden will fall disproportionately on those who own valuable houses, have private pensions, let property, or are top-rate taxpayers.

The so-called mansion tax starkly reveals how Reeves is less motivated by the need to raise cash than by old-fashioned class envy. This malign force thrives on the Labour backbenches, and the Chancellor wanted to give them an early Christmas present.

From 2028, owners of houses worth more than £2million will have to pay an annual surcharge of £2,500, rising to £7,500 for those whose properties are worth £5million or more.

No doubt the super-rich will barely bat an eyelid. But many of the less well-off, who perhaps bought their houses 40 or 50 years ago when they were comparatively cheap, will struggle to find sums of this magnitude. Some experts predict that the mansion tax will atrophy the upper reaches of the property market.

By the way, it’s highly convenient for several Labour nabobs that they won’t be caught by the £2million threshold. Originally, it had been set at £1.5million until someone presumably realised that the likes of Sir Keir Starmer (his house is estimated to be worth £1.8million) and David Lammy (a similar amount) would be clobbered.

The vital point about the mansion tax is that, according to Reeves’ own figures, it will only raise £400million from 2029, which is less than one third of one per cent of total public spending. But this isn’t principally about stuffing Labour’s coffers. It’s about envy.

In any case, I predict that many householders will challenge official valuations, which won’t be complete before 2028. What happens if the Government says your house is worth just over £2million – and is therefore liable to a surcharge – while you insist it’s worth less than that amount? There will be endless disputes.

Yet even if the Government doesn’t get all the money on which it has set its covetous eyes, it will have given Labour backbenchers a fillip – and made many better-off people feel more uneasy in their own country.

Soak the rich and the not-so-rich: that is Rachel Reeves’ mantra, writes Stephen Glover

Before outlining her plans to tax houses, Reeves fondly recalled how she had levied VAT on private school fees in her Budget last year (which caused the closure of some private schools and put more pressure on the state sector), as well as increasing inheritance tax for farmers and business owners. Again, those measures raised relatively little tax. But they fuelled the politics of envy – and stoked the class war.

Of course, the mansion tax is only part of the story. Top-rate taxpayers will inevitably shoulder the heaviest burden as a result of freezing income tax thresholds for a further three years from 2028. Meanwhile, those on middle incomes will increasingly be drawn into higher tax bands.

Soak the rich and the not-so-rich: that is Rachel Reeves’ mantra. Does she realise that the better-off in the UK pay a greater share of tax than their counterparts in almost all other Western countries? Probably not, but she wouldn’t care if she did. She would be delighted.

Over the past 15 years – which means very largely under Tory rule – the amount of tax paid by high earners in the UK has increased significantly. According to a recent authoritative article in the Financial Times, Britain’s top ten per cent of taxpayers are the only segment of society paying more in taxes than in 2010.

Reeves also targeted landlords. They will be hit with an extra two per cent on property income from April 2027. For those landlords on basic, higher and additional rates of income tax, rates will rise to

22 per cent, 42 per cent and 47 per cent respectively. Does the Chancellor really imagine that this will encourage landlords into the market?

Perhaps the most egregious measure penalising prudent and hard-working people concerned private pensions and the so-called salary sacrifice. Employees can divert part of their pay into pension schemes before tax and National Insurance are deducted. The Chancellor is slashing the annual limit from £60,000 to just £2,000.

Could there be better proof that those who save and plan ahead are now being punished by Reeves? Public sector workers can already expect to retire with a pension at least three times as large as those in the private sector. That gap will surely widen further.

Nowhere in the speech, of course, were there any plans to rein in ballooning welfare payments. Far from it. Welfare spending is expected to increase by £16billion before the end of the decade. Kemi Badenoch was right to say in her uplifting Commons tour de force after Reeves’ dirge that this was a ‘Budget for Benefits Street’.

And a Budget, too, that breathes fire into what some of us had hoped were the dying embers of the class war. A Budget that bears down on those who save and strive.

It’s both unbelievable and depressing. Yet there is a fragment of hope. It’s noteworthy that many of the Chancellor’s oppressive measures won’t kick in for two or three or even four years.

Reeves and Starmer will be long gone by that time. But not only that. Just as Labour’s class war is reaching its crescendo, the party will have to submit itself to the judgment of the electorate.

Assuming that there is still a country called Great Britain in 2029, I believe that it will resoundingly reject Labour’s politics of envy and division, and its atavistic war on enterprise and wealth creation.

Bad as things are, I live in hope that one day in the not-too-distant future they will get better, and this nightmare will finally be over.