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Labour’s Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is tipped to have ruled out taxing the rich – so who does she intend to squeeze for the money her government says it needs?

All the signs point to the middle class.

Reeves has rejected calls for a standalone wealth tax, even though the richest people in the United Kingdom are hoarding assets, raking in capital gains, and enjoying property windfalls that remain largely untouched.

Instead, she insists the wealthy already pay “their fair share” – a transparent lie.

So where will the axe fall?

There are already reports that Reeves is considering extending the freeze on income tax thresholds.

This is a stealth raid on wages: as inflation forces earnings up, more people are dragged into higher tax brackets, even though their real spending power doesn’t increase. Middle-income households could end up paying hundreds of pounds more every year by 2030.

Then there are the rumoured property tax reforms.

Changes such as levying National Insurance on landlords’ rental income or altering stamp duty could land hardest on middle- and working-class families – the very people Labour was created to defend.

Put these decisions together, and the pattern is obvious. Reeves is apparently closing the door on taxing the rich, targeting middle-income households instead.

This is not a strategy of “caution” or “centrism”.

Nor is it about winning elections by appealing to a broad base of voters (clearly; the only voters it benefits are the tiny number of people who are super-rich).

It is a betrayal.

It betrays the working-class families who built the Labour Party and expect it to fight on their side.

It betrays the middle-class households who already feel the strain of stagnant wages, soaring costs, and public services run into the ground.

And it betrays the very principle on which Labour was founded: that the many should not be exploited for the profit of the few.

The reason is depressingly clear.

If a party focuses on raising taxes for the middle class instead of the wealthy, it is protecting the rich – letting the people who have the most assets and resources off the hook.

This reinforces inequality rather than challenging it.

Historically, Labour was seen as the party that would tax wealth and privilege to redistribute resources. Any shift away from is a betrayal of its traditional base.

If the rich continue to accumulate wealth through assets and capital gains while the majority face stagnating wages and rising costs, inequality worsens.

Taxing middle-class income rather than wealth won’t solve this; it will shift the pressure onto people who already have fewer ways to protect themselves financially.

The consequences are obvious:

• Middle-class households will end up carrying more of the fiscal load, meaning Labour will be squeezing people who already face cost-of-living pressures.

• Working-class voters will see their traditional champions betraying them.

• The wealthy elite will benefit from policies that preserve or even increase their advantages, while continuing to extract wealth from the rest of us through property, assets, and financial mechanisms.

If this is Reeves’s choice, it is – frankly – inexplicable.

It may be that Labour is taking donations from the wealthy, and shaping its policies to protect those donors’ interests – even if it means throwing everybody else under the bus.

But this is electoral suicide.

It induces voters to ask a very simple question: why support a party that protects the rich at our expense?

If Reeves and Starmer continue down this path, they will not only betray Labour’s history – they will betray its future.

Ordinary voters – working-class and middle-class alike – will have every reason to abandon them.

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