Self-righteousness has always been an ugly ingredient in Labour’s character. It was Harold Wilson who declared in 1962 that “the Labour Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing”. But claims of superiority have never looked more hollow than in the aftermath of Rachel Reeves’s grubby Budget. Putting party before country, exuding dishonesty, rewarding irresponsibility and punishing ambition, the Chancellor’s package was a vast exercise in the inversion of morality.

The Budget was the opposite of what our nation needs. Reeves should have nurtured growth by encouraging enterprise, promoting employment and reducing debts through reductions in state expenditure and taxes. But she went down a very different path, one that penalizes the workers and featherbeds the shirkers.

In taking this route, Reeves has shown she has not learnt anything from her disastrous first Budget, which hiked National Insurance and helped cause the loss of 276,000 jobs. The destruction is likely to intensify, given the scale of her latest tax rises, led by a freeze on income tax thresholds which could turn a quarter of the working population into higher rate taxpayers.

Fiscal oppression is reinforced by her litany of other tax grabs, including a new surcharge on homes worth more £2million, as well as levies on milkshakes, gambling, electric vehicle trips, rental property earnings and private pensions.

It is estimated this growing state-sponsored confiscation will push the tax burden to 38% of GDP, the highest level ever reached. Incredibly, in just two budgets, Reeves has increased overall taxation by £66billion.

What makes Labour’s approach so depressing is that much of the money will be used, not for economic regeneration or investment, but to prop up the bloated, unsustainable welfare system. With an annual bill of £312billion, the benefits leviathan should be a prime target for cuts. But because the huge army of welfare claimants tends to back Labour, the party shies away from reform.

Instead, Labour MPs gave their loudest cheer to the Chancellor’s announcement that she would remove the cap that limits benefits to the first two children in a family. Reeves presented this as a measure of compassion but in reality it promotes fecklessness and inactivity by encouraging families to have children that they cannot afford.

Far from lifting households out of poverty, it will trap them in the cycle of welfare dependency, especially by removing incentives to work. The Government’s own figures show that a claimant family with six children will be £14,000-a-year better off, while one with five children will see their income go up by £10,000.

Despite Reeves’s rhetoric about fairness, her approach is profoundly unfair on hardworking taxpayers who live within their means but have to pay for this racket.

The entire Budget is riddled with moral contortions. Wishful thinking is matched by statistical manipulation and broken promises. So Reeves’s commitment in 2023 not to “pick the pockets of working people” is ignored by the freeze on income tax thresholds. In fact Labour’s last election campaign was built on monumental dishonesty about its intentions.

Furthermore, Reeves’ changes have added further complexity to an already convoluted tax system. In Hong Kong, whose economy is far more dynamic than ours, the tax code has just 300 pages, whereas Britain’s has 21,000 pages and 10 million words, 12 times the word count of William Shakespeare’s complete works.

Equally striking is Labour’s enthusiasm for the politics of class envy, partly driven by the Cabinet’s desperation to appease the party’s backbenchers. This year’s mansion and private pension tax raids are the equivalent of last year’s financial assaults on private schools and farmers.

The Prime Minister and Chancellor are often accused of lacking a political vision. In fact, they do have one. As the Budget proves they remain attached to traditional socialism, that destructive, authoritarian strategy of high taxes, lavish spending and generous welfare, where the Government is soft on the unions but hard on the wealth creators.

The creed has always brought misery wherever it has been tried, and it is doing so again today in Reeves’ Britain.