While the economy stagnates and the poorest are punished, Labour is giving free reign to the already rich, writes John Rees

Labour’s Chancellor, Rachel Reeves has abolished the rule that corporate bonuses should not be paid for five years so that company performance can be monitored. Now the City bosses can cash them in after just two years.

The new boost for the super-wealthy came as Reeves removed a swathe of safeguards implemented after the banking crash of 2009. She said she would ‘rip up’ regulations meant to stop another wave of banking failures.

Now the economy will be exposed to the same risks that collapsed Leaman Brothers and started the bank failures a decade and a half ago. Then the taxpayers were saddled with having to bail out the banks.

Reeves’ move, revealed to the City oligarchs at the Mansion House speech, came just as newly released growth figures indicating economic stagnation at the heart of the UK economy.

Latest figures show that the economy was almost at a standstill in the third quarter of this year. It only grew by a barely perceptible 0.1%. Economists had been expecting a still miserable 0.2% figure, but the economy grew by half of that. This quarter’s figure was a fall form the 0.5% of the second quarter of 2024.

The economy was in recession in 2023 and on these figures will show little improvement this year. Reeves’ boast that slashing regulations and rewarding the already rich will boost growth is likely to ring hollow with pensioners facing winter without their fuel allowance and poor parents for whom Reeves has refused to remove the two-child benefit limit.