Clueless: Angela Rayner’s tax raid will cost the UK far more than it will ever raise (Image: Getty)

Lately, it looks like she’s been angling for it. Frustrated that Reeves hasn’t taxed the nation into total submission, Rayner reportedly sent her a private memo listing all the areas where Labour should grab even more of our cash.

That note says everything about the state of our Deputy PM – and the Labour Party more widely. They just want to tax, tax, tax.

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During Reeves’s Spending Review on Wednesday, Labour revealed its true colours again. The Chancellor blew a cool £600billion, but that still wasn’t enough for party activists.

Despite driving the tax burden to its highest ever level, Reeves was accused of pushing Tory austerity. Incredible.

She’s already hauled in an extra £40billion in last October’s Budget. Tax experts reckon she’ll need another £24billion this autumn, or maybe £30billion.

Yet she’s not taxing hard enough for Rayner.

Last month, she handed Reeves a wishlist of tax hikes: dragging more earners into 45% income tax, scrapping the dividend allowance, reinstating the hated 55% pensions lifetime limit tax. She also proposed hiking the bank surcharge to 5%, and more.

But one request exposes how staggeringly ignorant Rayner is about how businesses generate jobs, growth and ultimately, tax revenue.

Rayner called on Reeves to kill off tax relief that boosts smaller British businesses listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM). Why is that so ignorant? I’ll be brief.

Household names like ASOS, Fever-Tree and YouGov began life on the AIM index. It’s also supported Eddie Stobart, Young’s Brewery, and hundreds more.

Last year, AIM-listed firms added an impressive £35.7billion to the UK economy and directly employed 400,000 people.

Indirectly, they supported nearly 800,000 jobs and delivered £68billion in value, The Daily Telegraph reports.

AIM isn’t a London club. These companies support jobs across the UK, exactly where Labour claims to want growth.

They’re precisely the kind of firms Labour should be backing: fast-growing, homegrown, high-contributing, risk-taking businesses that pay their taxes.

In 2023 alone, AIM companies delivered £5.4billion to the Treasury via corporation tax, VAT, income tax and national insurance.

Yet Rayner wants to threaten all that to raise just £100million. It’s economically illiterate.

The tax raised will be dwarfed by the damage done. Like so many Labour levies.

And Rayner will soon inflict even more damage on the UK economy through her Employment Rights Bill, which will cost businesses £5billion and send youth unemployment through the roof.

Not that Reeves is much better. In her October 2024 Budget, she wiped out 250,000 jobs by walloping business with £25billion of extra national insurance.

And she also halved the IHT relief on AIM shares from 40% to 20%.

But that relief is vital, because investing in smaller firms is risky. Many will go bust. Investors risk losing every penny. They need incentives to put up their money. And Labour is destroying them.

It’s short-sighted and self-defeating. These are the very companies Reeves wants pension funds to back under her risky market reforms.

Yet she’s busy ripping up the tax breaks that make it worthwhile.

Britain’s stock market is shrinking fast. Firms are being snapped up by US private equity by the day. Inexcusably, Reeves has snatched IHT from family businesses too.

Rayner has an excuse for her financial illiteracy, she’s not chancellor. Rachel Reeves is. So what’s hers?