Rachel Reeves sees older generations as a golden goose to be plucked - this is why

Taxing pensioners who are already faced with higher inflation and rising care costs would be a desperate measure from a failing Chancellor under enormous pressure to fill a £20billion black hole in public finances. The suggestion, from the left-wing Resolution Foundation, would be a disgraceful betrayal of generations who have already paid a lifetime of tax and take pride in not being a burden. But we can't rule it out when it comes to Rachel Reeves.

Before my mother passed away earlier this year, she was paying £7,000 a month for her care home. It was an enormous sum that came directly from her savings, yet she was still being taxed on her modest pension income.

You would have thought the Government would have exempted my mother on account of her taking responsibility for her own care at no further cost to the state. Not a bit of it. Politicians like Ms Reeves see older generations as a golden goose to be plucked. Why? Perhaps because they are an easy target - and many have certainly already made up their minds that this Government is useless and they will never vote for them again.

The Resolution Foundation, which has close ties to senior Labour figures, says the Chancellor should cut national insurance by 2p and add it to income tax. This would raise £6billion by adding to the tax bills of those who do not pay employee national insurance, such as around 8.7 million pensioners already paying income tax, 4.3 million self-employed people and landlords.

It neatly ignores the fact, as far as pensioners are concerned, that older generations have already paid decades of national insurance to fund their state pensions and health care.

Far harder would be to cut back on the enormously wasteful public sector - whose gold-plated final salary pensions are estimated to amount to a staggering future liability of £1.6trillion. Add to that the cost of foreign nationals and non-working families living in the UK claiming benefits to a sum higher than a billion pounds a month and you have two runaway sources of national debt that are only going to escalate unless someone gets a grip.

But this weak government has fallen at the first hurdle in efforts to rein in national expenditure, and thanks to Keir Starmer's poor judgment in losing key figures, he is vulnerable to his hard-left MPs baying for ever more cash.

The best way to cut costs is to stop spending rather than raise taxation, but rather than putting nation before party, as Labour promised before the last election, they are running scared and simply taxing those they claim are "rich".

Not only did this policy fail in their first budget, causing a catastrophic failure in economic growth, but they are now doubling down on raising yet more money from groups who have already paid more than their fair share. The gross unfairness of civil servants working a four-day week or illegal migrants getting benefits and four-star hotels is already driving voters towards parties that seek to cut the size of the state.

As was once noted by Margaret Thatcher, the problem with socialism is that you "eventually run out of other peoples' money".

Living on a fixed income, pensioners are already under huge pressure from rising prices and a cost-of-living crisis that has never gone away. Thanks also to Boris Johnson's failure to put a cap on private care home fees, they also face eye-watering demands in their later years. To hit them with yet more tax is perverse and shameful.

The Government should sort their own house out first, cut back on the pampered public sector and bring an end to migrants exploiting our benefits system. But if there's one thing we have learned about Starmer's government, it's that it is weak and cowardly and would far rather leech off vulnerable groups than fix fundamental faults.

Older generations who have worked for decades and paid their taxes deserve every penny of their state and private pensions. These should not be a pot to be dipped into by a desperate Chancellor who promised growth but failed to deliver it and is now flailing around for more sources of money to fund her bloated government.

Even the suggestion of further taxes on pensioners has got to be a new low for this bunch of poorly performing politicians.