Rachel Reeves blames everyone else for UK crisis - except the biggest culprit of the lot

The moment Rachel Reeves walked into No 11, the UK economy stopped growing. In the final six months of Rishi Sunak's doomed Tory government, GDP grew by a healthy 1.2%. Under six months of Reeves, it grew 0.0%.

So what went wrong? The consensus view is that Reeves and PM Keir Starmer spooked the life out of the economy by warning about Labour's upcoming tax blitz. Businesses and households had four long months to fret about what the Budget might contain, and the economy froze.

Reeves tells a very different story. At her bizarre pre-Budget press conference on Tuesday, she once again insisted the blame lay everywhere else.

Naturally, she blames the Tories. But she also points the finger at Nigel Farage, despite the fact he's never been within a mile of government.

She blamed Brexit, eight years after the vote. Also the rising global cost of borrowing, even though UK interest rates have climbed fastest of all. Trump's tariffs got a mention, yet other countries have taken a bigger knock. Supply chains, world events, Vladimir Putin, Uncle Tom Cobley. Everyone but the actual UK Chancellor.

The implication? Without this parade of villains, the economy would be booming as plucky Rachel Reeves fixes the foundations. What bad luck!

It's nonsense, of course. Now I could run through the usual list of mistakes made and lies told, but I seem to do that every day.

So instead, I'm going to name the man who inflicted more long-term damage on our economic prospects than Trump, Putin, Brexit, Farage and even Liz Truss.

A man Reeves consistently avoids criticising. Why? Because he's her political hero. As a student, she even had a poster of him on her wall.

His name? Former Labour chancellor Gordon Brown. She's even styled herself the "Iron Chancellor", just like him. And is now hellbent on repeating his biggest mistake.

Brown inherited a growing economy from the Tories in 1997. Just as importantly, public spending was under control at just 34.89% of national income.

Brown rigidly stuck to Tory spending limits for two years, so that by 1999 the state was spending just 33.9% of GDP and Britain was booming.

Then Brown lost all self-restraint. As he angled to replace PM Tony Blair, he splurged on every scheme going to buy his way into No 10 using taxpayers' money.

By 2008, spending had ballooned to 40.96% of GDP, even as tax revenues surged during the credit boom and property bubble he helped inflate, while claiming to have put an end to "Tory boom and bust".

Then came the financial crisis. This wasn't Brown's fault, but his spree left us woefully unprepared.

By the time voters removed Labour in 2010, the state was swallowing 44.71% of everything Britain earned. On Brown's watch, public spending rocketed by 28% and it's hardly come down since, despite years of so-called "Tory austerity".

This year, the Treasury will spend 43.88% of national income, and there's no sign Reeves can bring it down. She can't cut spending because Labour backbenchers won't allow it.

So she'll tax more and spend more, while failing to curb the welfare bill or boost public-sector productivity. Most of the cash will be lost in staff pay and pensions.

That's on her. But the deep hole Britain is in today was first carved by Gordown Brown, the man she came into politics to emulate. So strange she never blames him.