Rachel Reeves told to rip up rules and unleash reckless spending spree - and YOU will pay

When it emerged that Rachel Reeves would survive Keir Starmer's panicky reshuffle last week, UK borrowing costs actually fell. Bond markets clearly think that the embattled Chancellor is the only one standing between Labour and financial misrule.

Reeves has made a string of mistakes and told the odd fib along the way, but the rest of her ramshackle party are worse. This year's Budget on November 26 already threatens to be a nightmare before Christmas, as Starmer surrounds himself with tax fanatics who spend their days dreaming up new ways to raid our wallets.

The party is full of them, despite Starmer's attempts to purge the hard-left Corbynites.

Whenever Labour gets into trouble, which is all the time, they emerge with the same tired mantra: tax more, spend more, and if necessary, borrow more too.

This morning gave us another example. Former transport secretary Louise Haigh, who quit last November over a fraudulent mobile phone theft claim, has published a lengthy essay in the New Statesman urging Reeves to rip up the fiscal framework.

Haigh calls for the government to junk debt limits, sideline the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), and force the Bank of England to alter monetary policy to suit ministers. It would be fiscal suicide, but this is what Labour thinking has come to now.

Haigh argues that Britain is being "forced to govern with one hand tied behind our back" and that fiscal rules are "catastrophically constrained by market sentiment". Her answer is to rewrite the rules and ignore the markets.

Yet those constraints exist for a reason: to reassure investors that we can meet the £300billion of borrowing required over the next 12 months. Cast them aside, and the cost of debt will rocket.

Haight attacks the OBR a "gatekeeper of orthodoxy" and wants its power checked. But the watchdog was created precisely to stop politicians fiddling the figures. Sideline it, and markets will simply trust Britain less. And charge us more to borrow.

Haigh does make some valid points. The Conservatives talked austerity while driving the nation's debt pile even higher, and the Bank of England's reversal of quantitative easing deserves scrutiny.

But this line is terrifying: "Unless Labour can govern with real fiscal freedom, the public will not feel the change they voted for."

I'm sorry, but there's no fiscal freedom when you're drowning in debt and still borrowing £150billion a year, with £100billion of that servicing the interest on existing loans. You have to play by other people's rules, like it or not.

Haigh's conclusion tips into fantasy as she calls for "a decisive break with the fiscal rules and institutional constraints that hold back renewal."

Hasn't Haigh heard of Liz Truss? The Tory PM deliberately shunned the OBR when she pushed through £45billion of unfunded tax cuts in her September 2022 mini-Budget, spooking financial markets and sending mortgage rates through the roof.

Britons paid a heavy price for that. And we'd pay a heavy price if Labour did something similar.

Reeves doesn't need advice like that. There's already a real danger her November Budget will spook the markets, even without following Haigh's wild suggestions.

If she did adopt them, chaos would follow. The tragedy is that Reeves is the only sober driver in Labour's out-of-control car. And everyone else is trying to rip her hands off the wheel.