It’s rare to watch a political calamity advance with such gruesome inevitability. Rachel Reeves’s reported plan to shred Labour’s flagship tax pledge in the upcoming budget is so plainly disastrous that it invites the suspicion that the party leadership has completely lost its senses. But madness would be too generous an alibi for a faction that long ago abandoned any purpose beyond wielding icepicks against its own left.

Labour’s 2024 election campaign offered no story, no clear moral argument, no real sense of direction. That vacuum explains why, even after being handed power, thanks to the most shambolic government in modern British history, Labour mustered only a third of the vote. The tax pledge was one of the few recognisable threads of coherence.

For example: “Labour will not put up your income tax, national insurance or VAT,” tweeted Reeves on 4 June 2024, denouncing the Conservatives as “the party of high tax”. A week later, Keir Starmer told Sky News in Grimsby: “We will not raise tax on working people.” The manifesto couldn’t be clearer: “Labour........

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