RACHEL REEVES is heading down a dangerous road if fears of a fuel duty increase in this month’s Budget are to be believed.
Don’t take my word for it — just listen to the views of the Chancellor’s constituents in her Leeds West backyard.
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In the town centre of Pudsey this week, I meet Ashley Smethurst, a new mother whose car has become a lifeline for midwife appointments or trips to visit family in the North East.
But if petrol prices surge, those journeys would become few and far between.
At 32 — and made redundant just a week before starting maternity leave — Ashley worries she will be shut off from the vital family support she relies on.
“It would just add stress and pressure if I felt I couldn’t get out and see people with my newborn”, she tells me as she cradles her baby.
Broken promise
Pudsey in West Yorks may be 200 miles from the House of Commons, where Ms Reeves will deliver her first Budget in less than a fortnight.
But it is market towns like this that will bear the brunt of any decision to increase costs at the pump, with cash-starved public transport here making car travel absolutely essential for many.
For 14 years its people have been among the millions of drivers to have benefitted from the Sun’s Keep It Down campaign to freeze fuel duty.
And the thought of THEIR MP putting an end to that is — in the words of one local — “diabolical”.
Many tell me it would represent nothing less than a betrayal: for the working parents juggling school runs, the pensioners carefully budgeting their incomes, the small business owners struggling to keep afloat.
It is not just a fear of rising costs, but a deep sense that any hike would break the Government’s promise to protect working people and pensioners.
Take 72-year-old Judith Briggs, who drives her Volkswagen Passat to do her weekly shopping and see relatives.
She doesn’t hold back: “Rachel Reeves has taken away my winter fuel allowance — that’s £200 gone. And if the price of fuel went up, that’s another meal, isn’t it?
“They are certainly not protecting pensioners, and they are not particularly protecting working people either . . . unless they are in a union.”
The frustration is shared by Marilyn Noble, 71, and Glenys Daley, 75, two pensioners who rely on their cars just to reach local bus routes following cuts to services in the nearby village of Farsley, and feel equally anxious.
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For Luke Prendergast, a young van driver working for waste removal company Leeds Junk and Rubbish, the thought of fuel costs rising feels like yet another broken promise.
With six vans out on the road every day, he says: “The increase in fuel prices can be diabolical for small businesses — especially people like us who are driving everywhere.
“I feel like that’s going against the promise that they’ve made to protect working people, as well as letting small businesses down.”
Luke is also worried about the knock-on effects for customers, saying his company might have to look into increasing their prices, particularly for jobs further afield.
Local taxi driver Aamir Abbasi, 60, feels equally under pressure, knowing his livelihood is at stake. He tells me: “The business is suffering as it is. If fuel goes up, that will have a knock-on effect on my earnings.
She’s a technocrat, much like Germany’s Angela Merkel
Aamir Abbasi
“We do a lot of mileage and use a lot of fuel. It will add to the cost of living, which will be devastating.
“It’s going to be difficult to survive as a taxi driver, to be honest.”
German-born driving instructor Martin Jahn, who has lived in the area for more than 20 years, puts it rather more bluntly: “Rachel Reeves triggers me.
“She’s a technocrat, much like Germany’s Angela Merkel.”
Martin also tells me he switched to an electric car two years ago, hoping to save money when fuel prices were soaring.
But he now finds that running it is just as costly as his diesel vehicle, which he still drives.
Jade Lambert, who works in Pudsey, is particularly furious about the idea of a five pence rise in fuel duty.
‘It just wouldn’t work’
“It’s disgusting,” says the mum of two, from Bradford. “I have to drive to get my kids to nursery and school, then get to work. I know driving can be seen as a luxury but I wouldn’t be able to catch a bus with my own kids. It just wouldn’t work.”
Ms Reeves may be looking for ways to fill the public coffers, but it is the people of Pudsey who will pay the price if she chooses to raise the levy.
As would scrapping the 5p per litre cut introduced by Rishi Sunak in 2022 — a move that would sting the budgets of 9million motorists who would typically pay an extra £3.30 per tank of fuel.
As the Budget looms, the Chancellor’s constituents have a clear message: hit the brakes on a fuel duty hike before it drives them into more financial trouble.
Because if the Chancellor doesn’t steer clear of this rise, she might just find herself running on empty with voters.
