Desperate Rachel Reeves's latest socialist warrior pose will be disaster for UK

Rachel Reeves has taken a brutal hammering from economic experts over the last week. The International Monetary Fund predicts that this year the rise in living standards will be lower and inflation higher in Britain than in any other G7 nation, while the Office of Budget Responsibility has just downgraded its crucial forecast for productivity growth. And a group of leading economists has described her position as "desperate".

That is exactly the word to use about her economic mismanagement, which has hit job creation with tax rises and worsened our debts with reckless spending. Britain now owes the equivalent of £40,000 for every person in the country, and the cost of servicing this colossal financial obligation now reaches over £105billion-a-year.

To avoid national bankruptcy, the obvious course would be to make drastic cuts in public expenditure, but Reeves does not have the guts for such a mission, as she showed in her humiliating retreats on welfare reform. So the only alternative is tax hikes. Posing as a socialist warrior, she now hints that she will hit the rich with a so-called "wealth tax".

Yet such a step would be disastrous, driving away investors and entrepreneurs while raising only limited revenues. As the respected Institute of Fiscal Studies warns, implementing such a measure would be "extremely difficult" because it would require an entirely new system for valuing assets.

Moreover, international experience, says the IFS, shows that wealth taxes never work. But Reeves is not interested in the lessons of history, only in saving her own skin by appealing to the comrades in Labour's ranks.

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Successful integration in a multi-ethnic society requires the acceptance of a shared moral code. But that is precisely what we do not have in modern Britain.

Instead, amid creeping segregation, too many urban neighbourhoods have imposed their own cultural practices, even when they are antithetical to Britain's tolerant, democratic values. A classic example occurred last weekend, when the East London Mosque held a charity fun run in a nearby park.

Despite being advertised as "an inclusive event", women and girls were barred from participation. Such blatant misogyny should have no place in our society. The Communities Secretary Steve Reed professed that he was "appalled" by the episode.

But rather than just spluttering his outrage, why doesn't Reed try to ensure that other forms of separatism are challenged like two tier justice through Sharia tribunals or the demands for special blasphemy laws to protect Islam?

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The late Newcastle United manager Sir Bobby Robson affectionately said his star player Paul Gascoigne was "as daft as a brush". Gascoigne's s erratic career proved the wisdom of those words but tragedy was mixed with comedy as he descended into chronic, almost suicidal alcoholism.

Perhaps the most amazing aspect of his extraordinary life is that he has survived to produce his autobiography, just published this month. The sentence "Unfortunately I fell off the wagon at the airport," appears with thudding regularity.

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A new biography of Margaret Thatcher by the journalist Tina Goudoin claims that the Iron Lady had an affair with her Cabinet colleague Humphrey Atkins.

I find that hard to believe, if only because Atkins was such a lightweight. But stranger things have happened. Labour bruiser Denis Healey was rumoured to have had a fling with the Hollywood legend Shirley Maclaine.