Rachel Reeves is lining up her biggest lie yet - and pensioners will NEVER forgive her

Latest figures suggest she'll have to find £30billion on November 26 if she wants to balance the books. That's almost as much as the £40billion she squeezed out of us last year. No Chancellor can raise that kind of money by tinkering around the edges.

One of the big three taxes has to rise: either income tax, National Insurance (NI) or VAT. The big problem facing Rachel Reeves is that Labour's election manifesto promised not to touch any of them.

When politicians break promises, voters are merciless. They don't forgive being lied to.

As I've pointed out before, Reeves has told at least a dozen whoppers, and expected us to swallow all of them. The bond market is also choking on them.

Crucially, she lied that hiking employers' NI didn't break the manifesto pledge not to hike taxes on "working people", when in practice businesses passed on the cost in the shape of lower wages and higher prices.

Now she's preparing the biggest lie of all. And this time, it's pensioners who'll pay the price. They'll never forgive her if she presses ahead.

Pensioners don't pay NI, but that could change in November as Reeves is being exhorted to haul retirees into the taxman's net for the first time.

Labour's favourite think tank, the Resolution Foundation, is pushing it hard. And that's a real worry.

A left-wing entryist cabal from the foundation has seized command of party policy. Incredibly, its former boss Torsten Bell is the man writing the Budget, rather than Reeves herself.

He'll be taking advice from another Resolution Foundation stooge, Dan Tomlinson. He's just been appointed Treasury secretary.

Former Resolution Foundation trustee, Baroness Minouche Shafik, is now advising Keir Starmer directly and will have her own input to make.

The Resolution Foundation's NI plan is a neat trick. Cut the main NI rate from 8% to 6%, but bolt the difference onto income tax instead.

That way, millions who don't pay NI, chiefly pensioners, buy-to-let landlords and the self-employed, would suddenly be caught. The Foundation reckons its cunning ruse would hand Reeves £6billion a year.

This clever fiddle would let the Chancellor claim she hadn't broken her manifesto promise not to raise NI, while still pocketing the money. Or so they all hope.

Voters won't fall for it though. Pensioners in particular have seen these games played before. They understand how Westminster works, and they remember.

The Resolution Foundation's toxic plan has been carefully designed to let Reeves say Labour is keeping its word. In reality, it would amount to hiking income tax by stealth, because 8.7million pensioners would see their bills rise by 2p in the pound.

Resolution Foundation is no neutral player. Its former bosses and researchers have burrowed into the Treasury, feeding ideas directly into policy. Reeves has already implemented its plans for inheritance tax and capital gains tax.

This is another one, only bigger.

Reeves could take the honest route and admit she has to raise income tax. That would at least be straight with voters. But honesty has never been her instinct.

If she adopts the Resolution Foundation's NI wheeze, she'll claim she's stayed true to the manifesto. Pensioners won't buy it though.

They'll be hit hardest. Once stung, they'll never forget being cheated like this. And they won't forgive Labour.