The United Kingdom announced vast increases in taxes and borrowing in a major budget announcement Wednesday. The budget shows Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s abandonment of the political center ground in favor of an overtly left-wing economic policy.

Since entering office in July, Starmer has encouraged Britons and the U.K.’s trading partners to believe that his Labour Party will adopt centrist governance. That effort no longer passes the smell test. After all, what Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves (the U.K.’s all-powerful treasury secretary equivalent) has announced is nothing short of a return to the tax, borrow, and spend approach that nearly bankrupted Britain in the 1970s. Reeves and Starmer have set a course for long-term decline.