Few can doubt that the Tories left office with the public finances in a dire state. But it takes two parties not to talk about the tax rises necessary to plug that gap. Indeed, no lesser authority than the Institute for Government’s Paul Johnson accused both Labour and the Conservatives during the campaign of being complicit in a “conspiracy of silence” over their spending plans.
And so, today’s speech by Rachel Reeves is the inevitable result. There is hard economics to be dealt with — Britain can only fix its finances through spending cuts, tax rises or borrowings. But this is about politics. The Chancellor, like all her predecessors, wants to shift as much of the blame onto the other side and in doing so, avoid much of the blame. It is likely to be successful.
