Prospect of breaking 50-year income tax taboo shows scale of Reeves’s challenge

The chancellor appears to be gambling that a small rise in income tax will be more palatable than lots of smaller measures. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AP

In April 1975, the Labour chancellor Denis Healey sought to grip the UK’s runaway inflation and rising unemployment rates – an economic crisis triggered by the shock rise in global oil prices – by raising the basic rate of income tax.

Now Rachel Reeves, faced with her own set of difficult economic circumstances, including a multibillion-pound budget shortfall, is contemplating the same remedy – breaking a 50-year taboo by becoming the first chancellor since Healey to raise the basic rate of income tax anywhere in the UK.