The politics all looked simple for Rachel Reeves as she stepped over the threshold of the Treasury on 5 July to take up her post as Britain’s first female chancellor. The outgoing Conservative government had been routed at the general election and the idea was to blame the discredited Tories for the looming repair job on the public finances deemed essential by the new government.
As it turned out, things during Reeves’s first 100 days – a milestone she crosses on Saturday – proved to be not quite that simple. The chancellor duly rolled out phase 1 of her plan three weeks after the election when, after looking at the books, she said there was a £22bn hole that needed to be filled. Reeves expressed shock and anger at the evidence of fiscal incontinence that had come to light. The means testing of the winter fuel allowance was merely an early taste of the pain to be expected in the budget at the end of October, Reeves made clear.
