Rachel Reeves has been accused of misleading the public on the state of the country’s finances to justify £26bn worth of tax hikes in her Budget.
There had been dire warnings that the chancellor faced a £20bn black hole, and in an extraordinary speech on 4 November, she signalled higher taxes were likely, blaming Donald Trump’s tariff war and the Budget watchdog’s expected downgrade of economic productivity for the “hard choices” she would be forced to make.
