There were two audiences for Rachel Reeves’s hastily arranged early morning speech on Tuesday: the financial markets, and Labour’s disillusioned voters.
As she made clear, though only obliquely, Keir Starmer’s government was considering abandoning its pre-election pledge not to raise income tax, backed into a corner by dire forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). No chancellor has raised the basic rate since Labour’s Denis Healey in 1975.
