This would actually have been quite an understandable day for Rachel Reeves to cry at work. “I’m really clear,” the chancellor told the CBI less than a year ago, “I’m not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes.” Can I shock you …? “We did wipe the slate clean,” she continued less than 12 months ago. “[We] put public finances and public services on a firm footing, and as a result we won’t have to do a budget like this ever again.” Again: can I shock you …?
So, then, to Reeves’s podium appearance from Downing Street this morning. Vibes-wise, it was like knowing you were going to be very incompetently mugged in three weeks’ time, but having to listen to a speech from the mugger about the context of it all. Or maybe a speech from an asteroid trying to get out in front of what people are going to say about it when it craters the West Midlands.
