Good morning. If Rachel Reeves’s priority in yesterday’s spring statement was to insist nothing much had changed, at the same time as saying repeatedly that the world has changed, it was a success: she came out with the same £9.9bn fiscal headroom she gave herself in October, and the markets barely reacted.
But there was a lot of frantic activity beneath the surface to reach that position of stasis – and as the impact assessment on the government’s welfare cuts made terribly clear, for a lot of people the results will be profound. Meanwhile, as Donald Trump’s new 25% car tariff showed overnight, there are many reasons to think that the economic outlook is not settled.
