Keir Starmer promised that the last Budget would be “painful”. In a speech in the Downing Street garden in August, two months earlier, he tried to manage expectations, saying that the state of the public finances was “worse than we ever imagined”, and asked people to “accept short-term pain for long-term good”.
It was a forlorn hope. Far from “accepting” the pain, public opinion turned against the government further after Rachel Reeves announced £25bn a year of tax increases, rising to £40bn a year by the end of this parliament.
