T he Labour Party has waited 14 years to deliver a budget. Rachel Reeves waited 45 years to become the first woman chancellor to do so. Yet hers was a thoroughly old-fashioned speech, less 2024 than 1974.
In substance, it most resembled the Labour budgets the country endured well before Ms Reeves was born. After four messy months in office, the chancellor has clarified the political definition of Sir Keir Starmer’s government. And what a familiar definition of Labour in power it is: the highest tax take on record , higher borrowing, higher spending on schools and hospitals, and a bill underwritten by employers and the asset-rich.
Ms Reeves made some sensible decisions, to which we shall come, but on her own terms there is much.
