Economics viewpoint Cut the chaos and make budgets boring again

Rachel Reeves should put us all out of our misery this Wednesday with a tax-and-spend statement bold enough to make future budgets boring again.

- Heather Stewart

Ask any economist or policy wonk and they'll tell you the buildup to this year's budget has been among the most drawn-out and chaotic they can remember.

Treasury insiders are adamant they have maintained the same "Labour values" throughout and that Reeves first scribbled down her top priorities - the NHS, the cost of living and the public debt - as long ago as July. But the combination of volatile bond markets, pass-or-fail fiscal rules, and Reeves's decision to leave herself with less than £10bn of headroom against them, has led to months of uncertainty.

It is not meant to be like this: aside from the first budget after a general election win, and outside economic crises (though goodness knows we have had plenty), budgets should be reassuringly dull. Chancellors whose principles are clearly understood ideally keep a steady hand on the tiller of tax-and-spend policy.

A memorable budget tends to be a bad budget: Gordon Brown's tooclever-by-half abolition of the 10p starting rate of income tax in 2008; George Osborne's "omnishambles" in 2012; Anthony Barber's "dash for growth" in 1972.