It’s time for Reeves to follow her own advice and be ‘bold’

It never rains but it pours for Rachel Reeves. Yesterday’s rise in inflation to 3.6 per cent was higher than expected, and there was a ghost at the feast as the chancellor delivered her Mansion House speech on Tuesday night... her Budget in the autumn.

- ANDREW GRICE

The audience at her City of London dinner broadly welcomed her relaxation of financial services regulations, but wondered whether her next act in this arena will be hostile: there is speculation the Budget will include a levy on the banks’ profits and a wider wealth tax.

Remarkably, for a second year running, the government has sparked a summer of speculation about which taxes will rise in the autumn. Cue four months of damaging headlines. This is a government that doesn’t learn from its mistakes.

True, lots of the media speculation will prove wide of the mark. But some mud sticks, and a Labour Party struggling in the opinion polls can’t afford to have much more chucked at it.

Ministers don’t help themselves, firstly struggling to define the “working people” they will protect from tax rises, and secondly failing to rule out a wealth tax. I suspect the chancellor will not announce a new one but that her Budget will target the wealthy, and that her allies will quietly tell Labour MPs she is achieving the aim of a wealth tax by other means.