Is this really the ‘change’ that Britain voted for?

Fundamentally, the Budget was sound enough. Rachel Reeves did at least make the numbers add up. The reaction of the gilts market suggests that lenders to the government believe that the chancellor has a credible plan to prevent debt from running out of control.

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Doubling the margin for error, known as headroom, from £10bn a year to £20bn was a prudent decision, putting right a pointless risk the chancellor took last year.

But in so many other respects, the Budget was a disappointment, and Sir Keir Starmer must take joint responsibility for that with his neighbour at No 11. The considered verdict on a Budget is often different once journalists, accountants and think tanks have had time to analyse the figures in depth. In the case of Ms Reeves’s second Budget, it seems that the initial negative judgement has only hardened.

Above all, it represented the wrong priorities for the country. Once the analysts had swept aside the distractions of the premature publication of the Office for Budget Responsibility report, it became clear that the OBR forecast had not changed anything like as badly as much of the pre-Budget speculation had assumed.