First 100 days: Reeves had to walk tightrope between pain and promise

The good news is that the economy is in reasonably good shape. The bad is that the recovery appears to be losing momentum

- Larry Elliott

The politics all looked simple for Rachel Reeves as she stepped over the threshold of the Treasury on 5 July to take up her post as Britain's first female chancellor. The outgoing Conservative government had been routed at the general election and the idea was to blame the discredited Tories for the looming repair job on the public finances deemed essential by the new government.

As it turned out, things during Reeves's first 100 days proved to be not quite that simple.

The chancellor duly rolled out phase one of her plan three weeks after the election when, after looking at the books, she said there was a £22bn hole that needed to be filled. Reeves expressed shock and anger at the evidence of fiscal incontinence that had come to light. The means-testing of the winter fuel payment was merely an early taste of the pain to be expected in the budget at the end of October, Reeves made clear.

But traditionally, newly elected governments don't wait too long before announcing what they plan to do. Gordon Brown in 1997 and George Osborne in 2010 held their first budgets within weeks of being appointed chancellor.

The timing of the election and the need to run her decisions past the Office for Budget Responsibility mean Reeves's first budget will take place almost four months after the election - and much has happened in that time. The OBR has warned that the tightening up of the rules governing non-doms may cost more in revenue than it raises. Voters have been angered by the winter fuel payments decision and recognition that the doom-and-gloom has been laid on a bit thick.