We're days away from a Budget that could deliver a tumultuous chain reaction ...economically as well as politically

IT seems every time there is a Budget nowadays it’s a crunch one, more significant than those that have come before. The economic and political fall out, bigger, more costly.

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There’s been pretty stiff competition during this decade alone. Rishi Sunak’s post-pandemic behemoth in Spring 2021, when he dropped a £32.1billion tax bomb to help rebuild the economy following the Covid meltdown, was certainly a biggy.

Rachel Reeves, last year, delivered the biggest tax-raiser on record with an eye-watering £41billion in hikes.

It was even more than Norman Lamont’s notorious 1993 fiscal raid in the wake of Black Wednesday, which is estimated to have brought in an extra £40.8billion.

It was also larger than Denis Healey’s 1975 Budget, valued at £33.3billion, when he became the last Chancellor to raise income tax (more of that later).

Perhaps the most notorious fiscal event in recent history was the Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng mini-Budget three years ago, which plunged the economy into a tailspin and ultimately led to the then-prime minister being ousted after just 49 days in the job.

On Wednesday, Ms Reeves will deliver her second Budget, the ramifications of which could be seismic, both politically and economically. Not only is her job on the line, Sir Keir Starmer’s is too, as she prepares to undo Labour’s main election manifesto promise not to raise personal taxes.

Added to this toxic mix is the fact that unemployment is rising and businesses are struggling. So too is the economy, partly due to global headwinds, including Donald Trump’s tariffs, because of the financial straightjacket Ms Reeves has forced upon herself and the nation.

It ultimately means that millions of people face being clobbered with punishing tax rises for the second year in a row, despite the Chancellor promising voters this would never happen.

Her first Budget, last October, was supposed to be a “one and done” fiscal event that definitively sorted out Britain’s public finances after the “chaos” she claimed to have inherited from the Conservatives.