All smiles... but pain felt by the public isn't being justified

Keir Starmer promised that the last Budget would be “painful”. In a speech in the Downing Street garden in August, two months earlier, he tried to manage expectations, saying that the state of the public finances was “worse than we ever imagined”, and asked people to “accept short-term pain for long-term good”.

- JOHN RENTOUL CHIEF POLITICAL COMMENTATOR

It was a forlorn hope. Far from “accepting” the pain, public opinion turned against the government further after Rachel Reeves announced £25bn a year of tax increases, rising to £40bn a year by the end of this parliament.

Business leaders reacted particularly badly to the rise in employers’ national insurance contributions, causing the chancellor to over-correct when she addressed the CBI the following month. She told representatives that she was “not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes”. Oops. That was too categorical, and she immediately had to clarify: “I do not plan to have another Budget like this. I have wiped the slate clean.”

Within a few weeks, however, it turned out that it was a magic slate, which had filled up with new liabilities that would have to be paid for. Donald Trump had become president, threatening a global trade war and depressing economic forecasts. By the spring statement in March, the thin buffer between sticking to her fiscal rules and breaking them had disappeared, and she announced emergency cuts to welfare spending to restore it.