Instead of muddling through, Reeves should emulate our cricketers and take some risks

Watching the England cricket team’s swashbuckling, high-risk batting approach take them to humiliating defeat in the first Ashes test, I couldn’t help wishing that they'd rein it in a bit. Sometimes, when you're in the lead, there’s nothing wrong with playing a couple of defensive strokes, or leaving the trickier deliveries.

- Ben Zaranko

Watching Rachel Reeves deliver her second budget speech in the Commons last week, I found myself feeling the opposite. The country faces enormous economic and fiscal challenges, she’s armed with a huge parliamentary majority, and she’s been preparing for months. This felt like the moment to take risks, to play big shots, to announce something bold that might meaningfully move the dial before the next election. But she didn’t. She took a couple of easy singles instead.

With apologies to those of you who don’t share my twin passions for fiscal policy and cricket, Pll cut to the chase.

This felt like a safety-first budget. A muddling-through budget. Now, there are worse things. If it’s a choice between “safety first” and “bond market crisis”, of course we're better going for the former. There were definitely things to like among the announcements. Yet it felt as though the government had diagnosed some problems, and thought about taking bold action, only to shy away and play it safe.