Are Reeves’s fiscal rules really ‘ironclad’?

This afternoon, Keir Starmer recommitted to not raising income tax, VAT or employee National Insurance for the duration of this parliament. At the same time, he reiterated his support for Rachel Reeves’s ‘ironclad’ fiscal rules. Are both possible?

Answering a question from GB News’s Chris Hope at a visit to the Jaguar Land Rover factory in the West Midlands the Prime Minister said: ‘We made that commitment in the manifesto and we were absolutely clear about it going into the Budget and the Spring Statement, and that is a commitment we’ve made and a commitment we will keep.’ 

In response to an earlier question from Sky, he also stood by the Chancellor’s fiscal rules: ‘So, the reaction to the challenges of the last few days is not for us to say, well, the first thing we’ll now do is to put on one side our fiscal rules it is to remind people why we put them in place in the first place, which is to create the certainty that we need.