Partygate was overblown, says Kemi in first interviews as leader

Rachel Reeves: ‘I was wrong’ to say no major tax rises would be needed

In her first big interviews since last week’s Budget announced tax rises of £40 billion, Rachel Reeves claimed this morning that she had been unaware of the extent of the ‘huge black hole’ in public finances before the election. On Sky News, Reeves told Trevor Phillips: ‘I was wrong… I didn’t know everything’. The Chancellor said the Conservatives had hidden the reality of the situation from the country, and that she’d had to put public finances back on a ‘firm trajectory’.

Reeves: ‘We have wiped the slate clean… it’s now on us’

The Chancellor told Trevor Phillips that her choices in the Budget represented a clean slate after the ‘mismanagement and chaos’ of the previous government, and that there would be ‘no need to come back with another budget like this’. Phillips asked her if she could commit to no further tax increases for the rest of parliament.