Rachel Reeves deserves a rough ride at the CBI

Rachel Reeves was probably expecting to be cheered for restoring ‘stability’, for rebooting ‘growth’ and crafting a British version of Bidenomics to create ‘the industries of the future’. Instead, the Chancellor’s ‘fireside chat’ at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) conference today is likely to be rather uncomfortable. There probably won’t be any heckling, walk-outs, boos and cat-calls. Yet the business world has made it all-too-clear that Reeves’s Budget will hit both jobs and growth hard. Reeves is going to get a rough ride this afternoon – and deservedly so.

The CBI made it clear this morning what it thinks of Reeves’s Budget. “Across the board, in so many sectors, margins are being squeezed and profits are being hit by a tough trading environment that just got tougher,” its chief executive Rain Newton-Smith told delegates. She argued that “profits…aren’t just extra money for companies to stuff in a pillowcase” but that, “when you hit profits, you hit competitiveness, you hit investment, you hit growth”.