Wahed’s alarming Tube adverts

As the interminable Budget wait goes on, so does the trawl through the Chancellor’s bin bags. I refer to the old tabloid method of digging in celebrities’ dustbins for evidence of depravity or scandal; in Rachel Reeves’s case, that would mean piecing together shredded Treasury analyses on all the various tax wheezes floated since July. One curry-smeared paper no doubt addresses the pros and cons of an inheritance raid on ‘aristocrats and landowners’; beneath the Red Bull cans and pizza crusts, might there be another headed ‘Clawbacks on Enterprise Investment Scheme’?

Not that there have been substantive rumours, mind you. But that’s rather the point: having had so many draft Budget items shot to pieces, she must be desperate to shield some last surprises. EIS offers reliefs from income, capital gains and inheritance taxes for investors in small private companies. Since launch in 1994, it has channelled £32 billion into a sector otherwise perpetually starved of capital.