There will be plenty of victims of the crash currently playing out across the global financial markets. A few hedge funds may well fail. The trading desks of the main investment banks will be watching their annual bonuses disappear. And ordinary investors will be nursing some big losses on their investment portfolios. But the most prominent victim might well be the British Chancellor Rachel Reeves. She staked everything on meeting her ‘fiscal rules’ – and it now looks certain her gamble has been lost.
Only a few weeks ago, in the Spring Statement, Reeves reassured everyone that she had made all the adjustments necessary to make sure she stayed within her fiscal rules, and to keep the economy on a stable path. And yet, just as she did in last year’s Budget, she left herself with just £10 billion of headroom in case the economy didn’t perform as she expected it would.
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