Will Rachel Reeves get away with a ‘doctors’ mandate’ to hike taxes?

It’s ‘blame the Tories’ day in Westminster as Rachel Reeves prepares to take centre stage. The new Chancellor will this afternoon publish a ‘spending audit’ of the financial challenges Labour has ‘discovered’ on entering government. Reeves will address the Commons chamber detailing these spending pressures before giving a press conference at the Treasury early this evening. It comes after Cabinet Office Minister Pat McFadden wrote to colleagues ordering them to ‘bring out the dead’ and identify looming crises in their departments. Expect high doses of political theatre throughout the day from Labour as they attempt to hammer their point home.

The context to all this is the autumn budget where Reeves could choose to announce a range of tax rises, despite suggesting in the run-up to the election that this would not be necessary. As she put it to the Financial Times during the campaign: ‘There are no additional tax rises needed beyond the ones that I’ve said’.