It’s time for Rachel Reeves to stop gambling
Next Wednesday Rachel Reeves will stand up in the House of Commons to deliver what she is calling her ‘spring forecast’. As so often with political language, everyone in Westminster knows it is no such thing, just as there was nothing ‘mini’ about Kwasi Kwarteng’s Budget of September 2022. The ‘spring forecast’ will be an emergency Budget, and the reasons for it reveal a surprising truth about the Chancellor of the Exchequer: she is an inveterate gambler. Unless everything turns out to be a brilliant exercise in expectation management, the worst-kept secret in Whitehall is that Reeves has already broken her ‘iron-clad’ fiscal rules. The Chancellor’s team will receive the
