A pre-Budget speech by a Chancellor always risks being a “waffle bomb”, as Kemi Badenoch put it, because the Chancellor cannot tell anyone what will be in the Budget before the Budget itself. Nonetheless Rachel Reeves made a clear and important point in her speech yesterday: she is willing to break promises, and become even more unpopular, rather than risk longer-term economic stability.

Downing Street’s political bet is that stability secures growth by 2029, and that voters will reward that toughness and determination at the next election . The unknown behind that gamble is whether Nos 10 and 11 can hold the line, stick together, and ride out the unhappiness and vitriol of both voters and the Parliamentary Labour Party until then.

But if Labour’s strategy is to do the right thing

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