Rachel Reeves has privately urged Labour MPs to back her make-or-break budget, saying they will not like every measure but promising it will be “fair.”

Speaking to a fractious parliamentary party, after a fortnight of leadership speculation, the chancellor said “politics is a team sport” and promised there would be a package of appealing measures in the budget that they could present to their constituents.

“When you look at the distributional analysis you’ll see this is a Labour budget, a progressive budget, a budget I’m proud of,” Reeves told the gathered MPs.

But she told them it would be “a package not a pick and mix … you can’t say I like the cola bottles but not the fruit salad”. She said she believed Labour MPs would like at least 95% of the budget.

The chancellor met MPs in pa

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