It seems the Chancellor thought she would get away with it, despite intense scrutiny of the government

WITH Keir Starmer insisting that Rachel Reeves did not mislead the public and the Budget was a moment of personal pride to him, shouldn’t he have sealed both his political fate and that of his erstwhile Chancellor?

Who doubts that with the myriad leaks before the Budget, with previous chancellors having resigned for less, Rachel Reeves’s position is untenable? Who doubts that her “selling” the £20 billion black hole she used to “justify” telling us that we all have to pay a little more is a lie too far?

Reeves now tells us she needed to raise taxes because £4.2 billion surplus “headroom” was the least any other chancellor had had to work with, and she needed to boost it. Curiously, I can’t remember the word headroom being uttered until her latest “black hole” lie was revealed. She is