DAN HODGES: The solely excellent news? The most chaotic Budget in British historical past shall be Rachel Reeves’ final

So, in the end Rachel Reeves didn’t even manage to deliver her Budget at all. That honour was left to the OBR – who, in one of the most staggering breaches of public propriety in British political history, somehow managed to publish the whole thing in advance.

Though to be fair, it was a perfectly appropriate conclusion to the most shambolic, disreputable, chaotic, unprofessional, duplicitous run-in to a major fiscal event in living memory. In the hours to come the Chancellor will plead her innocence and, as is her way, point the finger of blame at others. But this is the culture that she and the Prime Minister have instilled within the British body politic during their short but destructive tenure. And she can hardly complain about others leaking the details of her economic prognostications when she and her aides have been doing precisely the same thing over the past two months.

When Labour were elected they entered office less on the back of a mandate from the British people, more on the coattails of a perception that the Tory party couldn’t organise a drink-up in a brewery. Today we have been presented with the final conclusive proof the Chancellor and Prime Minister can’t even spell ‘brewery’, couldn’t find a brewery if they were dropped at the gates, and if they did inadvertently manage to stumble into one, would take one look then decide to tax it out of existence.

As Keir Starmer attempted to deflect from Kemi Badenoch’s ferocious assault on his Government’s incompetence at PMQs, he repeated his favourite trick of trotting out the names ‘Truss’ and ‘Kwarteng’, a reference to the disastrous 2022 mini-Budget. He can stop taking them in vain now. 

Rachel Reeves’ 2025 Budget has now set the benchmark for political and fiscal incompetence. Books will be written about it. There will probably be a film, or even one of those new wave Whitehall farces: ‘The Budget That Went Wrong’.

In the run up to today’s catastrophe, the Chancellor’s allies were already fanning out, trying to come up with pre-emptive excuses. She was, they claimed, facing a uniquely complex environment. She had to balance the competing demands of the voters, the markets, business and her own party.

Rachel Reeves delivers her Budget in the Commons today, where she was forced to admit she was snatching £8billion back from working people

And? That is the dilemma faced by every Chancellor at every Budget, in every Parliament since Budgets were delivered. It’s literally the job. A job, which every objective observer can now see that Rachel Reeves is totally and utterly unsuited to.

The Chancellor claimed yet again that she is a victim of events outside her control. But the seeds of the implosion of her authority were first planted two years ago. And they were pressed into the soil by her own hand.

Her plan for government was ‘fully costed and fully funded’, she vowed repeatedly during the election. Within weeks of entering office those costings were junked.

It was, incredibly, less than a year ago when she felt confident enough to boast to the CBI, ‘Public services now need to live within their means because I’m really clear, I’m not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes’. But today she had to admit to the House – or rather, the OBR leaked to the House – that she was raising taxes by £26billion.

And it was a year ago almost to the day when she pledged to the nation that she would not be raising taxes on working people. Today, she was forced to admit she was snatching £8billion back from them in the surreptitious form of frozen tax thresholds.

If the mayhem of the past few months was only having a political impact on the Government’s electoral fortunes, that would be one thing. Indeed, it would probably be seen as a blessing by those voters smarting from Labour’s betrayal.

But it doesn’t. The chaos generated by Reeves’ chaotic, contradictory briefings has had a direct impact on the economy. And as she was again forced to reveal, it will be a lasting one. According to the OBR growth has been downgraded from its already pessimistic estimates to 1.4 per cent in 2026, down from 1.9 per cent, 1.6 per cent in 2027, down from 1.8 per cent, 1.5 per cent in 2028, down from 1.7 per cent, and 1.5 per cent in 2029, not 1.8 per cent as previously thought.

Every time she opens her mouth – or her small group of hand-picked journalists open their briefing books – the working people of Britain have taken another hit in their wallets. Never in the history of British Budgets has so much GDP been squandered through the briefing and counter-briefing of so few.

In the run up to today’s announcement some of Reeves’ colleagues had expressed to me a fear she was under so much pressure she may not even have been able to complete her statement. But they needn’t have worried. Her performance was not characterised by timidity or uncertainty. But an arrogance and lack of self-awareness of breathtaking proportions.

There was not even a hint of contrition for the pandemonium she had unleashed. The destruction of the housing market. The frenzy in the Bond markets. The implosion of inward investment. The collapse of consumer and business confidence.

‘These are my choices. The right choices, for a fairer, more secure Britain’, she proclaimed. Which in itself was a fiction. The Budget had actually been written for her by Labour backbenchers, as evidenced by the concession granted – at the taxpayers’ expense – from everything from the raising of the two-child benefit cap to the Mine Workers’ Pension Scheme.

But Rachel Reeves’ true motivation for the ducking, diving, spinning and sophistry of the past weeks was actually revealed at a meeting with her parliamentary colleagues on Monday. ‘I’ll show the media, I’ll show the Tories, I’ll not let them beat me. I’ll be there next year and I’ll be back the year after that.’

That’s why 2025 has been the most shambolic Budget in British history. It hasn’t been about securing the economy. Or stabilising the markets. Or backing business. Or stimulating growth. Or supporting hard-pressed working people.

The sole purpose of this mad, careening, switchback ride has been the Chancellor’s desperate, panicked effort to save her own skin. And today, just as on every other day of her time in No 11, she failed. Fortunately, the most chaotic Budget in British history will be her last.