Rachel Reeves’s first budget on 30 October is still nine weeks away. But already she’s facing a political onslaught on two fronts.
Tories claim the fiscal event will be a Halloween horror for the middle classes and “Middle England”, with rumoured rises in inheritance tax and capital gains tax.
And the chancellor also faces a backbench backlash from Labour MPs over her axing of winter fuel payments of up to £300 for all but the most hard-up pensioners.
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But the woman who sees herself as an “iron chancellor” shows no sign of bowing to pressure from her critics on either controversy. Yet.
The day after Sir Keir Starmer’s warning that the budget would be “painful” – “I never promised you a rose garden,” said one headline – she refused three times to rule out the expected tax rises.
In a tetchy interview during a visit to Scotland, the exchange went like this:
“Can you rule out raising inheritance tax and raising capital gains in the budget?”
“I’m not going to write a budget two months ahead of delivering it.”
“Can you rule it out?”
“We’re going to have to make a series of difficult decisions…”
“So you can’t rule it out?”
“I’ll set out the budget on 30 October.”
