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Rachel Reeves will keep her remarks short when she delivers the spring statement on Wednesday.
But the enormity of what she is saying will be lost on no one as the chancellor sets out the grim reality of the country’s finances.
Her economic update to the House of Commons will reveal a deteriorating economic outlook and rising borrowing costs, which has forced her to find spending cuts, which she’s left others to carry the can for (more on that in a bit).
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The independent Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) is expected to forecast that growth for 2025 has halved from 2% to 1%.
That, combined with rising debt repayment costs on government borrowing, has left the chancellor with a black hole in the public finances against the forecasts published at the budget in October.
Back then, Reeves had a £9.9bn cushion against her “iron-clad” fiscal rule that day-to-day spending must be funded through tax receipts not debt by 2029-30.
But that surplus has been wiped out in the ensuing six months – now she finds herself about £4bn in the red, according to those familiar with the forecasts.
That’s really uncomfortable for a chancellor who just months ago executed the biggest tax and spend budget in a generation with the promise that she would get the economy growing again.
At the first progress check, she looks to be failing and has been forced into finding spending cuts to make up the shortfall after ruling out her other two options – further tax rises or more borrowing via a loosening of her self-imposed fiscal rules.
‘World has…
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