The sun might be shining but there remains plenty of gloom when it comes to the UK economy.

Labour’s Autumn Budget is probably still more than two months away but that has not stopped rampant speculation about what further pressures that event might put on households and businesses.

All sorts of potential moves have been floated in the media, with inheritance tax among the topics in focus last week.

UK economic challenges have fuelled speculation that Labour will have to raise taxes and/or rein in spending to meet its fiscal rules, which are not that different from the strictures of the Tories.

The National Institute of Economic and Social Research declared earlier this month: “The Government is not on track to meet its ‘stability rule’, with our forecast suggesting a current deficit of £41.2 billion in the fiscal year 2029-30.”

It remains somewhat baffling that Labour, given its lead in the polls ahead of the summer 2024 general election, felt it had to tie its hands so tightly with such fiscal rules. Surely the case could have been made for loosening the purse strings, to a sensible degree, and attempting to boost growth and thereby provide a fillip to tax revenues.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves, writing in The Guardian last week, described the talk about tax increases as “speculation”.

She talked about the Labour Government’s aim of........

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