Chancellor Rachel Reeves has been accused of misleading the UK over the state of the public finances.

Rachel Reeves has been accused of misleading the general public over the state of the country’s finances before unveiling her Budget last week.

The chancellor and her team spent the months leading up to the biggest fiscal event of the year hinting that tax hikes were inevitable due to the dire state of the public finances.

However, just two days after the Budget, the UK’s independent financial forecaster – the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) – suggesting Reeves’s remarks may have been more than a little inaccurate.

This split has triggered an almighty row across Westminster with Reeves’s political opponents even calling for her to resign, and even cabinet members criticising her.

Here’s what you need to know.

What did Rachel Reeves say about the state of the UK’s finances?

The chancellor organised a surprise, early morning press conference on November 4 where she laid the groundwork for major tax rises in her upcoming Budget.

Standing at a Downing Street podium, she painted a rather bleak picture, insisting that she would have to make many “necessary choices” to keep Britain afloat amid reports there was a black hole of up to £30 billion in the government’s finances.

Reeves also refused to rule out putting up income tax, a move which would have made her the first chancellor to do so since 1975 as well as being a clear breach of a key Labour manifesto pledge.

In a major U-turn, Reeves then ripped up those plans just 10 days later as Treasury........

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