Denis Healey, a Labour chancellor, advised that when in a hole, one should stop digging. The failure to observe this iron law of politics is behind the sense of constant crisis engulfing Rachel Reeves. The current chancellor’s problem is one of her own making. She designed her fiscal rules with so little wriggle room that even small changes in economic forecasts – such as revisions to GDP – mean that her numbers stop adding up. That, in turn, starts chatter about budgetary “holes” and the need for tax rises and spending cuts – despite no change in the economy.

In politics, as in digging, it helps to know when to put down the spade. Ms Reeves could end this drama by relaxing her fiscal rules. Or better still, replacing them, as the economist Tim Leunig

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