It’s hard to think of a more shambolic budget than the one Rachel Reeves will deliver next week. His Majesty’s Treasury has spent the last month pitch-rolling policies in the Financial Times – using the paper as a sort of town crier – then pulling them back as the OBR’s forecasts have wobbled. 

Directly, the cause for this volatility is the wafer-thin headroom the Chancellor left herself after her first Budget and the Spring Statement. The markets quickly eroded the slack in the face of persistent inflation and a government politically incapable of reining in Britain’s stratospheric spending.

Beneath all that is the staggering amounts we’re spending on debt interest. Indeed, figures released this morning by the Office for National Statistics show that in the first seven months of this financial year we’ve had to borrow nearly £117 billion – £9.9 billion more than the Office for Budget responsibility had forecast in March. The current budget deficit now runs at £15 billion more than projected and debt interest continues to spiral too. 

Add it all up and........

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