Is this Rachel Reeves’s idea of a programme for growth?

It is certainly true that the Labour party has been more than a little devious over the tax rises that are to come. After an election campaign in which it insisted it had no plans – and no need – to increase taxes beyond a few measures such as extending VAT on school fees, mysterious holes started appearing in the public finances as soon as the party achieved office. So acute, apparently, is the lack of funds that Sir Keir Starmer felt the need to warn us this week that October’s Budget will be ‘painful’. It is an old trick, which David Cameron and George Osborne also tried to pull off: making out that the public finances handed over to a new government are in a much worse condition than had previously been believed.

Yet for the opposition to keep plugging away at this point merely draws attention to the fact that the public finances were indeed in a visibly dreadful condition when Labour took office. Neither party can claim the moral high ground on this. No government of any colour – Labour, Conservative or Con-Lib Dem coalition – has succeeded in balancing the books in 22 years. By continually spending more than it earns in revenue, in good times as well as bad, the government has driven up debt and set unrealistic expectations of what the public sector is for. As time goes on, it becomes politically ever harder to bring the public finances under control. Try to do it through tax rises and taxpayers will feel aggrieved. Try to achieve it through spending cuts and a government will be accused of pursuing ‘austerity’, and for ideological reasons rather than plain financial ones.

The Prime Minister is not, therefore, wrong to warn about a tough Budget.