You can already sense Rachel Reeves’s spin machine whirring into action. It was Donald Trump wot ruined my careful book-keeping, the Chancellor will tell us as once again her fiscal headroom disappears and she ends up banging her scalp painfully on the ceiling. But could it be unrealistic expectations for her welfare reforms which prove her undoing? Tucked away in the government’s own figures is the revelation that Labour’s welfare shake-up could result in 400,000 more people signed off unfit for any work.
Britain’s workshy culture has received another boost
The contents of the impact assessment on her Spring Statement, published by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) last week, are still being digested. But what it clear is that the OBR is not as confident as Reeves that it will result in people flocking back to the workplace.
The sting in the tail of the Chancellor’s plans is her abandonment of proposed changes to the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) which had been proposed by Rishi Sunak’s government. That
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