Oh dear. It sounds as though Rachel Reeves was something of a bust at the big CBI shindig last night at the swish 8 Northumberland Avenue venue in central London. It was barely seven months ago that the Chancellor confidently promised the lobby group in the same room that ‘We’re not going to be coming back with more tax increases, or indeed more borrowing.’ But this evening, the Treasury minister told those same business leaders in a Q&A that:
Look, I’m never going to have to repeat a budget like that. You know, that was a big tax raising budget. I recognise that. It is what I felt that we had to do to secure our public finances… People need to know that we’re never going to repeat anything on that scale…. we will never have to repeat anything like that again.
Hmm. What does ‘anything on that scale’ actually mean? It might not be another £38bn Budget – but could the UK see billions more in tax rises? Those in the room, it seems, were non-plussed.
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