Chancellor Rachel Reeves hopes her historic rise in tax, coupled with spending on the NHS and other investments, will kickstart the economy and get Britain’s debt under control.
The level of her ambition and the size of the mountain she must climb can be seen in the numbers. Britain owes £2.7 trillion – an amount set to creep up each year through the rest of this parliament, and growth is expected to be no more than 2 per cent over the same period.
