Boring or bust: Reeves aims to project calm competence in spring forecast

Boring or bust: Reeves aims to project calm competence in spring forecast After 18 months of policy U-turns and political turmoil we are told not to expect any last-minute policy rabbits Politicians tend to hate being boring but Rachel Reeves will be delighted if Tuesday’s spring forecast is judged by voters and financial markets to be reassuringly dull. After Labour’s catastrophic Gorton and Denton byelection result , the chancellor’s future, along with that of the prime minister, is on the line, as backbench MPs fret about the party’s electoral prospects. As Mujtaba Rahman of the consultancy Eurasia Group put it on Friday: “Like Starmer, the chancellor is also fighting for her political life” – whether because the prime minister himself falls, or chooses to move his chancellor in a reset reshuffle. Against that backdrop, Reeves hopes to project calm and competence next week, after a tumultuous 18 months. She and the prime minister entered government in July 2024 determined to restore a sense of stability, after a string of chaotic Conservative administrations. They hoped that a secure parliamentary majority and pragmatism would reassure investors and kindle an economic renaissance. Yet each of Reeves’s moments in the spotlight since then has instead sparked drama and controversy. Within weeks of coming to power, she cut the winter fuel allowance for UK pensioners. Then there was the £25bn national insurance rise in her first budget; botched welfare cuts in last year’s spring statement – and a second stonking round of tax rises last November. Many of these key decisions, made in the Treasury, have subsequently had to be reversed. Next week, by contrast, is widely expected – and intended by Reeves’s team – to be a non-event. There will be, they repeatedly insist, “no policy announcements”, and she will resist the temptation, beloved by her predecessors, to pull a last-minute policy rabbit out of the hat. “The era of rabbits is over,” a Treasury source said. The chan...