Rachel Reeves’ Budget shambles causes chaos in the Commons

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A message to future Chancellors: if you want to your Budget to come across as slick and measured, make sure the run-up is as shambolic as possible.

It’s not unusual for measures in the Budget to be floated by the Treasury beforehand, sometimes to test the public’s reaction and sometimes to allow the ideas to sink in so they’re not so shocking.

But this year the briefing was on a different level, to the extent that headlines were made when one proposal we shouldn’t have known about yet – a rise in income tax – was jettisoned two weeks before Rachel Reeves was meant to announce it in the Commons.

And that’s before we arrive at the mother of all Budget calamities, perfectly timed to coincide with the beginning of Prime Minister’s Questions.

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I watched from the press gallery as Reeves scrolled through her phone, fiddled with her pen, and passed notes to Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury Torsten Bell behind her.

She’d just learned that all the details of her Budget had been accidentally revealed by a premature publication from the Office for Budget Responsibility.

Who knows what was going through her head at that point? Perhaps relief that it was categorically somebody else’s bungle that everyone was talking about.

So, all she really had to do to look comparatively composed was not slip on the carpet and toss her papers over the Tory front benches as she stood up to the despatch box.

I’m pleased to report Reeves managed to avoid that – though you might not have known from the reaction of MPs to her taking her place.

The roar from both sides was extraordinary, before she had even begun speaking.

And it didn’t let up. I was in the same room as the Chancellor, watching her talk into a microphone, and there were times I could hardly make out what she was saying from the heckling.

She had a couple of one-liners up her sleeve – ‘I don’t mind their shouting as long as it’s from the opposition benches,’ ‘They’re being so loud but I can’t hear them anymore’ – but ran out quickly as the Deputy Speaker kept pausing proceedings.

The atmosphere was raucous, but I watched it gradually shift towards celebration from Labour MPs as the speech went on.

That culminated in the crowning moment of scrapping the two-child benefit limit, a move that charities say will have a very real impact in lifting hundreds of thousands of kids out of poverty.

Backbenchers behind Reeves yelled in glee and waved their papers above their heads.

They’d forgotten the messy lead-up to the Budget quickly enough. The question is how long that jubilation will last once they (and the country) have had a chance to go through the detail.

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