There may be trouble ahead, but Reeves's plan could work

History is written by the winners," one Keir Starmer ally told me. "We have got to write the narrative for this government, not let others do it."

- ANDREW GRICE

Rachel Reeves began that task yesterday, in an important Commons statement in which she said the Treasury had found a £22bn black hole in this year’s Budget left by the outgoing Conservative government. The chancellor announced £5.5bn of cuts in the current financial year, and £8.1bn in the next.

Her headline-grabber was to end winter fuel payments for all but the poorest pensioners (those on pension credit or other meanstested benefits). She scrapped Tory plans to bring in a £86,000 cap for an individual’s lifetime social care costs, and a series of road and rail projects, while unfunded proposals for 40 “new hospitals”, originally promised by Boris Johnson, will be reviewed.

Reeves signalled there would be “difficult decisions” to make on spending and tax before her first Budget on 30 October, and signalled a squeeze on welfare payments. With a nod to the financial markets, she said repeatedly: “If we cannot afford it, we cannot do it.”