Tax rises aren't the only way to fill a £20bn black hole

Rachel Reeves is preparing to drop a financial bomb on Britain next week. I've seen figures quoting £10bn, £20bn, even £50bn, for the black hole she will announce she has found. Naturally, the voluminous gap will be blamed on the other lot.

- JAMES MOORE

Except that none of this should surprise anyone who was paying attention during the election campaign, to what was being said and (crucially) to what was left unsaid about the profound fiscal challenge the nation faces.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) explained this in its analysis of Labour's low-fi manifesto that, it said, "leaves literally no room - within the fiscal rules that it has signed up to - for any more spending than planned by the current government".

The plans of that now-previous government involved "cuts both to investment spending and to spending on unprotected public services". But Reeves's boss, Britain's new CEO Sir Keir Starmer, "effectively ruled out such cuts".

"How they will square the circle in government, we do not know," said the IFS. Next week will shine some light on that.

If Labour can conjure up, or get its hands on, some extra economic growth, growth that the current forecasts don't allow for, the task of Reeves and her colleagues will be made an awful lot easier.