What room to manoeuvre does Reeves have on tax?

Who to blame for the fiscal "black hole" and how big it "really" is are questions that have hogged the political debate in recent days. Traducing Jeremy Hunt's integrity, by implication, has drawn a furious response from the former chancellor; his successor, Rachel Reeves, has been accused by Hunt of confecting the crisis to give in to the doctors’ pay demands, and to put up taxes, as she has planned all along.

- SEAN O'GRADY

In turn, Reeves accuses Hunt of lying. It’s probably worth mentioning that Reeves wouldn’t really have wanted to cut the pensioners’ winter fuel allowance, a deeply unpopular move with a key electoral demographic, just for lol, but in any event she’s now conceded that tax rises, ie over and above the specifics in the Labour manifesto, are coming: “I think that we will have to increase taxes in the Budget.” Given the overall tax “burden” on the economy is at a 70-year high, Reeves will have to look at her options...

How much does she need to raise?

It’s complicated, and we won’t know for sure until the Budget. Taking the £22bn “black hole” at face value, some of it comes from one-off unfunded spending, such as the Rwanda plan, but other elements, notably the bumper pay rise for doctors, are an annual, permanent feature of the public finances. In her spending audit, Reeves identified some £5.5bn of immediate “in-year” savings; more might be found, such as “efficiency savings”.

But that still leaves more than, say, £15bn to be found. And that, of course, doesn’t take into account other contingencies, such as paying compensation for the infected blood scandal, the collapse of Thames Water, the bankruptcies of universities and local authorities, and preparations for the next pandemic and European war. So, yes, who’d want to be chancellor of the Exchequer?

What won’t she do?