Crucial test that Reeves's Budget cannot afford to fail

How do you sell what you admit will be a painful Budget? That's the question the best brains in the Starmer government have been wrestling with ahead of Wednesday's make-or-break package, which will set the terms of political trade for the five-year parliament.

- ANDREW GRICE

They have an uphill struggle. Every tax rise will be portrayed as bad news by a largely hostile media. Can Rachel Reeves outgun that with the limited supply of good news - more money for the NHS and changing her "non-negotiable" fiscal rules, which she has renegotiated in talks with herself, to permit an eventual £50bn a year of extra borrowing for investment projects?

Yet I think Reeves can win round many of the voters Labour needs to reassure. I wouldn't have written that a few weeks ago, when the government's communications were poor. The threemonth vacuum since Reeves's July Commons statement, announcing the means-testing of the pensioners' winter fuel allowance, was filled gleefully by the media with the freebies' controversy. An unhappy, mutinous Downing Street crew poured fuel on the fire by doing their infighting in public.

No 10 failed to use the power at its disposal to change the music. At one point, its feeble attempt at diversion was a picture of the Starmers' new cat. Starmer seemed naively unaware of the need for a 24/7 effort to control the agenda rather than relying on damage limitation after most of the media had done its worst.