Unexpected fall last month will help ease Treasury and Bank of England fears after bond market sell-off

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Rachel Reeves was being written off in some headlines as a “lame duck” chancellor earlier this week, after a savage bond sell-off put her at risk of breaking her fiscal rules.

The shadow chancellor, Mel Stride, had even compared Reeves’s situation – somewhat bafflingly – to Hamlet, Shakespeare’s tragic prince, while the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, claimed Labour had chosen a chancellor who wasn’t “qualified to do the job”.