Chancellor delivers a spring statement strong on wishful thinking and light on compassion for those hit by cuts

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Whatever you do, just don’t call it an emergency budget. It’s a SPRING STATEMENT, you halfwits. Everything is totally normal. This is precisely the fiscal event that Rachel Reeves had always planned to give. Why the long faces? What could be more Labour than implementing massive welfare cuts just days before the tax rises you imposed last autumn come into effect? Just another day in Westminster.

“I have full confidence in the chancellor,” Keir Starmer declared at prime minister’s questions. You couldn’t help wondering if this was the equivalent of a football club chair insisting that the manager’s job was safe just days before sacking him. There again, Keir isn’t spoilt for choice over possible replacements. Reeves looks to be by far the best qualified member of the cabinet. It probably hadn’t occurred to you that things could be even worse.