The chancellor, on the morning-after media round, just scraped a no-score draw despite a pervasive sense of unkept promises

The morning after the day and night before. Traditionally the time by which any budget that is going to unravel has started to do so. No wonder Rachel Reeves sounded relatively chipper on the morning media round. OK, her budget hadn’t been declared the greatest ever by the Daily Telegraph, but then she was no Kwasi Kwarteng. And Keir Starmer was no Liz Truss.

The haters were always going to hate; you could disagree with the politics but the numbers more or less appeared to add up. Well, as much as any chancellor’s numbers ever do. Even the International Monetary Fund had given her the thumbs up. This for a chancellor was about as good as it gets. Everyone knows that all budgets are launched on a wing and a prayer. Graveyards of broken promises. Huge sums of money spent and raised on assumptions that would be laughed at by a bank manager if you tried them out on your own finances.