It was a mild day in late March when a Labour Chancellor last stood up in the House of Commons to deliver a budget speech. 

With Labour struggling in the polls, Alistair Darling took to the despatch box with characteristic determination, unveiling a series of piecemeal measures which would do little to help Labour at May’s general election. Few now remember such riveting measures as Labour’s one-off bank payroll tax on bankers’ bonuses, or their small hikes to alcohol and tobacco duties — and who can blame them?

But it’s the budget’s subtitle which tells the most interesting story — Securing the recovery. The truth is, the recovery never came — fourteen years and five Prime Ministers later, Britain’s economy is still in the same slump that Darling was battling so fruitlessly. Wage growth has continued to flatline and economic growth has remained sluggish, while spending has continued to increase.

The post-2008 story of the British economy is one of chasing that promised recovery, which seems forever out of reach. The results of nearly two decades of lost growth are now obvious — a crumbling public realm, British businesses falling behind their competitors, and a country which now feels far poorer than many of its international counterparts. Rather than reducing the services provided by the state, governments have repeatedly reduced the state’s ability to deliver those services — ensuring that everything has gotten steadily, subtly worse. 

Now, in the unusually balmy conditions of late October, Labour have another chance to correct course. After fourteen years of Tory government, Rachel Reeves has the opportunity to finish the work that Alistair Darling so nobly started — securing the recovery for a country which now yearns for the halcyon days of Gordon Brown, Northern Rock, and Take That.

Unfortunately, today’s budget won’t be the one that puts an end to the entropy. In fact, it will almost certainly make the situation worse.

For one, the Chancellor seems intent on driving away Britain’s productive wealth creators, further shrinking the number of productive workers that the Government can rely on to prop up the UK’s failing social contract. Ending non-dom status, increasing Capital Gains Tax, and hiking National Insurance Contributions are policies which all seem designed to drive away the individuals and businesses who keep Britain’s economy running, albeit on fumes. Ordinary people can expect to see those NIC hikes passed on to their own pay packets. In the long run, we can expect to see lower wages and fewer jobs as a result of this change.

But maybe it’s all for a good cause? In fact, most of the cash from these tax raids will go towards plugging Reeves’ so-called fiscal “black hole” — which, like a real black hole, cannot actually be seen with the human eye. Elsewhere, #OurNHS — praise be upon it — has obviously received an additional spending injection of £22bn, while such substantive and hard-hitting economic drivers as the “skills agenda” and our “green energy mission” were also thrown a few loose billions. 

And of course, those spending gaps not plugged by tax hikes will be plugged by borrowing, borrowing, and more borrowing — contributing to our ever-growing debt burden. One of the most depressing line items in today’s budget is the cost of servicing our debt interest — a fiscal deadweight, costing more than £110 billion per year, spent entirely on maintaining our high-debt status quo.

Perhaps most worryingly, there was little recognition of why our economy is actually in such dire straits. Rather than talking about our broken planning system, our eye-watering spending during lockdown, or our self-flagellating energy policy, Reeves was content to lay the blame at the feet of the terrible Tories. 

The depressing reality is that today’s budget is how every budget will look until our politicians decide to tackle our economy’s existential challenges. Until these issues are taken seriously, all we’ll see are spending tweaks here and there, a few bones tossed to popular industries like pubs, and higher taxes.

Debt is far too high, growth is far too low, energy is far too expensive for businesses, and we are allocating far too much money to ever-growing burdens like the NHS and the state pension. Until we start to unpick this Gordian knot of fiscal obligations, Chancellors of both parties will have little choice but to increase taxes, tweak spending at the edges, and offer insubstantial animal sacrifices to the Great Economic Growth God In The Sky.

Tackling these existential challenges will require a level of political bravery which seems lacking in Starmer and friends. After all, making difficult decisions means running the risk of upsetting voters — or, god forbid, stakeholders.

Things will continue to get just a little bit worse, every year, in every way, for everybody

Growing our economy will mean liberalising planning regulations, particularly for transport and energy infrastructure, but doing so will mean offending vested interests. So will ending unsustainable government handouts, or weaning our economy off its addiction to mass migration — but again, both of these things will be necessary for making our economy fit for the future. 

Until we have a Government willing to endure this short-term political damage for long-term economic upside, we will continue to stagnate. Things will continue to get just a little bit worse, every year, in every way, for everybody. 

But at least the budget was delivered by a woman, eh?