The three spectres hanging over Rachel Reeves’ make-or-break budget

By Renaud Foucart, Senior Lecturer in Economics, Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster University

As the UK prepares for the budget announcement, familiar debates are taking shape. Should Chancellor Rachel Reeves cut welfare spending? Or reform the “triple lock” on state pensions?

Other debates focus on revenue: how should she raise money without breaking Labour’s manifesto promise not to increase taxes on working people? But these discussions are being held in a strange vacuum, where the three enormous expenditures that led the UK to this point are not mentioned.

COVID debt, energy support schemes and Brexit have fundamentally shaped the UK’s…

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