Can Rachel Reeves use her defining Budget to escape UK’s ‘doom loop’?

Downing Street, both No 10 and 11, hope they can pull off a huge coup this week – to tell the public things will be hard for a while, but convince them that a better country is on the way; that higher taxes will be well spent, public services will get up off their knees, the economy will grow and we’ll all have a stake in it.

There remain competing views about how to achieve that. Some are adamant that “it will be the Labour Budget the whole country’s been waiting for… to escape the doom loop of high taxes, low growth and poor public services”.

But even inside the party there’s scepticism about whether they can make it happen – a fear that No 11’s drive to balance the books, even with changed rules, will take over, preventing a bolder and cheerier message from ringing out at a huge moment.

Reeves and Sir Keir Starmer are fond of saying their number one priority is to grow the economy – and one source says it will not be “a Labour Budget or a Treasury budget, but a Rachel Reeves budget”.

One senior figure fears that the “Treasury sees its number one mission as controlling public spending – not creating growth,” citing no difference between the Treasury under Jeremy Hunt and No 11 under Rachel Reeves.

A Labour source says that “if it is a Treasury Budget, a technocrat one that focuses more on anything else on balancing the books, then it would be a let down”.

Another jokes the plans are “52% Labour, 48% Treasury”, as the party has just been on the side of managing to stick to its political instincts, not the traditional money-saving drive of No 11.

And what about the Budget tradition of a “rabbit out of the hat” – a nice surprise at the end of the statement?

Not this time. I’m told a group of Labour staffers is eagerly holding a sweepstake about what it could be – but a source suggests, in a bleak financial situation, they stand to be sorely disappointed. “There won’t be any rabbit, it’d be like Watership Down for the poor little sod.”