Voters already think Reeves has broken her tax promises and would prefer tangible improvements to public services over adherence to the Labour manifesto, says Adam Drummond

After interrupting breakfast TV with a pitch-rolling speech about hard choices, Rachel Reeves is now apparently not planning to raise income taxes. The reason is that a more favourable economic forecast means that the fiscal black hole is smaller than previously thought.

I believe that the Chancellor should reconsider, for the following two reasons:

The first is that nobody elected Rachel Reeves to be George Osborne. While Labour’s manifesto promised not to raise income tax, VAT or employees’ national insurance contributions, the word on the cover was “change” and implicit promise of every Labour campaign is to improve public services and look after the vulnerable.

There are many reasons why Labour has lost votes since winning the election but two catalysing events were the Winter Fuel Payment announcement, and subsequent climbdown, and the welfare reform announcement and climbdown earlier this year.

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