The Chancellor’s speech yesterday was really very odd indeed. It benefited from all the gravitas of a Downing Street address to the nation, but was remarkably thin on substance.

She created an atmosphere of high drama but left her audience with nothing but questions to which she was unable or unwilling to provide an answer.

She spent 20 minutes seemingly building up to some kind of announcement or conclusion but in the end we were left only with a ‘vibes based’ approach to expectation management. The political rationale for such a highly unusual pre-Budget intervention is understandable; it was........

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