It has been quite a week, with Rachel Reeves delivering a seismic Budget.

Given the number of Budgets and other fiscal events during years of political turbulence, it was always going to take something special to really grab the attention.

And it was not clear, in the run-up to Wednesday’s debut from the Chancellor, that Labour would deliver such a Budget. The mood music was all about tough times, and constraints, and a black hole in the public finances.

It all sounded a bit like what we got from former Conservative prime minister David Cameron in 2010, as he got going with his utterly foolish and counter-productive austerity drive. And this all suggested it might be more of the same from Labour, with the new Government essentially just following on from where the Tories left off.

Then again, this was the first Labour Budget in 14 years.

And that 14-year period had seen some very poor policymaking from the Conservatives, so it was hardly a surprise that Labour should want to address in a big way what it portrayed as major Tory failures.

Ms Reeves, who highlighted the fact she was the UK’s first female Chancellor, set the tone early on, declaring the Budget would deliver tax rises totalling £40 billion a year.

And it was revealed in short order that £25bn of this hike in the annual tax take would be coming from........

© Herald Scotland