I have now heard so many Labour people quiver that Rachel Reeves’ looming budget is a “make or break” event that I’ve given up counting. Whether or not it will deserve such hyperbolic billing, it is certainly true that the first Labour budget in 14 years is the most significant moment since the election, both for the chancellor’s reputation and the standing of the government as a whole. When Ms Reeves gets up before the Commons on 30 October, she will do so accompanied by a great weight of expectation.

“It’s massive,” says one member of the cabinet. “Hugely important,” agrees another. “It sets the course for the rest of the parliament.” A third senior minister describes it as “a milestone budget” with “several big jobs to do”. The first is to clear the decks of the dire fiscal legacy left by the Tories. The second is to do what she can for dilapidated public services. The third challenge, the most critical for the long term, is to change the arc of Britain’s story by putting the country on a trajectory towards higher growth. No pressure then, chancellor.

Land the budget well and Ms Reeves will settle nerves about the economy and give the government a clearer sense of direction while – or so her colleagues hope – drawing a line under a damaging period dominated by the debilitating dripfeed of revelations about freebies and nasty office politics at Number 10. Land the budget badly and the unravelling we’ve seen in recent weeks will get more dangerous. One Treasury insider remarks: “Every budget has a lot of risks to it – and this one is a huge budget.”

The interminably long build-up to the event is a consequence of the chancellor ordering an audit of the inheritance from the Tories before she did anything else, arm-wrestling between the Treasury and spending ministers over departmental funding, and the Office for Budget Responsibility then needing time to mark the chancellor’s maths. Politics abhors a vacuum. It has been filled with endless rumour-mongering. The appetite for speculation among journalists has been fuelled by hints and winks, nudges and steers from ministers and their aides about what might be........

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