I struggle to find any Labour MPs who will privately attempt to argue the weeks leading up to this Budget have been anything other than a mess.
It has been sufficiently messy that it has prompted some to argue, external the very idea of an annual Budget should be scrapped entirely.
The relationship between the government and its backbenchers is at best tetchy, at its worst volcanic.
Deep unpopularity in the country and jittery Labour MPs is the prism through which both the countdown to this Budget and its aftermath should be seen.
The prospect of it going down so badly there was a leadership challenge, possibly before Christmas, is what prompted some of those loyal to the prime minister to tell some reporters Sir Keir would fight any such challenge.
The prospect of mutiny among Labour MPs if the Chancellor had smashed Labour’s manifesto promise not to put up income tax rates prompted both the attempt a few weeks ago to make the case for it, and the decision a week or so later to have second thoughts.
Wobbly indecision in plain sight is near impossible for Labour MPs to defend.
But the lack of warmth cuts both ways.
“The Parliamentary Labour Party is sprawling and naïve,” one government figure tells me.
“They want to avoid the trade-offs and we have to tell them we’re in government, you can’t do that.”
The best Rachel Reeves can hope for is that this is a Budget she can get through without making her and Sir Keir Starmer’s parlous situation even worse – and that it buys them some time, and some patience, from their own MPs and the country.
But they both know there isn’t much patience about.