After she raised taxes at the budget last year, Rachel Reeves told businesses and the country that it was a once-in-a-parliament budget, and that she would not be coming back for more.
But today, she did just that, and so the chancellor is asked by Times Radio if she can now tell the public that she will not be raising taxes again at the next budget.
She does not do so.
Reeves says: “Last year, I had to fill the £22bn black hole in the public finances left by the Conservatives.
“What we didn’t know then, as well as that black hole in the public finances, that actually productivity growth was weaker than the Office for Budget Responsibility then forecast.”
That downgrade, she says, means a reduction in tax revenues of £16bn a year, and she says that although she believes “we can beat” the forecasts, ignoring them means paying “a huge price”.
Reeves goes on: “I am not going to risk the instability that we had under the Conservatives with our public finances or family finances, and that’s why I have asked people to pay more.
“I can’t write future budgets, but if you’re asking is this a budget I wanted to deliver today, well I would’ve rather the circumstances were different.
“But as chancellor, I don’t get to choose my inheritance, and I have to live in the world as it is.”
She repeats her assertion that she “made the fair and necessary choices given the circumstances”.