The weekend after the budget is always a tricky time for me. I can’t ignore last Wednesday’s statement after such a long, if chaotic, build-up. That would be like a cricket correspondent ignoring the first Ashes Test — though that might be no bad thing — or a theatre critic passing up the opportunity to review the season’s big opening.

At the same time, I am fully aware that many of you will have had enough of the budget even before Rachel Reeves got to the end of her speech — which had more than a flavour of her great hero Gordon Brown — if you had not already been put off by the months of speculation.

It is good to have had a few days to think about the budget. Quite a lot of the instant reaction you see has quite a strong Blue Peter element: here is one that they prepared earlier.

• OBR chief Richard Hughes quits over budget leak

So let me get my verdict out of the way before moving on to another issue. After all the speculation, and leaks — including that spectacular budget-day Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) leak — the budget was a bit of a damp squib. The markets, judging by their reaction, liked that, together with the chancellor’s decision to give herself some significant fiscal headroom, more than £20 billion, which offers a chance of moving beyond the air of permanent fiscal crisis that has characterised this government’s period in office so far.

Do I despair at the chancellor’s failure to meaningfully address the growth in public spending — and in particular, welfare spending? Yes. I wrote here on November 1 that spending cuts had to be part of the budget package to get us out of the fiscal hole. For “no return to austerity” Reeves, sadly, they were not.

Does it get me down that income tax (and national insurance) allowances and thresholds are to be frozen for another three years from 2028, making the biggest stealth tax increase in history even bigger and dragging many hundreds of thousands more people into paying income tax, and paying it at a higher rate? Yes, it does.

We have had a long period of real wage stagnation, which is due to continue, and which in the 2010s was made palatable by the increase in income tax allowances and thresholds, permitting a rise in real incomes. Now a modest rise in real wages is being stifled by that freeze. Real household disposable incomes per head will still rise over this decade, though only very slightly and, contrary to some reporting, they will be about 13 per cent higher at the end of the 2020s than in 2008, which is pretty poor over that length of time.

The freeze on allowances and thresholds, which are meant by law to increase in line with inflation (the Rooker-Wise amendment of 1977), will have lasted nine years and this damaging fiscal drag is taking on an air of permanence, a bit like the freeze on fuel duty. On that, Reeves has at least taken the brave step of signalling an end to the emergency 5p-a-litre fuel duty cut from next September, unless politics intervenes, and introducing a new pay-per-mile tax on electric vehicles to prevent the erosion of revenues from the switch to EVs.

I also found it mildly encouraging that the economic debate sparked by the budget is a grown-up one between Labour and the Tories, with the Liberal Democrats pitching in by focusing on the damage from Brexit. Reform UK does not have a credible economic policy position, and the Greens are away with the fairies.

• Don’t fall for political parties selling economic snake oil

On which note, if it is not too awkward a link, you may recall that before last year’s election, Labour was accused of relying on the “growth fairy” to make its numbers add up. There has been growth in every quarter since this government took office, but it has not been nearly strong enough. Richard Hughes, chairman of the OBR, already in the doghouse because of the budget-day leak, did not endear himself to the chancellor by saying there was nothing in the budget that met his organisation’s standard for raising its growth projections.

It has previously scored the government’s additional capital investment — infrastructure and other spending — and planning reforms as positive for growth, but there was nothing more to add to growth last Wednesday. Even the Treasury described it as a “continuation”. Hopes that the government’s EU “reset” and the India trade deal would be scored as positive for growth fell on deaf ears.

The OBR’s new growth forecast, averaging 1.5 per cent a year for the next few years, is better than the 1.2 per cent average since 2008, but too weak to be transformative.

So, where does more growth come from? The chancellor and her advisers think that if they have finally delivered the stability promised by Labour nearly 18 months ago, then this will bring benefits. Financial markets will no longer be constantly on edge and businesses will have the confidence to invest (though the OBR revised down its business investment forecasts).

Consumers, while held back by feeble growth in living standards, could break out of their caution and start spending seriously again, if they no longer fear that they are going to be hit by as-yet unannounced tax increases. Fiscal stability, of course, also requires political stability.

• Mehreen Khan: Is the UK economy better off after the budget?

To this could be added the impact of lower interest rates, with the Bank of England set to cut again next month, from 4 to 3.75 per cent, and a couple more reductions expected next year. Over the past two to three years, the economy has had to cope with much higher interest rates than was the norm over the previous decade and a half. As the reductions from the peak of more than 5 per cent feed through, this should have a positive impact on growth.

Will it be enough? No. So what is needed? It was set out well the other day. “Growth is the engine that carries every one of our ambitions forward … growth doesn’t just appear out of thin air. It is built patiently, and stubbornly, by the people who take risks — by founders who bet their savings on an idea, by firms breaking into new markets, developing new technologies, creating jobs and new opportunities.”

Not my words, but those of Reeves in her budget speech. She promised to “match private enterprise with public ambition”. After another tax-raising budget, which has at least partly repaired the government’s relations with business, it is up to her to make that a reality.

PS

I can’t leave this week without reflecting on my slight embarrassment at how everybody has been describing the budget as a “smorgasbord” of tax increases. Having just been to Sweden, if only briefly, I missed out on a real smorgasbord. I’m sure they are delicious, but I will always associate them with the 2025 budget.

• Alistair Osborne: Smorgasbord budget or dog’s breakfast?

Only the media, and political sophisticates operating within the Westminster village, could come up with “smorgasbord” as a description for the budget. It reminded me of the apocryphal story of Lord (Peter) Mandelson, former cabinet minister and British ambassador in Washington, campaigning in the North. He allegedly went into a fish and chip shop, pointed at the mushy peas and said he would like some of that guacamole.

To put you, and me, out of our misery, let me quote Wikipedia: “A Swedish smörgåsbord consists of both hot and cold dishes. Bread, butter and cheese are always part of the smörgåsbord. It is customary to begin with cold fish dishes, which are generally various forms of herring, salmon and eel. After eating the first portion, people usually continue with the second course (other cold dishes) and round off with hot dishes.”

I was glad to see, in this context, that the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), not a natural supporter of this government, described the budget as a “dog’s breakfast”, both before and after it was delivered. I’ve never had one of those either, but at least it did not have to plunder other countries’ culinary traditions to come up with an analogy.

But the IEA, I fear, is out of date; it has not kept up with advances in canine cuisine. Having done some family dog-sitting recently, I discovered that many dogs these days are on carefully curated personalised meal plans. They are provided by an online business whose name I will not mention, just in case they reward me with a year’s supply of dog food. So, the dog’s breakfast was actually a doggy gourmet meal and so, for that matter, was the dog’s dinner.

david.smith@sunday-times.co.uk