Tomorrow Rachel Reeves will deliver her big speech in the City. The annual Mansion House address is a chance for the Chancellor to set out her vision for the British economy. But amid a gloomy set of economic indicators (including two consecutive monthly GDP contractions) it is difficult to see what good news she can offer.
Westminster would be alive with speculation about what she might announce – initially, there was talk of reforms to cash ISAs; now, attention has turned to the prospect of Reeves promising a ‘new Big Bang’ by slashing regulation on financial services – however everyone is busy trying to work out who are the ‘working people’ the Labour government has pledged not to raise taxes for?
Are they – as Heida Alexander argued over the weekend – ‘people on modest incomes’? Or, as Darren Jones suggested today, ‘anyone that gets a payslip, basically’? That is quite a difference in definition – so who exactly is a ‘working person’?
James Heale speaks to Tim Shipman and Michael Simmons.
Produced by Oscar Edmondson.
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