The BBC's highest-paid actor, no less!

Losses pared back a bit - but still pretty chunky - as Bloomberg reports that the income tax decision reflects better economic forecasts

Perhaps not in a de facto sense but I think everyone - especially the bond market - would get the message.

They sort of already do this (section on sensitivities where they describe what would wipe out headroom)

But I think if there were games to stack the forecasts (and I'm not sure about that, given that would be incredibly dumb), I genuinely think the OBR would spell that in plain English

My sense is the OBR's tolerance for those sorts of games is less than it used to be.

If that is the plan, it's very short-sighted as the OBR could easily just call it out: "Our estimate of headroom is extremely sensitive to changes in market conditions. Had our window been a week later..."

Gilts (so far) having their worst day since Reeves' tearful appearance in parliament on July 2.

I mean, we saw this over the last year... and... they want more?

Hammering loads of smaller taxes has weird behavioural effects, risk of unintended consequences. At least income tax is relatively predictable. ( @johnstepek.bsky.social wrote well about this last time round)

Sort of like firms grappling with myriad aspects of Brexit

No idea if there'll be a market reaction to this stuff but a lot of investors will hate this.

Not that doing whatever the market wants is the best way to go - but there are good arguments against the 'smorgasbord'

One wonders if people on the manufacturing and renewable energy side of the economy will be looking at this with a degree of "WTF" given they've complained of grid issues for years and years

But no more than that.

"Alas, poor Free Trade! I knew him well... where be your open markets now!?"