And pointless.

It’s almost like they made them up…

Whatever they say, this shows they really aren’t interested in growth.

It was but markets don’t trust Labour to deliver spending restraint and so will want to see credible plans for sustained higher taxes. We don’t have that yet.

Reeves has to tighten fiscal policy, but the budget shows she doesn’t want to do that. Markets are rightly nervous about likely spending overshoots and an unwillingness to raise taxes enough to constrain borrowing.

I’m not so sure.

The lesson that Germany should learn (France has already) is that bad equilibriums are easy to get into and require policy change to get out of. Germany is in one now: it needs tax/labour market reforms and public investment to raise spending. France needs a credible, slow, fiscal tightening.

This kind of language is so like the way the Tory Brexiteers used to talk about trade. For them Brexit was a means to achieve 'free trade'. Reeves' Labour mean 'no new trade barriers that we haven't already chosen ourselves for reasons of overriding domestic political convenience.'

Have you bought a new car recently?