Bring on Rachel Reeves’s boring Spring statement

For the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to tell everyone in advance that her Spring statement will be ‘boring’ is a little like Nigel Farage telling us he might be popping out for a pint, or Sir Keir Starmer telling us he might change his mind. It is useful information, but hardly a huge surprise. Still, the new ‘no drama’ Reeves will at least be an improvement on her former tax-raiding iteration – the British economy could use a break from her attempts to improve it. 

With the Spring statement looming in just under a fortnight’s time, we will at least be spared the constant leaks of madcap ideas that led up to Reeves’s first and second Budgets. According to briefings from the Treasury, ‘the goal is to be as boring as possible’. For a woman who has already perfected her impression of a Dalek with a bad head cold, Reeves may have found something she can actually deliver on. Boring should come naturally to her. 

In the run-up to the last Budget in November, there was constant speculation about which taxes might go up. An increase in capital gains tax was floated, along with a wealth tax, and perhaps even an exit tax to be paid at the departures lounge at Heathrow by anyone who had had enough of all the other tax rises. Reeves went to the extreme of making an ‘emergency announcement’ from No. 11 Downing Street to tell us she was likely to break her manifesto pledge not to raise income tax, before changing her mind and scrapping the whole scheme at the last minute. 

There were two big problems with that. First, it gave the impression of a chancellor who was completely chaotic and had no idea what she actually wanted to do (which was probably accurate, as it happens). Even worse, it did real damage to the economy. Every time a tax raid was floated, entrepreneurs and businesses adjusted their plans to try and minimise the impact it would have on them. Indeed, the uncertainty created by the Budget was one of the main reasons that growth stalled over the autumn.

Almost everything Reeves does turns out to be a catastrophe. So if she has decided to do nothing, that will at least be a modest improvement. Sure, it would be great if she decided to come up with a reforming Spring statement. She could reverse the rise in employer’s National Insurance, cut the rate of capital gains tax again, lower the windfall taxes on North Sea oil, scrap the VAT she imposed on school fees, and perhaps most of all put in place some tough controls on public spending.

But given that Reeves is not very likely to do any of those, a ‘boring’ statement is certainly better than anything else. It won’t do anything to fix the economy. But at least it won’t make it any worse.