Chancellor tells parliamentary party they might not like every measure but promises budget will be ‘fair’
Rachel Reeves has privately urged Labour MPs to back her make-or-break budget, saying they will not like every measure but promising it will be “fair”.
Speaking to a fractious parliamentary party, after a fortnight of leadership speculation, the chancellor said “politics is a team sport” and promised there would be a package of appealing measures in the budget that they could present to their constituents.
“When you look at the distributional analysis you’ll see this is a Labour budget, a progressive budget, a budget I’m proud of,” Reeves told the gathered MPs.
But she told them it would be “a package not a pick and mix … you can’t say I like the cola bottles but not the fruit salad”.
