Scheduling the Budget almost four months after their election victory would have counted as a monumental misjudgment for the Labour government were it not for all the other cock-ups that turned their first 100 days into a sitcom. Still, the extended period of speculation about which taxes Rachel Reeves is really planning to raise has done no good at all to her carefully groomed reputation as a ‘serious economist’ (to quote Mark Carney) who is somehow uniquely pro-business and pro-worker.