The FT's Robert Shrimsley got it right. ‘Farewell then Singapore-on-Thames. In truth, we never really knew you.' He went on to argue, correctly, that while the Tories killed the post Brexit dream (more like a chimera in my view) of a low tax Britan by accident, in her first budget, Rachel Reeves was quite deliberate.

Not one post-Brexit chancellor has been able to find the magical way of cutting taxes and delivering commensurate cuts in public services of a kind the public are prepared to tolerate. The Labour Budget was a very much more Social Democratic budget than we have seen in decades. But by getting real with the electorate about the gaping holes in the public services that have opened in the last decade it seems to me as importantly a turning point away from the fantasy politics and economics born in 2016.