For all the promises of “stability” and “discipline”, what the Chancellor really told the country was simple: the cupboards are bare, the bills are due and she doesn’t want to turn off any spending taps.

The message was unmistakable. Stewardship of the economy is harder than Labour expected: the simplicity of the University Common Room in opposition not translating easily into the reality of government. Reeves is now preparing the ground for fresh tax rises – even if she refuses to utter the phrase outright.

While we are none-the-wiser about her plans at the budget – tariffs, inflation, Brexit, growing Government debt, defence spending, the benefits bill, and a lack of productivity were all name-checked as being to blame. Anything and anyone but her.

Her repeated insistence that she would “do what is necessary, not what is popular” is Whitehall code for a painful Budget.

For the ordinary working Brit, the rhetoric is of little comfort. The cost-of-living crisis may have faded from the front pages, but in millions of households, the reality is stark: frozen tax thresholds that will quietly drag more people into higher rate bands as wages rise over time, obviously only if you’re lucky enough to keep or find a job amongst the crumbling economy.

Duties on everyday items – tobacco, alcohol and almost certainly road fuel will rise.

Sleight of hand measures against pensions and home ownership and promises of fresh investment in public services now look increasingly hollow.

‘Our’ NHS, Labour’s new religion, will doubtless get another bung to disappear into the vast black hole of waste with no discernible improvement.

Additionally, inflation remains well above the acceptable Bank of England levels meaning mortgage costs staying higher for longer. Shopping baskets, rail travel, energy bills – all rising faster than wages, themselves suppressed because of the increase to Employers’ National Insurance.

Despite the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) giving her as many easy balls as they can without officially wearing a Labour rosette, this Budget is about political choices.

She could look to where the Treasury’s hand is heaviest – the so-called “sin taxes” that stealthily chip away at (and fall heaviest upon) the lives of ordinary people.

The Government’s own definition of a “working person” now sits at £46,000 or less. For that group, the cumulative effect of higher duties is devastating: pubs forced to close their doors, smokers pushed deeper into the black market, and loan sharks swirling in the void.

A freeze, or even a modest cut, in these punitive taxes would not reward vice but recognise a reality that working people deserve relief, not moral lectures disguised as fiscal prudence.

Indeed, no serious economist can justify a policy that simultaneously reduces Treasury receipts and fuels crime. A freeze or a cut in duty would not make smoking more attractive but would make the black market less profitable. Australia’s experience of ever more punitive anti-tobacco laws and taxes have fuelled the black market creating gang turf-wars to levels normally associated with Class A drugs. It’s why I viscerally oppose the Tobacco and Vapes Bill making its way through Parliament.

It would close the yawning gap between legal and illegal prices, redirect trade through legitimate channels, and crucially, put money back into the Treasury rather than into the hands of organised crime.

Of course, the health lobby will howl. It always does. But it is worth remembering that Labour’s success now depends on convincing voters it understands the pressures of ordinary life and the needs of real business.

Reeves must look at both the Treasury spreadsheets and towards the lives lived beneath them. The measure of this Budget will not be found in bond yields or credit ratings, but in whether working people feel the grip of the state loosen, even slightly, around their wallets.

Britain cannot tax its way to prosperity, nor moralise its way to growth. What it needs is a government with the courage to make choices that serve both economic sense and social decency.