You are probably aware that the government announced its budget last week. There was, understandably, quite a fuss about it. It was the first by a Labour government for 14 years. It was the first-ever to be delivered by a female Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the person of Rachel Reeves. Your overall opinion of it will quite likely depend on how it will impact your own finances. Certainly most of the preliminary scene-setting was about Reeves and the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, saying this was a budget that would deliver for “working people”, which meant they and other ministers spent an eternal (infernal?) amount of time down the rabbit hole of defining what a “working person” was.

I mean, we all knew they did not mean Premier League footballers, for example; if you like, people who are paid huge sums of money for enjoying their hobby in front of large audiences. But when one minister declined to confirm that a small-business owner who earned £13,000 a year counted as a “working person” and thus should be protected from tax rises, it seemed simply stupid. She said a working person was someone “whose main income arises from the fact that they go out to work every day”. Which could in theory take us back to the Premier League.

In truth, Starmer & Co might have spared themselves the kerfuffle and gone for a phrase that I recall Theresa May used when she was PM: it would be a budget for people who were “getting by”. At the sharper end of this, the earnings limit on people who claim government support for taking care of poorly or elderly loved ones will rise by £45 per week. In general, rather than in person, there will extra money for the NHS, schools and the armed forces. There will be more investment in the railways. Pot holes will get filled in. Public spending as a share of national output will be 44% by the end of this parliament. That’s 5% higher than pre-Covid.

But someone has to pay for this, and the major contributor by far was the increase in employers’ national insurance contributions (NIC). OK, so the better-off bear the bigger burden, but the Office for Budget Responsibility pointed out that this was bound to have a negative impact on business investment. Farmers were, inevitably, angry that inheritance tax would be levied on some of their properties, making it perhaps harder for the land to pass through the generations. Regarding the introduction of tax on inherited-defined contribution pensions (don’t ask), that debate could get very heated. On the other hand, some left-wing commentators were cross with Reeves because she had only raised the level of capital gains tax payable on private-equity deals to 32% rather than the widely mooted 45%.

I am sure she realised she was not going to please everyone with her announcement. The main trick was to avoid pleasing no one. And, short-term, hoping the financial markets stayed calm. Plus, long-term, hoping her optimistic forecasts for growth turn out to be realistic ones. The government’s over-arching aim, of course, is that this budget will be the bedrock upon which it will secure a second-term when the next election is called, probably in autumn 2028 or spring 2029.

If things go as Rachel Reeves hopes, then we could be heading towards those elusive sunny uplands as surely as The Shard points in that direction (shown in the photo on the home page). If things don’t, she will probably be out of a job – or at least out of her current one.