Your Party is voted to be called … Your Party, Jeremy Corbyn announces – UK politics live

4.56pm GMT
Corbyn calls for unity in Your Party to fight 'the rise of the far right'

Jeremy Corbyn used his conference speech to call for unity in the party to “fight back against the rise of the far right”.
He said:

It is important that we all absolutely work together on all of this and recognise that what we say and what we do has huge implications for people all over this country. It also is a signpost for the way in which the left in Europe and around the world can organise together in unity to fight back against the rise of the far right, not just in Europe, but in the USA and the nationalist right that are going all around the world.
So the solidarity we’ve shown over Palestine is right, but we also need to show solidarity against the other conflicts in the world to bring about peace in Ukraine, in Sudan, in Congo, and recognise what Trump is doing in the Caribbean is incredibly dangerous to not just to Venezuela, but to Colombia and all of the other Caribbean islands as well.
These issues are incredibly important. We are we are a very diverse group of people and supporters, and that is the strongest way of attacking what the government is doing in creating a new, horrible, hostile environment for so many people within our society.
The attacks on asylum seekers and refugees, the threats to people who are here with indefinite leave to remain, and the systematic abuse of those people that … no will of their own have been put into asylum hotels, our party, your party, this party, we have got to be in the forefront of the fight against racism and discrimination in any form whatsoever in our society. And that means we have to be well organised.

Updated at 4.58pm GMT

4.52pm GMT

Corbyn alluded to the problems that have beset the foundation of Your Party.
He said:

As Zarah [Sultana] said in her speech, there is no handbook on how to set up a political party, but we have come a long way and learned a lot along the way.

4.45pm GMT

The former Labour leader said members had decided the interim name would become permanent at the close of Your Party’s inaugural conference.
“We have a party, we have rules, we have a constitution, we have enthusiasm, we have commitment, we have principles. And, above all, we have a name,” he said.
“Your Party is the name of your party.”
Members chose between Your Party, Our Party, Popular Alliance and For The Many.

Updated at 4.50pm GMT

4.38pm GMT

Jeremy Corbyn is now giving his speech at the Your Party conference.

4.34pm GMT
Your Party is voted to be called ... Your Party

Jeremy Corbyn announces the name of the party: “Your Party, is the name of your party.”

4.31pm GMT

Here are some images coming to us from the Your Party conference:

Updated at 4.34pm GMT

3.44pm GMT

As a reminder, Jeremy Corbyn will close the conference by announcing the result of a ballot on the new party’s formal name, with members choosing between Your Party, Our Party, Popular Alliance and For The Many. We are expecting this to happen at about 4.30pm.

3.31pm GMT

Ben Quinn, a senior reporter for the Guardian, gives his assessment of Sultana’s speech and where Your Party stands on the second day at conference:
Divisions in the nascent left-wing party headed, for now, by Jeremy Corbyn and others have been re-ignited at its inaugural conference as Zarah Sultana delivered a blistering attack on what she described as “the expulsions, the bans and censorship” implemented by others in its leadership.
The independent MP, who resigned her Labour membership in July, arrived inside the main hall in Liverpool to the sound of ‘Oh Zarah Sultana’ after boycotting the first day of the conference in protest at the expulsion of a number of members of the Socialist Workers Party.
In a keynote address to members, she sparked a series of standing ovations from the supporters of what is known, provisionally, as Your Party, calling for the abolition of the monarchy and for former colleagues in the Labour party, including Keir Starmer and David Lammy, to be tried at the Hague over their actions in relation to Gaza
However, while these calls were red meat to the party faithful, the party’s infighting remains an existential threat. Others, including backers of Corbyn, still privately say its hopes of seizing the mantle of leading those to the left of Labour are slim if Sultana and allies from far-left groups are permitted to control its direction.
Sultana delivered a moment of contrition in the middle of her speech, addressing what she described as the “hiccups” since Your Party came together. While she did not explicitly refer to them, those “hiccups” have included rows over funding, membership, the party’s name and even its initial process of launching, which saw her being accused of unilaterally pulling the lever to launch.
“Some of that is my fault and for that I am sorry,” said Sultana, who was greeted with polite applause. “But I want you to know that my aim from the very start was for this party to be led by the members and not MPs.”
The apology stood in contrast with Sultana’s rage at what she warned was a culture of “backroom deals” as well as the “smears and leaks to the Murdoch press.”
Those close to others in the leadership had expected a fiery speech from Sultana, who they said had refused to share it in advance. Whether they will ultimately regard it as a bridge to unity – or another veiled attack remains to be seen.

Updated at 3.52pm GMT

3.23pm GMT
Centrist politicians 'presiding over decay' could pave the way for fascism if far-right capitalises on people's rage - Sultana

Sultana went on to praise Zohran Mamdani’s historic win in becoming the first democratic socialist and Muslim of south Asian descent to become New York City’s mayor (elect).
She said:

The stakes are enormous. The old is dying and if the new cannot be born this will be the time of monsters.
Centrist politicians presiding over decline and decay, pushing people’s rage towards the far right.
But from New York, in the very heart of empire, a new politics emerges. Zohran Mamdani, unapologetically socialist, unapologetically Muslim, unapologetically immigrant, built a campaign that proved what is possible when the working class unites people who look different, pray differently and love differently, but all want a life of dignity where people and planet thrive.
If we don’t win this global fight, decay will give way to fascism and people who look like me will be imprisoned in tents and deported to war zones while everyone gets poorer except for the hedge fund managers who donate to Labour, the Conservatives and Reform. But if we win, if we win we will handover a world renewed for future generations.

Updated at 3.23pm GMT

3.01pm GMT
Sultana says some of the 'hiccups' in the founding of Your Party were her fault

Zarah Sultana apologised for “hiccups” in the foundation of Your Party, saying some of it was her “fault”.
She said:

You may have noticed that the process of stating up this party has had some hiccups. Some of that is my fault, and for that I am sorry.
But I want you to know that my aim from the very start has been to ensure that this party is led by you, the members, and not MPs.

She added: “We have to get better at working with each other. We have to ensure that the best cure against any culture of backroom deals is people power and that’s why I’ve been fighting for maximum member democracy.”
As the Guardian’s Whitehall correspondent, Rowena Mason, notes in this story, there have been disagreements between Corbyn and Sultana over how the left-wing party was launched and how money raised from members should be held.
Two Independent MPs, Adnan Hussain and Iqbal Mohamed, withdrew from the party’s founding process, in part due to infighting.

Updated at 3.06pm GMT

2.51pm GMT
Sultana issues calls to 'abolish the monarchy' after branding Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor a 'parasite'

Sultana says we should abolish the monarchy, saying it was not enough to just abolish the titles of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Britain’s Prince Andrew.
“The same people who run Britain want you to believe that every refugee is a rapist while they grab £12m of taxpayers’ money to protect a parasite called Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor,” she said.
Sultana added:

What a sick society we live in, where our political and media class bend over backwards for the royal family, including Prince Andrew, close friends with notorious paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
That’s our money that provided him housing, that’s our money that defended him in court, that’s our money that put food on his table. Well, not any more. We shouldn’t just abolish Andrew’s titles. We should abolish the monarchy itself.

King Charles’s decision to remove his brother’s birthright and dukedom earlier this month followed growing controversy over Mountbatten-Windsor’s links to the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including that caused by the posthumous publication of Virginia Giuffre’s memoir.
Giuffre alleged that the former prince had sexually abused her after she was trafficked by Epstein, claims Mountbatten-Windsor has always strenuously denied.

Updated at 2.55pm GMT

2.45pm GMT
Sultana says Starmer, Lammy and Mahmood should be 'held in the docks of the Hague' over Gaza

Sultana says Britain should sever ties with the “genocidal apartheid state of Israel” over its devastating military assault on Gaza which many legal scholars have said amounts to a genocide.
The 1948 UN genocide convention defines genocide as any of five “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”.
The government should expel the ambassador and shut down the Israeli embassy in London, Sultana said, adding that ministers should be standing with the Palestinian people “until every inch of their land is free”.
She added:

And we must ensure there is a day of reckoning for those who have enabled genocide. Keir Starmer, David Lammy, Shabana Mahmood, and all responsible are held in the docks of The Hague.

Updated at 3.08pm GMT

2.35pm GMT
'Pathetic' Labour government lacks 'political will to confront parasites who own Britain', Sultana says

Sultana says the Labour government is “weak and pathetic” as the party does not have the “political will” to confront the “parasites who own Britain”.
She says Your Party is there to dismantle a system that attacks disabled people and demonise people coming to Britain via small boats.
Sultana said:

We have a weak and pathetic Labour government that is pushed this way and that way with the political winds, because it does not have the political will to confront the parasites who own Britain.
We are here to break up a system that humiliates our disabled friends and neighbours and deprives them of the cash that they need, while funnelling an extra 11 billion pounds a year to arms companies.
That’s right. Keir Starmer wants an extra 11 billion pounds on defence every year and all the old parties back it. £350 of our money every second on war. That’s money into the pockets of shareholders for the merchants of death, after two years where our money has funded daily spy flights over the ruins of Gaza, aiding and abetting a genocide.
This is a Labour government happy to oppress people abroad and at home. This isn’t a coincidence. The politicians who attack the disabled in Liverpool and demonise the desperate arriving on small boats, they are the same people who blow up our world with war, occupation and genocide, but we know that the real enemy of the working-class travels by private jet, not migrant dinghy …
Ordinary humans suffer everywhere, so the mighty and powerful can sleep in silk sheets in their blood soaked mansions, and as socialists, we stand with the oppressed everywhere, from Sudan to Congo to Palestine.

Sultana is met with cheers of ‘Free, Free, Free Palestine’ after saying she is proudly an “anti zionist”.

Updated at 2.47pm GMT

2.26pm GMT
Sultana says Your Party must never become 'Labour 2.0' as she condemns expulsions as 'unacceptable'

Sultana addresses why she refused to enter the conference hall on Saturday in solidarity with delegates who were expelled over links to other leftwing parties, which she described as a “witch-hunt”.
She said:

We have to confront what took place yesterday, the expulsions, the bans, the censorship on conference floor are unacceptable.
It’s undemocratic. It’s an attack on members and this movement. And those decisions were made at the top, not by you.
Many of those people expelled found out only after they had arrived in Liverpool, people who had travelled across the country took time off work, booked hotels, spent hundreds of pounds that they could not easily spare, discovered at the door that they had been barred, and the shocking sight of a Muslim woman being manhandled and dragged out of conference is something that should shame any party that claims to stand for equality and justice.
These actions come straight out of the labour rights handbook, the same playbook we have all lived through for years, the witch-hunts, the smears, the intimidation, the bullying, the legal threats and the leaks to the Murdoch press. Let me be absolutely clear, the members will not stand for this. The movement will not stand for this, and I will not stand for this. I did not leave the Labour party. You did not leave the Labour party to create another Labour party …
This party must never become a labour 2.0 and that is why we are here to build a new kind of politics, democratic, principled and rooted in the power of the working class.

2.20pm GMT
Sultana says she is honoured to co-found Your Party with Corbyn

She says she is honoured to co-found Your Party with Jeremy Corbyn, whom he says she has an “enormous amount of admiration and respect for”.
Sultana said Corbyn gave a lot of people “hope” when he became leader of the Labour party in 2015.
Sultana says Your Party has more than 55,000 members, making it the largest socialist party in the UK since the 1940s.
“We have built something no one in westminster believed was possible, a mass democratic working-class movement,” she said.

2.16pm GMT

Zarah Sultana, the MP for Coventry South, is arriving on stage to loud applause from members in the crowd.

2.02pm GMT

Zarah Sultana is expected to make a speech shortly. We will be covering her address to the conference in Liverpool live.

2.00pm GMT

You can watch Your Party’s conference proceedings live here:

1.37pm GMT

Spoiler alert!
The results of a vote to decide on a permanent name for the Your Party group meeting in Liverpool is due to be announced later. But from the looks of this picture, there is a clear favourite.

1.15pm GMT

Rachel Reeves has said she was “uncomfortable” listening to Kemi Badenoch’s response to the budget, in which the Conservative leader mocked and impersonated the Chancellor.
During her budget response in the Commons on Wednesday, Badenoch called Reeves “spineless, shameless and completely aimless”, adding: “Let me explain to the Chancellor, woman to woman: people out there aren’t complaining because she’s female, they’re complaining because she is utterly incompetent.”
As Keir Starmer and Reeves exchanged words on the frontbench, the Tory leader asked: “Is he mansplaining to you, by the way?” In an interview before the budget, Reeves had told the Times: “I’m sick of people mansplaining how to be chancellor to me.”
Reeves told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme:

I don’t like that sort of stuff. I don’t do it. I try to concentrate on policies rather than personalities.
So, yes, I was a bit uncomfortable listening to that, because it’s not really the way that I behave, but people are entitled to deliver the budget response that they want and she focused on personalities.

Asked whether she went too far in her response, Badenoch told Kuenssberg:

I remember last year’s budget – Rachel Reeves took a swipe at me, I wasn’t even leader of the opposition then – she’s forgotten now.
I remember when Rachel Reeves was out there calling Rishi Sunak a liar. I remember when they were all calling Liz Truss a lettuce.
But now it’s them and I’m merely talking about her competence. They can’t take it. They like to dish it, but they can’t take it.

Updated at 1.49pm GMT

12.58pm GMT

Despite not entering the conference yesterday, Zarah Sultana is still set to give a speech in the main hall on Sunday afternoon as scheduled.
She is expected to attack the Labour government and Reform UK while praising newly-elected New York mayor Zohran Mamdani.

12.18pm GMT

The Guardian’s senior political correspondent, Peter Walker, has explored the reasons behind the factionalism and infighting plaguing Your Party in this piece:

Related: ‘We had six MPs and four factions’: inside Your Party’s toxic power struggles

12.09pm GMT

Here are some of the key timings for the second day of Your Party’s inaugural conference in Liverpool:

Zarah Sultana is expected to make a speech at about 2pm
The result of the vote among members on four options for Your Party’s permanent name will be announced between 4.25pm and 4.40pm. The name choices are: Your Party, Our Party, For the Many, or Popular Alliance.

Updated at 12.37pm GMT

11.43am GMT
Your Party spokesperson says collective leadership model vote shows it is 'doing politics differently'

A Your Party spokesperson said after the collective leadership option was narrowly approved by members voting online:

This vote shows that we really are doing politics differently: from the bottom-up, not the top-down.
In Westminster we have a professional political class increasingly disconnected from ordinary people, serving corporations and billionaires instead of the communities they are supposed to represent.
With a truly member-led party, we will offer something different: democratic, grassroots, accountable.

Collective leadership will see ordinary members (not MPs) elected to an executive committee.

Updated at 11.56am GMT

11.21am GMT

Zarah Sultana has welcomed the Your Party conference’s decision to choose a collective leadership model over a single leader option.
She said:

I have fought for maximum member democracy since day one. Seeing members choose collective leadership is truly exciting.
Together, we’re building a new socialist party – radically democratic and powered by a mass movement. This party will be led by its members, not MPs. This is only the beginning.

Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour party leader, had previously indicated he would favour a single leader model and would have been likely to stand for the position.

Updated at 11.23am GMT

10.58am GMT
Your Party adopts 'collective leadership' structure

Ben Quinn is a senior reporter for the Guardian
The founding conference of the new left-wing party currently headed by Jeremy Corbyn and others has narrowly voted for it to have a ‘collective leadership’ in a win for Zarah Sultana, who has been at loggerheads with the former Labour leader.
The results were announced this morning after a chaotic start to the conference in Liverpool when Sultana, a former Labour MP who now sits as an independent, boycotted the first day amid disagreements over how Your Party – its provisional name – should be run.
Corbyn had said in advance of the results of voting on new constitutional arrangements that it was “quite hard for the public to grasp things that there are sort of ten people who run things.”
However, members voted by 51.6% to 48.6% for the party – whose future name will be announced later today following the counting of other voting – to have a collective leadership model. A new member-led executive will take the big decisions around the party’s management and strategy, with a chair, deputy chair and spokesperson helping to provide public leadership.
There were also wins for the other positions advocated by Sultana, including for members to be able to have dual membership of other political group.
The latter vote is significant against the backdrop of in-fighting which saw Sultana refusing to enter the conference hall on Saturday in solidarity with delegates who were expelled over links to other leftwing parties, which she described as a “witch-hunt”.
Members of other parties will be eligible to join only after their party has been ratified by the party’s new executive (CEC) and Conference as being aligned with the party’s values.
Corbyn had told journalists on Saturday that entry to Your Party was granted on the condition members were not aligned with other parties registered with the Electoral Commission. The party last week revealed a shortlist of names for its members to pick from and which will be announced later today: Your Party, Our Party, Popular Alliance and For The Many.

Updated at 11.01am GMT

10.40am GMT
Budget 2025: key points at a glance

My colleagues Rob Davies and Rowena Mason have done a useful explainer looking at the main points of the budget, which you can read here:

Related: Budget 2025: key points at a glance

10.22am GMT
Badenoch says Reeves should resign as Labour is accused of breaking manifesto pledge

Kemi Badenoch has reiterated her calls for the chancellor to resign on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, after accusing Rachel Reeves of breaking promises not to raise taxes.
In this year’s budget, Reeves froze tax thresholds for three years longer than previously planned, meaning that as wages rise more people will have to start paying income tax.
Labour promised in its 2024 general election manifesto that it would “not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase national insurance, the basic, higher or additional rates of income tax, or VAT”.
Badenoch told the BBC this morning:

The chancellor called an emergency press conference telling everyone about how terrible the state of the finances were and now we have seen that the OBR had told her the complete opposite. She was raising taxes to pay for welfare.
The only thing that was unfunded was the welfare payments which she has made and she’s doing it on the backs of a lot of people out there who are working very hard and getting poorer. And because of that, I believe she should resign.

Badenoch added:

The shadow chancellor, Mel Stride, has written to the FCA (the Financial Conduct Authority). Hopefully there will be an investigation, because it looks like what she was doing was trying to pitch-roll her budget – tell everyone how awful it would be and then they wouldn’t be as upset when she finally announced it – and still sneak in those tax rises to pay for welfare. That’s not how we should be running this process.

Updated at 11.23am GMT

10.11am GMT
Badenoch says the government has delivered a 'budget for benefits'

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has been interviewed by Trevor Phillips on Sky News. She said that Reeves’ budget has made the nation poorer and that she “should be resigning” having done a “terrible” job.
Badenoch said:

Every single thing that Rachel Reeves did in that budget makes all of us poorer. There are a lot of people out there who are struggling. Go and look at the farmers, for instance – we’re taxing farmers, many of whom are getting less than the minimum wage, to pay for benefits.
We are taxing everybody now to pay for benefits. This was a budget for benefits. That is not the chancellor’s job. That is not what she’s supposed to be doing. Benefits are supposed to be a safety net, they’re not supposed to make you middle-class.
We are at a point now where the rider is getting heavier than the horse, we cannot afford this, and we are leaving debts for our children. That is not fair.

Badenoch is calling for a reduction in the welfare bill, including around mental health benefits.

9.55am GMT
Reeves says that growth is the government's top priority

Laura Kuenssberg said it is no longer “credible” for the chancellor to say her number one priority is growth as the budget has made it more expensive for businesses to hire people and pushed up some business rates.
The OBR forecasts the economy will expand by 1.5% this year, higher than the previous estimate of 1%.
However, it lowered its growth estimates to 1.4% next year and 1.5% in the following four years.
Reeves insists that growth is the top priority for the government, pointing to recent investments in the UK by firms including JP Morgan in London and Goldman Sachs in Birmingham as positive signs.
She told the BBC:

(The OBR) has assessed productivity over the last 14 years as having been lower than they previously expected. Now, I don’t think that the Conservative legacy should define Britain’s future. But I have got to show we can beat those forecasts. We’ve beaten them this year … I am determined to beat those forecasts in the future.

Interactive

Updated at 10.29am GMT

9.43am GMT

Reeves says freezing tax thresholds was “the right thing” to do to safeguard spending commitments, and investment in the NHS.

9.39am GMT
I don’t accept that I misled the public, Reeves says

Reeves is being interviewed by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg. Rachel Reeves was told the Treasury “very deliberately” created the impression she had to put people’s taxes up to fill a “big gap in the public finances that simply didn’t exist”.
Asked if she misled the public in the run up to the budget by Kuenssberg, Reeves said:

I do not accept that at all. The OBR numbers themselves, which I agree with and we knew they were going to be published, they are very clear that there was less fiscal space than there was just a few months ago in the spring. And we needed not less but more fiscal headroom …
Kuenssberg interrupts to say the chancellor didn’t need an extra £26bn in extra taxes to fill the fiscal black hole.

Reeves added:

The numbers that you are using show that the headroom, the fiscal space, had deteriorated. That’s exactly what those numbers show … And of course, that didn’t include the policy choices that we had made between the spring and the autumn including on welfare and including on the winter fuel allowance …
I said when those policies changed just before the summer that we would have to find the money in the budget so I was very upfront about that.

Interactive

Updated at 10.06am GMT

9.21am GMT

Reeves was also asked about her decision to scrap the two child benefit cap from next April, which is estimated to cost £3bn a year by 2029-30.
The move, which came amid intense pressure from Labour backbenchers, was welcomed by campaigners and charities who argue it is the most cost-effective way to cut child poverty.
The two-child limit prevents parents from claiming child tax credit or universal credit for more than two children.
Asked whether the decision to remove the cap was in response to pressure from Labour MPs, Rachel Reeves told Trevor Phillips:

We’re choosing children. This lifts more than half a million children out of poverty, combined with our changes on free breakfast clubs, extending free school meals, 30 hours free childcare for working parents and preschool-age children …
The people I was thinking about were kids who I know in my constituency go to school hungry and go to bed in cold and damp homes, and from April next year those parents will have a bit more support to help their kids.

9.15am GMT
Reeves appears to back OBR chief despite watchdog's shock leak

Rachel Reeves’s much-anticipated budget was undermined after the Office for Budget Responsibility’s economic forecast appeared online about 40 minutes before she announced her policies to the Commons.
The chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility, Richard Hughes, has said he will continue to lead the watchdog unless he loses the confidence of the chancellor, the Treasury committee or parliament.
The OBR’s investigation into the leak is expected to report to the chancellor on Monday.
Asked if Hughes’ position is safe, Reeves said she will study the contents of the report tomorrow, but that she has a “huge amount of respect” for him and the budget watchdog.
She told Sky News:

We will get a report tomorrow, the report that looks at what happened about that budget leak. It was clearly serious. It was clearly a serious breach of the protocol, but I’ll see that report tomorrow.

Updated at 10.00am GMT

9.03am GMT
'Of course I didn't' lie about budget forecasts, Reeves said

Rachel Reeves said she “of course” had not lied about the state of the public finances before the budget. “Of course I didn’t,” she told Trevor Phillips.
Earlier, the chancellor had told his programme:

In the context of a downgrade in our productivity, which cost £16bn, I needed to increase taxes, and I was honest and frank about that in the speech that I gave at beginning of November.

Keir Starmer said on Thursday that Reeves’s £26bn tax-raising budget had “kept to our manifesto”, but conceded that Labour had “asked everybody to contribute” in the years ahead.

Updated at 9.05am GMT

9.01am GMT

Rachel Reeves is speaking to Trevor Phillips on Sky News. He started by replaying a clip of the chancellor saying last year that Labour would not increase taxes further in a future budget. He says her statements turned out not to be true.
Reeves defended this year’s budget by saying it “was not on the scale of the one last year”, adding that she had to ask people to “contribute more” because the “context” had changed.
Reeves said the OBR decided to do a review of productivity and said the watchdog’s productivity downgrade did not reflect anything the Labour government had done.

8.49am GMT
Chancellor to defend budget amid deepening row over deficit claims

Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of UK politics. The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has become engulfed in a politically damaging row about what she told the public about the state of the British economy ahead of last week’s budget.
Reeves had claimed that a downgrade to the UK’s predicted economic productivity would make it more difficult to meet her self-imposed fiscal rules.
She used a speech on 4 November to suggest tax rises were needed because poor productivity growth would have “consequences for the public finances”. It was seen by many as an attempt to clear the way for breaching Labour’s manifesto letter of the pledge on income tax by raising rates.
But the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) – the budget watchdog – on Friday said it had informed the chancellor as early as 17 September that an improved tax take from growing wages and inflation meant the shortfall was likely smaller than initially expected, and told her in October it had been eliminated altogether.
The OBR’s disclosure has prompted opposition figures to urge the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to investigate whether the Treasury deceived the public. The Conservatives have accused Reeves of “market abuse”, which is a civil offence. No 10 has denied Reeves misled the public over the state of the country’s finances ahead of the budget.
The prime minister, Keir Starmer, is expected to give his backing to the budget in a speech tomorrow, saying it will help ease cost of living pressures and lower inflation, and will reportedly announce plans to go “further and faster” to encourage growth.
Reeves will be questioned about the row this morning on the broadcast rounds so stick with us for the latest developments.

Updated at 9.46am GMT