"Cheer up – it's nearly the Budget," was my colleague Paul Clements' parting shot for us last week. Well, as the chancellor waved her big red box aloft outside No 11 on Wednesday and prepared to hand out treats, the excitement finally caught up with everybody. 

"The leaks and lateness of this Budget have made it the most hated in history" said James Moore – and that was before it was even published. How fitting, then, that the not-so-responsible Office of Budget Responsibility leaked the thing 40 minutes early due to a "technical error". Typical, concluded Sean O'Grady. "Disastrous as it was, even Liz Truss didn't bodge the running of her notorious Budget quite as badly as this."

What was in the box then, Rachel? There may have been huge welfare giveaways to lift the hated two-child benefit cap but make no mistake, said John Rentoul, this was the Budget that buried New Labour for good. "Almost the whole point of New Labour was to combine wealth-creation and compassion, on the basis that the first paid for the second. It was about getting people off welfare and into work. At the first sign of trouble from Labour MPs over welfare reform, however, Starmer and Reeves turned tail and ran away."  

Clearly, this one is going to hurt. Even Reeves – who had spent the days before her make-or-break Budget talking about the misogyny she has faced in public life – looked pretty deflated as Tory leader Kemi Badenoch ripped into her at the despatch box. "Let me explain to the chancellor, woman to woman: people out there aren't complaining because she's female," Badenoch said. "They're complaining because she's utterly incompetent."

I hold little truck with the idea of unquestioning "solidarity" among women, but this was a bit on the nose, said Joy Lo Dico. "Reeves framed this Budget as part of her resistance to misogyny. But it is Badenoch who has turned the argument into one about anti-feminism. Good luck with that when the men in the grey suits turn up."

So, smiles all round, then. Onto the next one. 

Cartoon by Dave Brown, for The Independent

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