Latest Budget: Darren Jones says Britain has ‘PTSD’ from Liz Truss – but admits Budget hit back at Labor

First of all, don’t panic.

What you need to know is this. The budget did not go down well in the financial markets. Indeed, it has gone down about as badly as any budget in recent years, barring Liz Truss’s mini-budget.

The pound is weaker. Government bond yields (essentially the interest rate the Treasury pays on debt) have risen. This is exactly the opposite market reaction to what chancellors like to see after they recommend their tax returns to the house.

All of this began to crystallize shortly after the budget speech, with yields starting to rise and sterling starting to weaken as investors and economists got their hands on the budget documents. But the pound’s falls and rising bond yields accelerated today.

This is not, to be perfectly clear, the kind of response any chancellor wants to see after a budget – let alone the first budget in office. Indeed, I can’t recall another budget that has seen as hostile a market response as this one in many years – barring one.

That exception is, of course, the Liz Truss/Kwasi Kwarteng mini-budget of 2022. And here you’ll find the silver lining for Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves.

The rises in gold yields and falls in sterling over the last few hours and days are still a far cry from what happened in the run-up to and after the mini-budget. This doesn’t look like a crunch time for UK markets just yet.

But it doesn’t look like good news for the government either. It’s actually pretty terrible. Because higher borrowing rates on UK debt means we (well, we) will end up paying considerably more to service our debt in the coming years. And that debt is set to rise dramatically due to plans set out by the chancellor this week.

And this is where things get particularly sticky for Ms. Reeves. In that budget filing, the Office for Budget Responsibility said the chancellor could afford to see yields on that gilt rise by about 1.3 percentage points, but when they exceeded that level, the so-called “margin” it had against the rules his fiscal will evaporate. . In other words, she would be breaking those rules – which, let’s remember, are considerably less strict than the ones she inherited from Jeremy Hunt.

Which begs the question: where are those gold yields right now? How close are they to the danger zone where the Chancellor ends up breaking his rules?

Short answer: worryingly close. Because right now the yield on five-year government debt (which is the maturity the OBR focuses on the most) is more than halfway through that danger zone – just 56 basis points from reaching the point where the interest costs on the debt consume any freedom the chancellor has. to avoid breaking her rules.

Now, we’re not in crisis territory yet. Nor can any movement in currencies and bonds be attributed to this budget. The markets are volatile right now. There’s a lot going on: US elections next week and a Bank of England interest rate decision next week.

The chancellor might be in luck. Gold yields could settle in the coming days. But right now the UK, with its high levels of public and private debt, with its new government having just committed to borrowing billions more over the coming years, is being watched closely by the “bond watchdogs”.

A Halloween nightmare for any chancellor.