The Observer

Hello, it's Matt here and you're listening to the slow newscast from The Observer.

This week, the ambition deficit.

Ahead of the budget, Rachel Reeves and the Treasury spent months pitchrolling policy after policy

for what was briefed as a radical autumn budget.

It's going to be a consequential one, a chance for the government to get on the front foot

and take on reform who are leading in the polls.

That's not how things turned out.

So to understand what shifted over those months,

my colleagues Rachel Sylvester and Jonathan Lewis

have been speaking to Treasury insiders.

As Rachel tells it, it's been a long and difficult journey.

In the run-up to this year's budget, there was a lot at stake.

Well, it's ahead of the crunch budget. Defining moment for politics and the country.

Indeed, sink or swim, huge pressure on Rachel Reeves ahead of Wednesday.

And it was a defining moment, just not necessarily for the reasons everyone might have expected. The ABR book has been published now. It's been published online by accident,

we're hearing. Because at five minutes to 12, more than half an hour before the Chancellor was due

to deliver her budget, that this has come out beforehand is pretty extraordinary.

I mean, there's leaks and then there's something like this.

We shouldn't be reading this right now.

I can deliver the budget now in the studio, right?

In terms of the main measures.

...