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Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shops, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast.

I'm Katie Balls and I'm joined by James Fusife and Kate Andrews, our economics correspondence.

Next week we'll hear from Rishi Sunak as he delivers his budget.

There are various reports in the papers about what could or might couldn't be in it.

I think probably the story's causing the

most alarm regard tax rises, particularly corporation tax, also hearing about potential stelfth tax.

Kate, is the general mood music that rather than a giveaway budget, as some have said this could be

in the papers, this is actually going to be much harder to swallow.

Yeah, I think that's really possible. It seems very much like a mixed bag so far. We've heard of

roughly 30 billion pounds going into short-term measures to continue to help tackle coronavirus

from an economic perspective. This is expected to cover an extension of the furlough scheme yet

again into the summer.

The Chancellor addressing business loans, which also may be needed into the summer.

A temporary uplift and universal credit. It's not thought that that's going to be extended indefinitely,

but you could see a temporary extension and also an extension of stamp duty.

Now, those are pretty major giveaways,

but counterbalancing that is something that I think very, very few Tories would have expected,

even mere months ago when the chancellor was just dishing out the cash.

And that is that he wants to get straight into tax rises to start addressing the public finances.

...