It’s been said many times in this column – I wouldn’t want the job, but later this month Chancellor Rachel Reeves will present her second Budget in less than a year. The first one was supposed to have gone far enough, according to the Chancellor herself, to make it unnecessary to hit the nation a second time.

The first Budget was presented against a background of blaming the party who had been in power previously and of setting fiscal rules for the rest of this parliament. It honoured, after a fashion at least, a manifesto commitment not to raise the rates of the main taxes. Businesses were hit hard by a sharp rise in employers’ national insurance, which apparently doesn’t qualify as a main tax. Never mind the definition, the impact has been wholly detrimental to business performance, inflation, confidence and probably the overall tax take.

Business confidence has fallen to a new low

A lot has happened since then. Inflation, and therefore interest rates have remained higher than desirable, fed, at least to a large part, by last year’s Budget. The Chancellor’s own government has had to take a backward step in welfare reforms as a result of not being able to force through its planned measure. And business confidence has fallen to a new low as the country prepares for recession.

So what is the Chancellor going to do? Hit businesses as she did last year and force even more of them out of business, increasing already worrying unemployment statistics at the same time? Tinker with pensions and inheritance tax reliefs because that hits the better off and they can afford to make a greater contribution to resolving the mess?

Or maybe wise up to the simple answer and put up tax rates – 1p for standard rate taxpayers, 2p for higher rate and 5p for highest rate. It’s simple, it’s immediate and it’s fair. But it means admitting that it’s not possible to stick to her manifesto promise. My dear departed mum always used to tell me that if I got something wrong, to hold my hand up and apologise.

Sadly, I don’t think the current Chancellor will listen to mum and therefore we have another few weeks of uncertainty, and then goodness knows what, to follow.