Starmer has little choice but to bind himself closer to his chancellor | Keir Starmer

While Keir Starmer sued for an investigation against Boris Johnson over his Partygate antics, it took almost two months and a police investigation before he formally called on the prime minister to resign. He was of the view that there was no point in calling things until they were likely to happen.

This is not the philosophy of the current leader of the opposition. Since October, Kemi Badenoch has called on Starmer to sack his chancellor three times; once for a rental license mishap, then for considering increasing income tax, and finally for not actually increasing income tax.

It’s unclear whether Badenoch actually believes Reeves could be removed from office for distorting the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecasts to help Reeves back from the brink of a manifesto breach. Resignations are coming thick and fast, from Angela Rayner to Peter Mandelson, and now Richard Hughes’ departure from the OBR over an embarrassing lack of quality in their cybersecurity meant the entire budget was leaked early.

But the truth is that prime ministers almost never sack their chancellors; When they do, it almost inevitably leads to their own downfall. The last chancellor to experience this, Kwasi Kwarteng, told Liz Truss the obvious truth to her face: If she dismissed him, his own premiership would be over.

After this budget, Starmer knows the same goes for him and Reeves. The decision not to proceed with the manifesto breach on income tax cannot be understood without the context of Starmer’s need to protect his own political survival.

Starmer gathered journalists at a community center in Southwark on Monday morning to try to highlight the key issues in the budget – cuts to energy bills, removing the two-child benefit cap and promising more investment, deregulation and reform.

However, it was striking that while he was in the room, he held the press conference not to shift the blame to others, but to bring himself closer to Reeves. “There was nothing misleading, I just don’t accept it. And I was getting the numbers,” he said.

He took the unprecedented step of revealing that it was he who thought he was violating the manifesto by increasing income tax. “I didn’t want to go there, but I realized we might have to,” he said, defending Reeves against accusations that he misled markets and the public.

“As the process continued, it became clear to me and others that we could do what we needed to do on our priorities without violating the manifesto.”

During the hour-long speech and questions, Starmer repeatedly underlined that the budget choices were his. He also turned his own fire on the OBR, with barely concealed anger about how “stunned” he was by the timing of the drop in productivity and the “serious error” of the leaked forecast.

Some in Westminster believe Hughes’ resignation further exposed Reeves after a weekend counter-briefing in which the OBR left no doubt that the income tax decision was not made because of suddenly improving forecasts. Hughes claimed responsibility after the body’s cybersecurity was found to be inadequate. Maybe Reeves should do the same now that the twist has been revealed.

But Starmer made it quite clear on Monday that this was unthinkable. And if he parted company with his chancellor now, it would shed light on the real context of his decision to abandon the idea of ​​violating the income tax manifesto, in a week when Starmer’s leadership is under renewed threat following a furious Allied briefing against health secretary Wes Streeting.

Scratch the surface and this is the most worrying thing for some of the more thoughtful and economically educated Labor MPs; This is an unambitious, essentially self-preserving budget in which the living standards of ordinary voters continue to stagnate.

The majority of Labor in parliament are happy enough to see the two-child limit end. But amid predictions of the worst parliament in terms of living standards, there is little to give growth-oriented MPs hope. Once again, the real risk to Starmer and Reeves’ future is not Badenoch but the restive PLP.