Over and over again, in the run-up to the election and beyond, the prime minister and the chancellor told voters they would not put up taxes on working people – that their manifesto plans for government were fully costed and, with the tax burden at a 70-year high, they were not in the business of raising more taxes.

On Wednesday the chancellor broke those pledges as she lifted taxes by another £26bn, adding to the £40bn rise in her first budget.

She told working people a year ago she would not extend freezing tax thresholds – a Conservative policy – because it would “hurt working people”.

Budget latest: ‘It can only lead to the death of us at the general election’

On Wednesday she ripped up that pledge, as she extended the threshold freeze for three years, dragging 800,000 workers into tax and another million into the higher tax band to raise £8.3bn.

Rachel Reeves said it was a Labour budget and she’s right.

In the first 17 months of this government, Labour have raised tens of billions in taxes, while reversing on welfare reform – the U-turn on the winter fuel allowance and disability benefits has cost £6.6bn.

Ms Reeves even lifted the two-child benefit cap on Wednesday, at a cost of £3bn, despite the prime minister making a point of not putting that pledge in the manifesto as part of the “hard choices” this government would make to try to bear down on the tax burden for ordinary people. The OBR predicts one in four people would be caught by the 40% higher rate of tax by the end of this parliament.

Those higher taxes were necessary for two reasons and aimed at two audiences – the markets and the Labour Party.

For the former, the tax rises help the chancellor meet her fiscal rules, which requires the day-to-day spending budget to be in a surplus by 2029-30.

Before this budget, her headroom was just £9.9bn, which made her vulnerable to external shocks, rises in the cost of borrowing or lower tax takes. Now she has built her buffer to £22bn, which has pleased the markets and should mean investors begin to charge Britain less to borrow.

As for the latter, this was also the chancellor raising taxes to pay for spending and it pleased her backbenchers – when I saw some on the PM’s team going into Downing Street in the early evening, they looked pretty pleased.

I can see why: amid all the talk of leadership challenge, this was a budget that helped buy some time.

“This is a budget for self-preservation, not for the country,” remarked one cabinet minister to me this week.

You can see why: ducking welfare reform, lifting the two-child benefit cap – these are decisions a year-and-a-half into government that Downing Street has been forced into by a mutinous bunch of MPs.

With a majority of 400 MPs, you might expect the PM and his chancellor to take the tough decisions and be on the front foot. Instead they find themselves just trying to survive, preserve their administration and try to lead from a defensive crouch.

When I asked the chancellor about breaking manifesto promises to raise taxes on working people, she argued the pledge explicitly involved rates of income tax (despite her pledge not to extend the threshold freeze in the last budget because it “hurt working people”).

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Why Labour MPs may like Reeves’s budget

Trying to argue it is not a technical breach – the Institute of Fiscal Studies disagreed – rather than taking it on and explaining those decisions to the country says a lot about the mindset of this administration.

One of the main questions that struck me reflecting on this budget is accountability to the voters.

Labour in opposition, and then in government, didn’t tell anyone they might do this, and actually went further than that – explicitly saying they wouldn’t. They were asked, again and again during the election, for tax honesty. The prime minister told me that he’d fund public spending through growth and had “no plans” to raise taxes on working people.

Those people have been let down. Labour voters are predominantly middle earners and higher earning, educated middle classes – and it is these people who are the ones who will be hit by these tax rises that have been driven to pay for welfare spending rather than that much mooted black hole (tax receipts were much better than expected).

This budget is also back-loaded – a spend-now-pay-later budget, as the IFS put it, with tax rises coming a year before the election. Perhaps Rachel Reeves is hoping again something might turn up – her downgraded growth forecasts suggests it won’t.

This budget does probably buy the prime minister and his chancellor more time. But as for credibility, that might not be recoverable. This administration was meant to change the country. Many will be looking at the tax rises and thinking it’s the same old Labour.

Rachel Reeves will face further questions this morning after being accused of presiding over a manifesto-busting budget that rose taxes by £26bn.

The chancellor has acknowledged she is “asking ordinary people to pay a little bit more” following her series of announcements yesterday, including extending the freeze on income tax bands.

But when challenged by Sky News political editor Beth Rigby that this amounted to a breach of Labour’s manifesto, she argued it didn’t because the rates themselves had not changed.

Ms Reeves said the party’s election document was “very clear” about not raising the rates of income tax, national insurance, and VAT.

But she added: “If you’re asking does this have a cost for working people? I acknowledge it does.”

The chancellor – who will be questioned on Mornings With Ridge And Frost from 7am – is set to inflict a record tax burden upon Britain.

Her other measures include:

• A “mansion tax” on properties worth over £2m;

• New taxes on the gambling industry to raise more than £1bn;

• A new mileage tax for electric vehicles from April 2028;

• Slashing the amount you can save in a tax-free cash ISA from £20,000 to £12,000, except for over-65s;

And in a move that will prove particularly unpopular with savers, people paying into a pension under salary sacrifice schemes will face national insurance on contributions above £2,000.

Read more:
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What the budget means for you

The tax rises – which were published by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) ahead of time in an unprecedented blunder – are mostly needed to pay for increased welfare spending.

Ms Reeves announced the abolition of the two-child benefit cap, expected to lift 450,000 children out of poverty.

You should resign, says Badenoch

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch accused her of “hiking taxers on workers, pensioners, and savers to pay for handouts”, claiming the budget will increase benefits for 560,000 families by £5,000 on average.

Ms Reeves had sought to cut the welfare bill earlier this year, but the government was forced into a damaging retreat after backbench Labour MPs rebelled.

“What she could have chosen today is to bring down welfare spending and get more people into work,” Ms Badenoch told the Commons on Wednesday.

“Instead, she has chosen to put a tax up to tax after tax.”

She called on the chancellor to resign.

From our experts:
Ed Conway: This was a historic budget
Beth Rigby: Labour’s credibility might be shot
Sam Coates: It’s not clear if Reeves will survive

Under fire from left and right

Labour MPs cheered raucously at the two-child benefit cap announcement, but one backbencher told Sky News: “We are effectively doing government by consent of the PLP, if not the cabinet – a bad place to be.

“The Tories did it for years, and it can only lead to the death of us at the general election.”

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey, meanwhile, warned Ms Reeves cannot “tax her way to growth”, while Reform’s Nigel Farage described the budget as an “assault on ambition and saving”.

Greens leader Zack Polanski criticised the budget for not raising taxes on the “super wealthy”.

Read more: A town that feels betrayed

Sky’s Sophy Ridge and Wilfred Frost won’t be the only ones putting the chancellor under more scrutiny today – two influential economic think tanks will also give their full verdicts.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and the left-leaning Resolution Foundation have already been critical in their immediate verdicts, with the former describing the budget as “spend now, pay later”, with tax rises being increasingly relied upon over time.

It also accused Ms Reeves of breaching Labour’s manifesto commitments on tax.

The Resolution Foundation warned of a hit to living standards because of Ms Reeves’s measures, though she has said policies aimed at cutting household energy bills and freezing rail fares and prescription charges will help people.

She also claimed her decisions would help cut NHS waiting lists and the national debt.

Also facing more questions today is the head of the OBR, as he remains under pressure over how its forecast of the chancellor’s announcements were published ahead of time.

Follow live updates on the fallout from the budget in the Politics Hub and Money through the day.

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Has the chancellor done enough to save the government after weeks of official and unofficial briefings of the “most trailed budget in history”?

We knew Rachel Reeves was taking taxes to an all-time high before she was even on her feet in the Commons – thanks to the full budget being published by mistake on the Office for Budget Responsibility’s website – but what else was announced, and what didn’t she say?

Sam and Anne break down the budget and talk about:

• The smorgasbord of tax rises – taking it to an all-time high

• Britain’s economic outlook and downgrading of growth

• The opposition’s response to “the worst chancellor in history”

• A potential rebellion from her own MPs