14-mile tunnels will be first new Thames crossing east of London for 60 years, with work having already cost more than £1bn

Rachel Reeves has received a backhanded endorsement from Kemi Badenoch, who described the chancellor as “one of the best” of the Labour team – but only, Badenoch said, because the others were even worse.

In an interview this morning on Talk TV, asked if Reeves should lose her job because of what she had done to the economy, Badenoch replied:

I think in any other field she would have. But she’s actually one of the best that they’ve they’ve got, which is what’s really sad.

If she goes, we’re likely to get someone much worse. You listen to labour backbenchers, and a lot of the things that they ask for are crazy, they would bankrupt the country tomorrow.

The mistakes that she made in that budget are what she’s trying to fix now with the emergency budget that we’re getting tomorrow.

This is not something that’s reacting to world events. She made errors, problems have been caused, and now she’s going to try and fix them again tomorrow. That’s wrong, and I think that she should be judged on that basis.