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FTSE 100 Live: BBVA Sabadell bid falls through, tax rises in focus

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The City PM Live Blog
The City PM FTSE 100 liveblog with your top market stories.

Good morning from the City PM liveblog team.

Rachel Reeves isn’t going to introduce a Wealth Tax, but she is going to tax the wealthy. 

She isn’t going to impose austerity, but she is going to get spending under control. Confused?

Speculation over the contents of next month’s Budget has reached fever pitch, and it’s only going to ramp up from here. This is not idle curiosity; with businesses still adapting to the confidence-sapping and job-smothering fallout from last year’s Budget, there is now a genuine fear that what remains of our economic resilience could be crushed by the government’s need to fill an almighty black hole in the public finances.

The situation is serious; the latest economic data out yesterday confirms that the UK economy is just 0.1 per cent larger now than it was in March. This is a lamentable state of affairs that ought to be met with humility and urgency by the government. But that’s not where we are.

On Wednesday, Reeves conceded for the first time that tax rises are on the cards (making her look like the last person to realise) telling Sky News “we’re looking at tax and spending” while a Downing Street spokesperson refused to rule out increasing income tax or VAT, hikes to either of which would breach Labour’s manifesto.

Here’s a summary of our top headlines from yesterday: