It’s worth saying it’s incredibly unusual to see any of this before the day itself, hinting perhaps at jitters in No 11 about how the review will be received.
Until we hear the chancellor’s speech, and then see all of the documents in full on Wednesday, the story of the Spending Review won’t be clear.
There will be reams of statistics, produced by government, and the official number crunchers, the OBR, and then days of analysis by think tanks and experts in the aftermath.
But bear in mind these three core facts. Rachel Reeves will put a huge amount of cash, tens and tens of billions, towards long term projects. Short-term spending money will be tight, with no spare cash for sweeteners. And the government is not popular, so there’s huge pressure to tell a convincing story to try to change that, not least because of what went wrong the last time.
PA Media“We can’t ever do it like this again.” After Labour’s first Budget, government insiders concluded next time, it had to be different.
A source recalls: “It was a very brutal exercise – it was literally just making the sums add up, there was no collective approach to what the priorities were.”
Alongside a lot of extra cash for the NHS, there was a big tax rise for business that came out of the blue. No one wants a repeat of that experience.
The “next time” is now – and a Labour source warns the review might be as “painful as hell” .
So the task for a government struggling in the polls is to make this moment more than just a gruesome arithmetic problem, instead, to use the power of the state’s cheque book to make, and go on to win an argument.
Stick a fiver on Rachel Reeves referring back to that first Budget as “fixing the foundations” of the economy and public services, this week then being the moment to start, “rebuilding Britain”.
Sources suggest she has three aspects in mind: security for the country (which will explain all those billions for defence), the health of the nation – that does what it says on the tin, and “investing”, all that cash for long-term projects.
Next week’s decisions will be followed soon after by the government’s industrial strategy which will promise support for business, possibly including cash to help with sky-high energy costs.
And it comes after several big staging posts – the immigration white paper, trade deals, the defence review.
In government circles there’s hope of denting some of the criticisms that they have been slow to get moving in office, that, frankly, Sir Keir Starmer arrived in government without having worked out what he really wanted to do.
One Whitehall insider tells me, “Now the buses are all arriving at once – maybe the idea of this lacklustre government that didn’t have a plan will be blown away by July?”
Another Labour source suggests the threat from Nigel Farage has actually forced the government to get moving, visibly, and decisively: “Reform gives us the impetus to actually shake this stuff down.”
That’s the rosy view of how the chancellor might be able to play a difficult hand. It might not be reality. It is profoundly uncomfortable for a Labour government to make cuts.
There is already a whiff of rebellion in the air over ministers’ welfare plans. Expanding free school meals for kids in England seems designed to placate some of those critics in advance, but there could be more to make them mutinous.
Don’t forget Reeves has several different audiences – not just the public and her party, but the financial bigwigs too.
This time last year all Labour’s schmoozing was paying off, and she enjoyed good reviews in the City.
One year on, that mood has shifted, in part because of the autumn budget.
According to one city source, it “damaged her. People saw it as an about turn on her promises. Raising National Insurance, however they want to present it, went against the spirit of the manifesto… confidence in her in the City is diminished and diminishing”, not least because there is chatter about more tax hikes in the autumn budget.