I’ll admit it. I think I actually felt a bit sorry for Rachel Reeves. Not for long, of course, but just long enough to appreciate the sheer, almost operatic misery of her day. If Westminster had a national sport, it would be watching a Cabinet minister crumble in slow motion. And my word, Reeves delivered a gold medal performance - but at least this time she didn’t cry. First, the Office of Budget Responsibility, those sage guardians of fiscal purity, accidentally leaked the entire thing online.

She was then caught on camera looking all sourpuss as she glowered at her phone, squatting on the front bench as she perhaps pondered how best to announce a series of measures most of those around her would have seen early! And when she did rise to her feet, it appeared that at any moment her voice would give way. Croaking her way through the opening stanzas of her siren song of suffering, she declared a lift on the two-child benefits cap.

What followed was a cacophony of clucking from her own side, as the backbench who’d been hounding her on the issue for months finally realised they’d got her safely in their thrall.

Yet the move is so ruinously expensive that it should have come with one of those trigger warnings the television channels are so fond of.

She somehow managed to turn welfare spending into a game of Buckaroo, piling on the billions until the whole thing collapsed on top of her.

Some 18,000 unemployed families are set to receive £14,000 a year extra of our cash, just because they have six kids. It was a surrender to her backbench, and shows she lost control.

Then came Kemi badenoch’s response. It was less of a reply and more of a controlled demolition.

For once, Badenoch appeared to actually be enjoying herself as she skewered the Chancellor with an almost surgical pleasure.

And when Keir Starmer leaned over to whisper something to his Chancellor, Badenoch purred: “Is he mansplaining to you?”

I think some of her front bench may have to be sedated, such was their mirth.

You could almost see Reeves wilting away, the only thing missing was the popcorn.

But the torment for us was bedded in. Reeves dragged millions into higher rates of income tax, and dug her hands dep into the pockets of workers, freezing income tax thresholds in a stealthy tax hike for many.

Perhaps she walked out of the commons with a stripy shirt and a bag marked “SWAG”, so burdened will she now be with your money.

She once again steeped herself in that proud Westminster tradition of promising change whilst reaching into the nearest wallet.

Workers will now pay more, earn less, and apparently should say thank you as we do so.

And this of course comes after she slammed up National insurance in her previous budget, a move so economically masochistic that even HMRC must have checked its paperwork twice to ensure they hadn’t misread it.

Then came the coup de grâce: changes to beer duty. Another tax. Another quiet siphoning of the pint glass.

She cannot even console herself with a cold one after the nation’s longest bad day at the office.

So yes, I feel sorry for Rachel Reeves. Briefly. Because somewhere between the broken promises, the blunders, the taxes and the public humiliation, it becomes painfully clear: she wanted to be Britain’s first female Chancellor remembered for greatness.

Instead, she’s becoming the first to need hazard pay just for delivering a Budget.