Voters will look elsewhere if Rachel Reeves does not use next week’s pivotal budget to show that “centre-ground” politicians can fix the UK’s entrenched economic problems, the former head of the civil service, Simon Case, has said.

Case told the Guardian that at the time of last year’s general election, when he was still cabinet secretary, he believed Labour would be forced to break its manifesto promise to not raise taxes because of the state of the public finances.

The buildup to Rachel Reeves’s set-piece fiscal speech has been dramatic, with the chancellor briefing heavily that she would be forced to breach the Labour manifesto and raise income tax, before the Treasury suddenly rowed back on the idea.

Instead, she is expected to seek more revenue through a suite of changes

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