Rachel Reeves has defended her handling of the Budget as she fights for her political survival amid opposition claims that she “misled” the public about the state of the nation’s finances .

In a series of broadcast interviews on Sunday morning, the Chancellor insisted she “of course” did not lie when she delivered a bleak assessment of the economy in early November.

She rejected claims that she exaggerated the scale of a Budget black hole and told broadcasters that there had been a genuine “repair job” needed on the public finances. “Anyone who thinks that there was no repair job to be done on the public finances, I just don’t accept that,” she said. “We needed to build more resilience, more headroom into our economy . That’s what I did, along with that investment in the NHS and

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