Rachel Reeves makes history today when she delivers her first Budget. After eight centuries of male Chancellors of the Exchequer, the purse strings are in the hands of someone who carries a purse. For Reeves I fancy something from Mulberry with a sturdy postman’s lock.

Other countries and institutions, with their Janet Yellands and their Christine Lagardes, may mock Britain for its late arrival in the modern age, but this is officially a big deal for fusty old us.

In common with every other Chancellor after Ken Clarke, Reeves will eschew an alcoholic tipple. Gone are the days of Churchill’s brandy, Geoffrey Howe’s G&T and Gladstone’s (typically weirdo) sherry and beaten eggs. It is thought she’ll opt for H2O but none of the fancy fizzy stuff. This is a plain tap water kind of a Budget from a hunk of dry bread government. Haven’t you heard?

Monday’s warning from the Prime Minister that “tough stuff is coming” was the latest in a long line of gloomy predictions. From the rose garden speech early in his premiership, Keir Starmer has been laying his fix-the-foundations stuff on with a trowel.

Now it is the Chancellor’s turn to take centre stage. The moment she starts to speak this becomes her Budget, the work with which she will be forever linked and judged. It could propel her one day to the leadership, or consign her to the backbenches where most Chancellors end up. But no pressure.

With its rules and traditions, talk of Budget boxes and drinks, the Budget has become the Royal Variety Show of political events. It is easy to forget how important this financial statement is to millions. We live in an interconnected world where no country is a financial island and the markets are powerful enough to force a Prime Minister out of office. The actions of one Chancellor are but pebbles in a pond.

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Yet for many people Budgets do matter. I’m not talking here about the wealthy and well-advised. They’ve already taken steps to make sure the pips don’t squeak. I’m referring to ordinary working people and the poor. Everyone knew what the terms meant and they still do, but it suits parts of the media to tease Starmer the lawyer about them.

Budgets matter. A Budget can mean the difference between having a home or not, getting that operation or not, turning the heating on or not, and having a hot meal or not. Politics today is what it has always been - the story of haves and have nots. Reduced to the essentials it is not that complicated. So why are Starmer and his Chancellor so bad at it?

Waiting so long to deliver the Budget was a mistake. The months since the election have been filled with briefings, speculation, and a grab bag of announcements that are unpopular or make no sense. Means-testing winter fuel payments showed a level of cluelessness that was off the charts. As does accepting thousands of pounds of clothing, as both Starmer and Reeves did.

Starmer has flaws that are particular to him. He is stubborn. He has trouble thinking on his feet - remember his deer in the headlights act on tax during the first TV debate with Rishi Sunak? He doesn’t look up to see the big picture. Allowing the Sue Gray business to drag on does not bode well for when inevitable turf wars break out among Cabinet ministers.

Reeves has been largely spared bad publicity, despite her role in cutting winter fuel payments. Starmer, leading from the front, has taken most of the flak that has come his government’s way.

The Chancellor deserves attention in her own right, and not just because she is the first woman in the job.

Her parents were teachers, she worked hard at (state) school, then came Oxford, the LSE, and a job with the Bank of England. As an MP and shadow minister she steered clear of Corbyn and courted the City one croissant at a time. All fairly routine and forgettable in the nicest possible way.

There was one episode, however, that has stuck with me about Reeves, and that is the curious case of the iffy book. The story came about when reporters from the Financial Times discovered that parts of Reeves’s book, The Women Who Made Modern Economics, rang a bell.

In Reeves’s book, for instance, there was mention of the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe. It said: “Once, when entering a smart restaurant in Boston, she was told that ladies were not admitted in trousers, so she took them off there and then!”

Compare that to an obit by Jane O’Grady in the Guardian in 2001: “Once, entering a smart restaurant in Boston, she was told that ladies were not admitted in trousers. She simply took them off.”

When the similarities were pointed out, Reeves held her hands up. She said some sentences “were not properly referenced” and that “I should have done better”.

Now, you may think this trivial in the grand scheme of things. Reeves would not be the first busy politician to “not properly reference” material. You may recall a young US senator by the name of Joe Biden doing something similar with one of Neil Kinnock’s speeches. An embarrassed Biden, then hoping to be the Democratic nominee for president, quit the race.

What is odd about the Reeves story is that it broke in 2023, when she was being touted as a Labour Chancellor in waiting and courted by the press and business accordingly. In that position, and with one presumes more time on her hands than now, shouldn’t she have taken more care? Been across the detail as City types say? It is not a mistake you could ever imagine Gordon Brown making.

The incident reminds me of the criticism levied at Keir Starmer by Rosie Duffield when she resigned as a Labour MP. The Labour leader, she said, lacked the political skills and instincts required.

So far, the same could be said of the Chancellor. Today, Reeves has the opportunity to turn that around, to show she has a considered plan that stands a chance of working. Her place in history as the first woman Chancellor is assured. Now comes the tough part - making it matter.