In my recent blog on the Spring Statement I expected Rachel Reeves to be as boring as a Chancellor can be in a major statement. Rachel Reeves succeeded. What we had was what the BBC political team called “a win in the cells of spreadsheet”. This analysis of the British economy in her own hands, included ignoring the impact on employers for the NI rises which are upon us, or the likely impact of negative shocks from US tariffs. But Reeves has had her analysis approved by the Office of Budget Responsibility. As the Pension Minister told us in Edinburgh “we have to get real”.

It is hard to equate the Government’s wish for Britain to grow, with the impact of the October Budget and Trump’s defence and tariff agenda has been to put a stick in the wheel and set us back to where we started. The self-imposed rule of prudence has to impact on someone and this someone is the poor (sick) and public support (bloated).

Actually the OBR did not approve the original proposed forecast, the OBR said that 3.2m families (dilatory) will lose out £1,700 per annum but with a smaller amount (genuine) getting an extra £420 pa. Of course politicians don’t use the words in brackets but that’s what people will hear.

250,000 people will be pushed into “relative poverty” , others – including charities – say 400,000. The cliff edge is so sharp that the borderline is likely to be fudged by doctors and many people will survive the slashing of their benefits – this is the decent adjustment from the OBR.

I know that you think this is me getting political and not sticking to the pension theme, but this message of “getting real” is one that will be picked up in pension policy. Labour is about work (we are told) so we will see more people paying into pensions as they start working but those paying into pensions will not get more paid for them or be required to pay more. They will not get more or less from the state pension (though the increase from the triple lock looks like being smaller than recently).

There isn’t much detail about what will happen to taxation either, this is an “opportunity lost” for many, including Paul Johnson who will be leaving the IFS without anything to get his teeth into by way of fiscal changes, We will have a huge October Budget, Johnson says. Like I said, this is a statement as boring as it could get (at least if you are not a public worker or disabled on PIP).

You can read the detail of the statement , you can do here. They are not going to make a big difference to your pension or, if you run pensions, the cost or profit of doing so.

Thanks to John Mather and others for throwing economic statistics at me and yes there are good reasons to doubt the OBF/HMT numbers, but we have to move with the mood and the mood is a lot more realistic than anyone would have thought from a Labour Government in the last decade or the early years of this. Realistic = boring. Let’s keep working and investing for the long-term, boring as it might seem, there is no secret key to unlocking growth.