After 117 days of alarmist speculation and hyperbole the waiting ended at lunchtime on Wednesday when the first female Chancellor in British history delivered her inaugural Budget. In the two days that followed we have witnessed…yet more alarmist speculation and hyperbole about what the consequences of her Budget might be.

If I was to summarise, I would say that in totality Rachel Reeves’ pronouncements amounted to an “Inverse Bullseye” for savers and investors…

In the classic Eighties TV game show Bullseye host, Jim Bowen, would put a friendly arm around losing contestants whilst saying, “Have a look at what you could have won”. To their dismay a car or speedboat would then be wheeled onto the set.

Based on all the pre-Budget speculation, what we actually got feels more like a “have a look at what you could have lost” moment.

There was no wealth tax. There was no re-banding of Council Tax. The higher rate of Capital Gains tax didn’t revert to 28%, and the uplift on death has remained. The nil rate bands for Inheritance Tax weren’t reduced. Fuel duty wasn’t increased. In pensions there was no change to the tax-free cash allowance, no change to the tax relief regime for contributions and no drop in the Annual Allowance. Business Asset Disposal Relief has remained, albeit with a graduated decrease over two years. Business Relief and Agricultural Property Relief on Inheritance Tax were hit hard, but not completely abolished.

Even the increase in Employers’ NIC rates ended up being less than the 2% that some had speculated, and the drop in the threshold level was offset for smaller businesses by an increase in the Employment Allowance.

For context, it’s also worth revisiting the then Government’s press release from the 5th April this year after cutting employee NICs, in which it boasted of a tax cut “worth £20 billion a year”. That provides context to Reeves’ £40 billion hike, and anyone surprised by the increase clearly hasn’t been paying attention for the last 16 weeks.

To be clear, there is pain for many in the measures that have been announced.

Overall, I struggle to see how this Budget can be construed as pro-business, and I understand why the President of the CLA, Victoria Vyvyan, described the announcements on BR and APR as a “betrayal” of farmers.

I am no apologist for the Chancellor’s decisions, but in totality I do feel it could have been worse. It was a gamble the Labour Party probably had to take and, with the OBR forecasting lower growth in five years’ time than they were in March this year, it is a Big Gamble.

From an investment perspective, we should now turn our attention to the events across The Pond next week. In the long-run the US Presidential Election could be far more consequential for our wealth than the Chancellor’s Gambit on Wednesday.

But if British ‘working people’ don’t feel better off in 2029 it will be they who will then pass judgement at the ballot box.