By bizn_fun 
Being asked live on TV “did you lie?” is never a comfortable question for a chancellor to be facing in the days after giving a really significant Budget.
But the reason why that challenge was being made was because of the accusations by the Conservatives and others that Reeves had painted a misleading picture in the build-up to the Budget about the state of the UK finances.
Reeves’ stance was to not accept that and to insist the UK economy had been revised down and she had chosen to put taxes up in order to put some money away for a rainy day – trying to bring more stability to financial markets in the hope it will lead to lower interest rates.
Asked if she had broken the spirit, if not the letter, of her manifesto commitment on taxation by freezing income tax thresholds, Reeves said: “I recognise I did not say that in the manifesto but since then we’ve had both a significant downgrade in the productivity forecast but also huge global turbulence.”
She added: “I have to respond to all those things because, if I were to lose control of the public finances, we would be punished.
“Punished by financial markets that hold £2.6tn of public debt, and punished with higher interest rates, which wouldn’t affect just the country but would also affect every single business that borrows, and every single family that has a mortgage.”
Appearing on the same show, Badenoch said she was “absolutely not” satisfied with Reeves’ explanation, said she should instead have cut welfare spending, and urged the chancellor to quit.
She said: “The chancellor called an emergency press conference telling everyone about how terrible the state of the finances were and now we have seen that the OBR was telling her the complete opposite.
“She was raising taxes to pay for welfare – the only thing that was unfunded was the welfare payments that she has made, and she’s doing it on the backs of a lot of people out there who are working very hard and getting poorer – and because of that I believe she should resign.”
Badenoch added her shadow chancellor Mel Stride has written a letter of complaint to the Financial Conduct Authority asking for an investigation, accusing the chancellor of trying to “pitchroll for her Budget”, which could constitute “market manipulation”.