The Chancellor’s Budget has to be about more than just assuaging markets - David Blunkett

But paradoxically, it has reassured the international financial markets. The bond markets responded very positively to the idea of decisive action by the Chancellor to deal with the theoretical “need for headroom" in four years’ time. Theoretical, because even the most brilliant economists can't predict precisely what the finances will look like, what international pressures will bring, or what the likely speed of recovery will be by 2030. In fact, it is an absolute nonsense. Yet it is a nonsense that people are taking so seriously that it is impossible to ignore.

As we now have a febrile social media environment, and people believe what they read online, the situation can be very dangerous. I listened recently to the very reliable Radio 4 programme, Money Box.

They had to knock down a recent story that the government planned to “cut the state retirement pension".

People had seriously started to worry about this, when the real issue is just how much the retirement pension is going up. In fact, because of the triple lock, it will increase by 4.8 per cent in line with the increased wage levels in September even though inflation is less than 4 per cent and falling.

I must confess that I haven't the faintest idea what Rachel Reeves will announce on November 26. What I do know is that she has ‘boxed herself in’. By giving so much influence to the Office of Budget Responsibility – invented by Conservative Chancellor George Osborne – she is effectively provided a ‘Shadow Treasury’. They make a judgement on the evidence provided to them; their analysis of what might transpire in three or four-years’ time, and therefore a pronouncement on what the government will need to do to make up a likely deficit in the public finances.

Their announcement affects the attitude of the bond markets – or rather the analysis of a few, magnified by algorithms which respond immediately – and which result in an increase or decrease in the amount that the government has to pay for borrowing on international markets.

A substantial part of our borrowing is with our own Bank of England, but hardly any attention is paid to the nature of the interest payments required by them and what the government might do to ‘get a grip’ of minor but important ways of reducing the medium and long-term borrowing costs for the government.

It is, in fact, almost like living in a parallel universe. Economists inside and outside the Treasury have almost universally been taught by what are called ‘monetarists’. Those who are inculcated with a particular, right-wing analysis of how economies work, and who have rejected the growth orientated and socially conscious economic challenge - put forward by the late John Maynard Keynes – to historically failed economic orthodoxy.

‘Keynesianism’, as it came to be known, believed strongly that the government had a major role in its own destiny, rather than responding to the fundamentally market orientated economic philosophy, which, by its very nature, involved cutting expenditure on essential services.

To be fair to Rachel Reeves and the government, the announcements giving the go ahead to fundamental and long-term strategic infrastructure programmes has been welcome. However, most of these are wholly or substantially funded by the private sector and even with a modest adjustment to Treasury rules about the analysis of return on investment from the public purse, there is still a reluctance to both argue the case and accelerate the investment.

That is true of the need for immediate announcements on the backing of the rail programme, announced back in May, which would be so fundamental to all of us here in Yorkshire in terms of being able to link the TransPennine Rail Upgrade with substantial change across the whole of the east of the Pennines. Added to the already announced investment in the West Yorkshire transit scheme and refurbishment of the Sheffield and South Yorkshire Supertram, the very modest demand for electrification and modernisation has to be met.

The development of housing, jobs, growth and stimulation of the economy depends on it, and all we hear is the voices of those to the West of the Pennines, whose ‘megaphone diplomacy’ captures attention rather than collaboration across the whole of the North of England.

So, the budget will certainly be very much about responding to the Office for Budget Responsibility; meeting the theoretical construct of income to the Treasury versus day-to-day spending in years to come. Yet, it should be, crucially, about telling a story – a narrative about the future of our country and how, with brave decisions and a total rejection of traditional Treasury orthodoxy, we can both win over the international markets and deliver to the people we care about.

David Blunkett is a Labour Party politician, and served as the MP for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough.