Only two people in the audience liked the Budget. BBC

The BBC Question Time audience delivered a brutal verdict on Rachel Reeves’s Budget.

Just two people put their hands up when asked by presenter Fiona Bruce whether they had liked it.

It came after two members of the audience made clear why they were unhappy with the chancellor’s financial package, in which she announced changes which will lead to nearly 1.8 million workers paying more income tax.

She also lifted the two-child benefit cap, adding to the already rising welfare bill.

One man said: “People don’t really want a lot. They want their bins collected on time, they want to be able to go to the doctors, get a dentist’s appointment, save a little bit of money and go on holiday every year.

“Unfortunately, this Labour government, you’re not giving people that hope that’s ever going to come back ever again.”

A woman in the audience added: “I’d like to know from Labour who they mean when they tall about ‘working people’ because it seems to me that it’s the working people that have suffered the most in this Budget.

“I’ve got two kids who are 27 and nearly 19, both working. They’ve got no chance of ever moving out of home in the immediate future because housing is so expensive.

“They’ve got huge, ridiculous debt from their student fees, when they’re paying the most outrageous interest rates … and this Budget seems to me to be helping the people that are not employed and don’t seem to have any likelihood of being employed at any time in the future.”

Bruce said Labour MPs had appeared “****-a-hoop” after Reeves delivered the Budget, with critics accusing Keir Starmer of putting his backbenchers ahead of the wider country.

Addressing the audience, she said: “So far, this bit of the country doesn’t seem particularly satisfied. Is there anyone here who felt the Budget was good and will help them.”

The camera then panned to the audience, where only two people put their hands up.

One of them, a woman, said: “I felt it was a good Budget. It was making the people that can afford it pay more, while the people who can’t afford it will have more money to look after them.”

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