LONDON — Rachel Reeves launched an impassioned defense of her budget Thursday, insisting her political future is secure.

Britain’s chief finance minister unveiled her second budget Wednesday, raising taxes by £26 billion with measures including a tax on expensive homes and freeze on income tax thresholds until 2031.

She also ended the two-child cap on benefits — a move which received a largely positive reception from Labour MPs who have been publicly and privately pushing for the measure.

Conservative opponents accused her of launching a welfare splurge, and paying for it by hiking taxes on working people.

Speaking during the traditional post-budget morning broadcast round, Reeves insisted her political legacy would not be a huge welfare system, despite the increase in social security spending over this parliament.

“Lots of people have tried to write me off over the last 16 months,” Reeves told Times Radio. “You’re not going to write my obituary today. There’s plenty more that I’m going to do to grow our economy and make working people better off.” 

Reeves later told Sky News working people had been asked to “contribute a bit more,” but would benefit from reduced energy bills and a freeze on train fares and prescription charges.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) watchdog on Wednesday predicted real GDP growth for 2025 would be 1.5 percent, 0.5 percentage points higher than its March forecast. But its growth outlook for subsequent years has been downgraded.

“I have defied the forecasts this year,” Reeves said. “I’m going to defy those forecasts next year and the year after that.”

However the OBR Chair Richard Hughes said no measures announced Wednesday met the watchdog’s thresholds for boosting growth, and warned the figures could reflect “more structural issues and the headwinds that the U.K. economy is facing.”

The chancellor had been expected to increase income tax but backed down in the wake of a backlash from Labour MPs concerned about the direction of the government and the party’s dire poll ratings.

Reeves admitted to the BBC: “I have to operate in the world as it is and the forecasts that I have, not in the world as I might like it to be.”