November saw the death of John Prescott, a man who had served as the United Kingdom's Deputy Prime Minister from 1997 to 2007 under the premiership of Tony Blair.

A tough trade unionist who became known as Blair's bruiser – a former boxer who once famously punched a protester – Prescott's greatest achievements were to push international understanding of the urgency of the climate change crisis through 1997's Kyoto Protocol, and to do his best to maintain some vague semblance of left-wing commitment at the heart of Blair's New Labour project.

There are those today who would want Keir Starmer's second-in-command to try to do the same thing.

Another plain-speaking northerner and one-time trade union activist, the UK's current deputy premier Angela Rayner described John Prescott, on hearing the news of his death, as a ‘Labour legend’ who had inspired her political career.

Two years ago, she’d called herself ‘John Prescott in a skirt’ – and had added: ‘I just say it as I see it’.

Yet in recent months, her notorious candour seems to have grown shy on subjects about which she might once have been expected to speak out. As her party's new government has increasingly found itself accused of ignoring Labour's socialist principles and working-class roots, dull Sir Keir's flame-haired deputy could, some believe, do well to show a bit more red.

Last week, I was stopped in town by a local antiques dealer of my acquaintance who, when he saw me walking past, stormed out of his shop and across the road to chase me up the street shouting that, although he was a lifelong Labour supporter, he'd never vote for that bunch of scoundrels again. (He used a rather blunter term than 'scoundrels' but I'll not repeat it.)

I pointed out that I was not a member of the Labour Party myself but that if the government's policies eventually achieved their stated aims of turning round a failing economy and – perhaps more importantly – of getting the National Health Service up on its feet again, then I could imagine them being re-elected in five years' time.

After all, I pointed out, Tony Blair's administration had – at least during its first parliament – achieved something similar – even to the extent that a leader now commonly branded a war criminal was voted into Downing Street on a third consecutive occasion two years after he had involved Britain in America's ill-advised and ill-fated invasion of Iraq.

My angry friend – though still seeing red – conceded that he might indeed end up voting for Sir Keir's crew again if his planned investment of billions in the NHS results in the benefits they've promised.

Those investments into public healthcare's infrastructure and running costs had indeed been confirmed in the new government's Budget at the end of October. They could not of course come without significant costs.

In the run-up to July's general election, Labour's manifesto had pledged that their government wouldn't increase the burden of direct taxation on ordinary working people.

It should have been abundantly clear to everyone in the land that this didn't mean that taxes wouldn't rise at all.

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Following her party's landslide victory, Labour's new Chancellor had announced that the ‘black hole’ in the nation's finances was far deeper than she had previously feared. A little later she added that it had turned out to be even deeper than that initial assessment had supposed.

It transpired that one of the reasons for this was that the previous Conservative administration had neglected to budget for billions of pounds of costs in such areas as compensation payments relating to more than 30,000 cases of people who'd been infected with HIV and hepatitis (after being given contaminated blood products in the 1970s and 1980s), and for Post Office franchisees wrongfully prosecuted for financial crimes.

Rachel Reeves's first Budget had to pay for those and other Tory commitments. It also had to cover the costs of resolving various major and long-running public and transport sector pay disputes.

It certainly also spent an awful lot on healthcare, as well as introducing an increase to the national minimum wage.

In order to meet its massive spending commitments, Rachel Reeves’s first Budget was obliged to increase state borrowing and to raise a range of taxes. It froze the inheritance tax threshold, introduced a low rate of inheritance tax on agricultural land worth more than £1million, and increased capital gains tax. It raised the level of stamp duty paid on the purchase of property by those who own more than one home. And it hiked the rate at which employers pay national insurance contributions on the salaries of their staff.

These measures will of course primarily affect the wealthier elements of society – and specifically (in line with manifesto pledges) those whose money is generated by their wealth rather than by their work.

It has however been supposed that the hike in national insurance payments will mean that employers will be less likely to give their staff pay rises. It is understood that the increase in the minimum wage had been designed to protect the poorest paid workers from the worst impacts of this in the context of ongoing (albeit reduced) inflationary pressures on household accounts.

The right-wing press inevitably denounced this Budget as an abject but predictable betrayal of everyone who’d been foolish enough to vote for Keir Starmer in the first place.

Those on the left of his own party – already furious at their leader's embarrassing tendency to accept from rich donors gifts of expensive suits, spectacles, and Taylor Swift concert tickets – have hardly proven much more enthusiastic about his government's tactics.

Many are still upset that he followed Treasury advice to abandon a winter fuel payment for all pensioners, not because Labour leftists have any great love for the elderly rich (no more than for other forms of old money), but because they generally like the illusion of a level playing field offered by the idea of universal benefits (apart, of course, for the much-loathed Conservative benefits scheme called Universal Credit).

By contrast, however, one satirist – a writer not known to be a fan of Sir Keir – has commented that this Budget only looks radical as it follows fourteen years of Conservatism – and that nobody should really be surprised that, for the first time in a while, it makes efforts to redistribute wealth, support, and opportunities away from the most privileged people in society towards those with the least advantages.

Yet, in the wake of this Budget, Labour candidates probably won't fare particularly well at upcoming local elections and future by-elections. And Keir Starmer's personal popularity rating has taken an unprecedentedly sharp drop in the opinion polls. But that shouldn't matter very much. His government is safely in power with a massive parliamentary majority. He's got nearly five years to save the economy and the NHS – and then to lower taxes towards the end of his first parliament.

The most radical thing that he appears to be doing is – for a famously risk-averse politician – to be surprisingly bold enough to take the chance of alienating large portions of the electorate with policies which might eventually prove worthwhile but will take years to bear any fruit.

Unlike recent leaders, he doesn't have to pursue popularity through short-term grandstanding. He has the luxury of time and parliamentary support to test his fiscal and economic strategies.

But, if his gamble fails to pay off, then he, his government, his party, and the entire country will of course be pretty much sunk. And there are factors way beyond his control – most obviously the prospect of a second Trump presidency – whose economic and geopolitical impacts may yet leave him rather worse off than just a bit red-faced, overturning his best-laid plans and ripping the ground away from beneath all our feet.