Rachel Reeves joins Keir Starmer in the Downing Street cat club

Rachel Reeves has revealed she has joined Sir Keir Starmer in getting a new Downing Street cat. 

The Chancellor revealed that Pumpkin has joined the team at No 11, following Prince, who lives in No10 with Sir Keir and his family. 

Ms Reeves told BBC Radio 5Live that she and the PM had extended their families 'under pressure from our children.

 When it was pointe out that Pumpkin was quite a seasonal name ahead of Halloween, she joked: 'Pumpkin is for life, not just for Halloween.'

The Chancellor, 45, lives in Downing Street with her husband Nicholas Joicey, who is a senior civil servant, and their two children. 

Asked by presenter Matt Chorley how she was finding living in the heart of the government machine she said: 'It's an amazing place to live and a huge privilege to be able to live in Downing Street. 

If someone had said to me when I was, you know, (a) girl at my local secondary school all those years ago ... that one day I would be Chancellor of the Exchequer, you know, that was beyond what you know, a girl like me from the ordinary background that I came from could have ever dreamed of, and this is my dream job.'

Ms Reeves admitted her Budget will be 'painful' today amid fears it will leave Brits facing the highest tax burden since the Second World War - and potentially ever.

The Chancellor argued problems cannot be 'magicked away' as she prepares to mount an eye-watering raid next Wednesday with warnings that she needs to close a £40billion black hole in the government's books.

But the rumoured £35billion of tax increases in the package could leave Ms Reeves with two unwanted slices of history.

Official figures suggest it would be the most tax raised at a Budget since 1993, in the aftermath of the Black Wednesday Sterling crisis.

And Ms Reeves could put the country on track to pay the highest tax as a proportion of GDP since comparable records began nearly eight decades ago.

The increase would be equivalent to around 1.2 per cent of GDP. Adding that to the existing forecasts for the tax burden suggests that it will be over the previous peak of 37.2 per cent in 1948. 

The National Accounts measure of tax as a proportion of GDP was not produced prior to that. 

However, longer-term stats compiled by the Bank of England indicate that taxes are likely to have been lower all the way back to 1700.

Speaking to 5Live, Ms Reeves again blamed the Tories for mismanaging the public finances.

She stressed that the main rates of income tax, VAT and national insurance will not change - although the government is set to target employers' NICs. 

'You can't just sort of pretend that the sort of fiscal position that we've inherited is all fine and there won't be any pain in fixing it,' she said. 

'Of course it's going to be a challenge. Of course it's going to be a challenge next week. 

'I was really clear about that in July… that at the budget, there will be more difficult decisions to come on spending on welfare and taxation, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. 

'I'm not going to say that all of those problems can just be magicked away.'