WELFARE not warfare must be Britain’s Budget priority, Chancellor Rachel Reeves was told today.

Campaigners organised by the People’s Assembly rallied outside Downing Street to give the government the message on the eve of the make-or-break Budget.

As they gathered, Ms Reeves was desperately trying to convince Labour MPs to back her plans, which have been the subject of innumerable leaks and interminable U-turns as the Chancellor has been buffeted from one direction or another.

People’s Assembly chair Martin Cavanagh, also president of the PCS union, said the protest was “hugely important.”

He said: “We have to send the message to the Chancellor, yes, but also to the wider public, that yet more austerity is not the answer.

“Put more money into people’s pockets, through decent pay rises or enhancing benefit payments, and your economy will grow.

“Stop spending billions of pounds on weapons, and ask the richest to shoulder a greater tax burden, and there will be no need to cut public services or benefits, and we’ll be able to stop scapegoating asylum-seekers.”

The protest was backed by the Stop the War Coalition, whose vice-chair Chris Nineham said: “We’re backing the rally because any genuinely progressive government would be resisting Trump’s pressure to increase our military capacity and looking to cut arms spending.

“It’s a national scandal that we spend over 20 times more on the military than we do on the affordable housing programme, currently allocated just £2.6 billion, and twice as much as we spend on social care, which gets just £29.4bn.

“At a time when services are in a state of collapse and millions are struggling to make ends meet, we need to ignore Establishment scare stories and fight for real security for working people.

“We can only do this by tackling inequality and breaking our slavish support for US foreign policy priorities. It’s time our money was spent on welfare not warfare.”

Those are not Labour’s priorities, however. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer told MPs that his main aim is “keeping Ukraine in the fight” in the war with Russia, peace overtures notwithstanding.

Ms Reeves’s package is expected to include a range of tax increases, including a mansion tax on properties valued at more than £2 million, which could raise more than £400m a year.

But income tax rises, widely trailed as likely at one point, are not going to feature.

It is also anticipated that she will win Labour back-bench applause by announcing the end of the cruel two-child benefit cap.

Back-bench resistance has scrapped her previous efforts to cut welfare benefits.

The Chancellor has been spending the week trying to win over back-bench support, as backing for the Starmer government has generally collapsed since the rows over an impending leadership challenge.

At a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, Ms Reeves urged MPs to get behind her, saying that politics is a “team sport.” The Budget, she added, was a “package” not a “pick ’n’ mix” and should be supported as a whole.

She reiterated that the Budget would focus on three priorities: “Cutting the cost of living, cutting NHS waiting lists and cutting the cost of debt.”

Her task will be made none the easier by the news that the erratic and mysterious Office for Budget Responsibility has cut its growth forecast again for every year up until the next election.

This reduces Ms Reeves’s margins to stay within the government’s fiscal rules, which she will surely tell MPs tomorrow “are ironclad.”

Jeremy Corbyn, former Labour leader Independent MP, told the Star: “I’d like to see an acknowledgment by the Chancellor of the levels of inequality and poverty in our society.

“I would like to see the Chancellor set herself objectives of reducing poverty, of increasing living standards and increasing opportunities, and particularly development of good quality and affordable housing, which means control of the private rented sector and building of council housing.”

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said today that the package should “restore confidence and put this Labour government back on track.”