Speaking to Times Radio, Mr Johnson said: “I’m not expecting a recession. But again, the Government’s going to be talking about hard choices.
“They’ve got the hardest of all choices to make in the summer when they do their spending review, and then I think we’ll have a lot of miserable Cabinet ministers because they’re not going to get very much money.
“And who knows? It’s not impossible that the Chancellor will feel she needs to come back for yet more money next autumn if the economy doesn’t pick up.
“Then, again, she’s stuck in this really difficult place – you increase taxes in order to fund public services adequately or because there’s no growth, you don’t have the money you need for the public services and you disappoint people on that front.”
Mr Johnson’s intervention comes amid growing alarm from businesses over the impact of Labour’s rise in employer National Insurance, a costly overhaul of workers’ rights and an increase in the minimum wage.
A study by the Confederation of British Industry this week found that employers are expecting higher prices and job cuts in the coming quarter.
Meanwhile, an Institute of Directors survey earlier this month revealed that confidence among business leaders had fallen to its lowest level since the first Covid lockdown.
Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England, said last week that uncertainty after the Budget was holding the economy back and making it harder to cut interest rates.
The sense of gloom was further compounded on Monday by an unexpected revision to economic data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which said that GDP flatlined in the three months to September rather than growing by 0.1pc as previously thought.
The economy subsequently shrank by 0.1pc in October, putting Britain close to the two consecutive quarters of negative growth that are the technical definition of a recession.
Meanwhile living standards, as measured by GDP per capita, dropped by 0.2pc in the third quarter compared to a year earlier rather than remaining flat.
Labour went into the election promising to deliver the highest per capita growth in the G7 but has since watered this down to an “aim” and dropped mentions of getting there in this parliament.
Mr Johnson said it was “a little unfair” to blame the new Government for the economic picture, adding that in his view they inherited a difficult situation from the Tories.
He said: “The Government had no choice, really, but to fix some of the massive problems, and they’re right about this. The last government did leave them absolutely massive problems. I think some of what they’ve done to fix it has been less than ideal.
“What we’ve essentially had in terms of tax was the last government, I thought very cynically, reduced the employee National Insurance rate and then this Government essentially made it up by increasing the employer National Insurance rate.
“And in the short run, at least, that is a net loss to the economy because that makes it more expensive for employers to hire people.”
However, he pointed out that Labour’s spending plans were making the situation worse because they are even bigger than the tax increases announced so far.
Mr Johnson said: “You’ve got a significant increase in spending relative, at least, to what was planned. Now again, we can see the need for this in the NHS and the justice system and elsewhere, and the remarkable thing is, I mean we’re all complaining as it were about the big tax rises, but the spending rises are even bigger.
“So one of the issues here is the Government is borrowing more. In other words, it’s pumping more money into the economy and that can have inflationary consequences.”
If overall economic growth comes in below the 7pc predicted by the Office for Budget Responsibility over the next four years, it will mean a smaller tax take for the Chancellor.
This could force her to put up taxes in order to hit her fiscal rules and balance the books, particularly if – as noted by Mr Johnson – other Cabinet ministers push for higher departmental budgets in next year’s spending review.
Another large-scale tax raid would be extremely challenging for the Chancellor. Last month she claimed there would be no more tax increases at all this parliament, telling business leaders that she was “not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes”.
Other Cabinet members, including the Prime Minister, refused to repeat this claim, and Ms Reeves herself appeared to water down the pledge just a fortnight later when she said: “I can’t write five years’ worth of Budgets in just the first five months of government.”
She nonetheless downplayed the risk of tax raids on a similar scale, saying: “This was a once-in-a-parliament Budget that I delivered in October to wipe the slate clean after the mismanagement of the previous government.”
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