If Ministers lie, it’s by mistake. No serious politician lies by choice or even by necessity. We can only tell when they need to lie by what they don’t say.
The last, late Chancellor – that nice young Jeremy Hunt – responded to the Chancellor’s statement by asking a question that went unanswered all afternoon, however many times it was asked. We have to assume the question “What did she know when?” leads in a very unwelcome direction to a most uncomfortable place.
Rachel Reeves statement was based (you’ve probably heard) on the “new information” she revealed to the Commons about the “black hole” she had discovered in the Treasury – £22 billion of unfunded Tory promises. It was a terrible shock. (Backbench cries of Shame!). Twenty two billion pounds, as soon as she walked in the door! Shame! Shame! Actually 11 rounds of Shame! all told, the new MPs are picking up the art of parliament very smartly.
Oh, had she only known before!
She seems to have been the only person in Westminster that didn’t know. The figure had been put about by any number of think tankers and every sort of economic riff-raff.
Perhaps she might have said that she didn’t know how accurate the figure was until she walked through the door of the Treasury? She didn’t even try that.
Among several interesting and possibly cogent technicalities, Hunt pointed out that she had constitutional access to the Treasury perm sec well before the election. Had she met him, and if so, had she asked him the relevant questions?
Her answer was an angry amalgam of “How dare you,” and “Do you have any idea?” And “I’ll take no lectures,” and, “The mini-budget that crashed the economy must never be allowed to happen again.”
Or, in ordinary English, “Yes,” and “Yes.”
Tory backbenchers asking the same question were plastered with the same amalgam.
It’s possible that this mission-led Government is risking one of its missionaries winding up in the pot (no offence to cannibals).
The emphasis the administration is laying on their virtue, their political morality, their commitment to service makes it as much a pleasure as a duty to keep nagging at this question that seems to be concealing a horribly weeping wound.
And it may not be the only oddity to have emerged in the Chancellor’s address to the Commons.
Fraser Nelson of the Spectator had earlier suggested that the Chancellor had not given the OBR prior sight of her statement and thus was by way of restoring Truss in government (forgive me).
Knowing the amour propre of these court economists we might have been hoping for a stiff response from the OBR. A sharp reminder that the books were open, that surprises on this scale were impossible. But right in the middle of Ms Reeves announcing extensive new privileges and powers to the OBR, its boss put on social media an endorsement of the Chancellor’s statement.
Some coincidences may not be coincidental.
Rachel Reeves carried it off pretty well. She has assumed that implacable conviction – that monumental self-belief that left wing politicians do so well. Even her voice (at the risk of being unkind, she does talk like a tannoy) has swollen with office to sound incontrovertible.
And of course, she is trustworthy, honest and transparent. We have that on the highest authority. She will always put country before party. Always put growth first. Only promise that which we can afford. She will never risk the stability of the British economy.
Towards the end of the front bench, glowering, Ed Miliband brooded.
The stability of the economy under Liz Truss will be a golden memory when the hurricane of his Net Zero makes landfall in (I’m guessing) the second quarter of Year 4. You could see chaos radiating from Miliband’s head, like the stink waves in old-school comics.
I’m not at all sure our national economic collapse will be worth it, if the only reward is to see the look on their faces when they realise what they have done. But then, they will certainly (and not without some justification) blame it in the Tories.
