Where to start?
There’s enough material from November’s Winter Budget debacle to fill an entire book. Whacky policies cooked up in the depths of the Resolution Foundation started appearing in the press as if by magic. A tax here, a levy there. A rookie attempt to stress-test how much Reeves could get away with when she finally stood at the despatch box…
Soon they upped the ante. Well-placed rumours of a manifesto-breaking rise in income tax swirled across Westminster. The rumours were seemingly confirmed when the Chancellor held a bizarre (and dishonest) press conference in Number 10 in which she warned that productivity had fallen, and world events had blown the public finances off-course. Having pinky-promised not to whack up taxes again after last year, Reeves was now rolling the pitch to do just that…
Guido reported on the jitters within Number 10 as days went on; Starmer’s fate was tied to the Budget just as much as Reeves’s. The pressure obviously got to Sir Keir, who fell like a ton of bricks at the G20 in full view of the media. Guido posted the footage, which is still available here despite the best efforts of Number 10 to get us to remove it. Here it is a second time for good luck.
On the day of the Budget itself, Guido prepared as always to live blog the announcements as the Chancellor reads them out in the Commons. Fortunately, the Office for Budget Responsibility made our lives easier by accidentally releasing the entire Budget before Reeves had even stood up. Guido published the document and thanked the OBR for their help. OBR Chief (and Resolution Foundation ally) Richard Hughes later resigned…
As for the Winter Budget horror show itself, the last-minute decision to ditch the planned income tax hike meant Reeves had to raise a bunch of other taxes to cover the funding black hole created by her own spending spree. She still managed to break her own manifesto promise anyway by freezing thresholds, despite claiming a year earlier that such a move would ‘hurt working people’. The question of ‘what is a working person’ remains unanswered…
Elsewhere, the BBC had another howler when the Telegraph revealed it had manipulated a Trump speech from the January 6th riots. Trump claimed he would sue the broadcaster for billions of dollars, and both director-general Tim Davie and Head of News Deborah Turness resigned. Guido published the internal memo sent to BBC staff, which warned “the coming weeks and month will be hard” and “it’s never easy when we are the story“. Which seems to happen every ten minutes at the BBC nowadays…
Honourable Mentions:
SAS Veterans Threaten to Sue Labour Over Troubles Bill
EXC: Hundreds of Afghan ‘Serious Cases’ Including Criminals Let Into Britain Under Relocation Scheme
EXC: Starmer Involved in Regulator Appointment Despite ‘Recusal’ From Football Decisions
Headline of the Month:
Reeves ‘Demands Respect’ for ‘Being The Chancellor’ in FT Puff Piece
