Just maybe Rachel Reeves had a cunning plan all along. Most budgets have a tendency to be moderately well received on the day, only to fall apart when the economist wonks have had a chance to go through the small print 24 hours later. Rachel has tried a rather different approach. The budget of dialectics. Her mission has been to get her budget to fall apart in the weeks and months before she delivered it. Own goal after own goal. It was a thing of Hegelian beauty. All in the hope that everything would be all right on the day and in the weeks after. She is keeping her fingers firmly crossed. Desperate measures for desperate times.
You certainly can’t fault Reeves for effort. A pre-budget shambles on this scale doesn’t happen of its own accord. It takes a lot of hard work to create this much chaos. Imagine going to the trouble of calling an early morning press conference to signal you were planning to increase income tax by 2p, only to decide against it the following week. You’ve shown you can’t be entirely trusted to keep your word while getting none of the fiscal benefits. A headless chicken is more sentient than that.
The mayhem continued right up to the wire. Just as Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves entered the chamber for prime minister’s questions, it was revealed that the Office for Budget Responsibility – AKA the Office for Budget Irresponsibility – had accidentally posted the entire budget on its website. Somewhere in the OBR, some bored junior had just pressed “Send” before skipping off to an early lunch. No one had told him it was time-sensitive. What’s 90 minutes between friends?
Rachel looked ashen – as if she was being filmed for a hostage video – and reached for her phone. Texting “Help” to Torsten Bell, the junior Treasury minister who was seated behind her. Torsten likes to think he is the go-to man for any crisis. No one rates Torsten higher than Torsten. He answers only to the name “Genius”.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Torsten dashed off some advice, which Reeves wrote down, and she could smile again. Nervously. She needn’t have worried. Gilt yields feed on the news. The markets weren’t spooked, everything was as expected. Borrowing costs were falling.
Public speaking isn’t Rachel’s natural forte. She stumbles over her words and her delivery is flat. So a one-hour statement is an ordeal for her. And for her audience. But needs must. At least she only has to do it once a year. First came the non mea culpa. The leak of the OBR report was all the fault of the OBR. Nothing to do with her. She was as appalled as the next person. Though possibly not as appalled as Kemi Badenoch. There is nothing that doesn’t appal the Tory leader.
Still, the OBR leak turned out to be just about the only leak for which Rachel wasn’t responsible. Because the rest of her statement seemed to be a word-for-word rehash of policy announcements and leaks to the media that the country had been drip-fed over the past month. Not even one mini surprise. No rabbit to be pulled out of the hat near the end to make us all forgive and forget. No wonder the Labour backbenchers looked a bit weary half-way through.
It is possibly true, as Reeves suggests, that no one has a plan that’s any better. Though you could also call it a low bar. No one is exactly waiting on Mel Stride’s every word. His credibility rating is substantially less than zero. The shadow chancellor who wants to cut the welfare benefits that he increased to record levels as work and pensions minister. And he doesn’t even see the irony. Or realise that the country still is a long way off forgiveness for the mess they created in the past 14 years. It’s going to take a lot longer than 18 months with no apology to wipe the Tory slate clean.
It was to the Tories Rachel turned next. Austerity, Brexit, Liz Truss. They were the reason she had had to break the promise she made last year on freezing tax thresholds. Which might have been more convincing if they hadn’t also been the reason she had raised £40bn in tax the year before. So they could hardly have come as a surprise. But successive governments – the Tories included – have always considered fiscal drag a matter of semantics. A promise that no one had ever had any intention of keeping.
Replying to the budget speech always used to be one of the more thankless tasks for a leader of the opposition. This time, Kemi had three distinct advantages. Reeves had already briefed its entire contents. Thanks to the OBR she had full knowledge of the growth and inflation forecasts. And, lastly, she had free licence because no one was very interested in what she had to say. The verdict from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and other economics thinktanks were the ones that counted. The budget would stand or fall on their response.
So the dice were loaded in Kemi’s favour and it looked as if she could hardly fail. Though she did her best. There is no situation she can’t misjudge. She is a woman with no personal affect. No warmth. A better politician would allow for nuance.
Kemi just has one note. There is no room for reflection. Otherwise she would not have insisted Reeves resign and then unresign so that she could then resign again. A 20-minute speech leaves everyone feeling exhausted. She accused Rachel of self-delusion: something that could equally be levelled at her. You could sense her disappointment that Labour hadn’t broken the promise not to raise income tax. She even suggested that a £2m house was just an ordinary family home.
“Don’t pretend you’re not interested in what I’m saying.” she snapped near the end. Only no one was interested in what she was saying. The Lib Dem MP Steve Darling’s dog was getting all the attention. Jennie was sitting up to beg and then rolling on her back, demanding to have her tummy rubbed. She was nothing less than adorable. Kemi could learn a thing or two in people skills from her.
Rachel got up to leave. It had gone about as well as expected. A solid five out of 10. Her backbenchers had waved their order papers performatively. Largely because they had got their own way. Her budget had survived initial contact with reality. She would keep her fingers crossed it stayed that way tomorrow.
