At this rate the only businesses who will want to invest in Britain after the budget are heroin dealers. No 10 used to have a news grid, now it has an apology grid. Even so, why did Keir Starmer apologise for a sensationally self-destructive round of briefing against Wes Streeting if he didn’t do it? This is like me apologising for accidentally releasing sex offenders from prison. I suppose there is the occasional previous example in public life. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor apologised for his association with Jeffrey Epstein and gave a woman he’d never met a reported £12m. Perhaps that provides the prime minister with the warming cover of precedent.
If you’re just joining us, this is a week in which the government finally achieved the chaos spiral of several recent Conservative administrations. We can now officially say: same car, different clowns. We are less than two weeks out from the budget, with Friday morning’s Downfall meme being yet another U-turn, with the chancellor reportedly not going ahead with her all-but-confirmed plans to raise basic- and higher-rate income tax. The gilt markets reacted accordingly, if by accordingly we mean “made emergency calls for Andrex” – but then new Treasury briefings insisted it was all actually good news and based on better forecasts. Tell you what Rachel Reeves won’t raise: fuel duty on circus vehicles.
Seriously, nothing says “budget responsibility” like sending a second budget plan to the Office for Budget Responsibility that rips up the first. You’ll be familiar with the fiscal black hole. This moment could be its event horizon.
Either way, instead of using any of the three serious revenue-raising levers that all serious chancellors know are the ones available to them – income tax, national insurance and VAT – revenue will apparently now be raised by what is being described as a “smorgasbord” of smaller taxes. If you’re picturing one of those gorgeous Instagram charcuterie boards with little chunks of fine cheese and caperberries tucked between prosciutto spirals, please adjust your expectations to a Formica table bearing four half-eaten Babybel and some reconstituted ham still in its packet (use by 31 October 2025). Not pulling the big levers but fiddling around in other ways produces unintended consequences – just like eating ham way after its use-by date does. You might be wondering how many more times Reeves needs to learn this lesson. The answer, evidently, is: more times than she has already learned it in the past year. And that’s a lot of times.
Does Downing Street’s financial drama relegate the briefing drama to this week’s B-plot? Unclear. It’s hard to work out what sort of show Labour thinks it’s writing. Midweek, it seemed to become a procedural, when Starmer announced that he had conducted some kind of personal inquiry into who briefed against Streeting. Admittedly, the world of entertainment has given us a rich tradition of lawyers who turned to the darker world of investigation: Matlock. Perry Mason. Saul Goodman. She-Hulk. But does Keir Starmer really sit among these giants? We can all agree he doesn’t sit in anything approaching “the world of entertainment”.
Certainly, the insane briefing operation was of such staggering ineptitude that its end result was to make Streeting stronger, Starmer even weaker, and the government even more of a mirthless laughing stock. You’ve heard of Abraham Lincoln’s team of rivals. Starmer – arguably more of a political genius – has gone for a team of weevils.
Like many even passingly familiar with the way his administration has done business since it tipped up in Downing Street, I’m trying to picture the PM’s police investigation whiteboard for this political crime. All I’m getting is an entirely empty wall with one picture of (chief of staff) Morgan McSweeney and one picture of (communications chief) Tim Allan on it. We’re all trying to find out who did this, etc.
Starmer seems to have tried to find out by asking some of the suspects and simply believing them when they said they didn’t do it. Or as the prime minister put it: “I have been talking to my team today. I have been assured that no briefing against ministers was done from No 10, but I have made it clear that I find it absolutely unacceptable.” “Done from No 10”? That’s an eye-catching way of putting it. Lawyerly, even. Was briefing by Starmer’s team being done from somewhere else, like the pub? Or maybe his loathed posse of aides are now mainly BFH (briefing from home)? Either way, you should definitely trust Detective Starmer, Attorney at Law, to get to the bottom of it. No stone left unturned. OK, some stones left unturned. OK, most stones, but there are a lot of stones. OK, fine, there are actually only two stones, but he doesn’t like touching stones. Can you be signed off work for not liking touching stones?
If you can, incidentally, please expect the parliamentary Labour party to refuse to consider even means-testing the cost of this benefit. This feels like a problem, because four days ago – four days! – the chancellor told the BBC that “It would of course be possible to stick with the manifesto commitments [on tax]. But that would require things like deep cuts in capital spending.” You’d think, wouldn’t you? Let’s see.
Meanwhile, it has just emerged that Starmer has spent a whole sixth of his premiership overseas. Ironically, the only other Brits who spend this much time abroad are now trying to offshore their tax arrangements. Perhaps the prime minister is trying to get his primary residence listed as “international waters”. After all, if this week has hinted at anything, it is perhaps that he will be changing his primary residence sooner rather than later.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
A year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar
On Tuesday 2 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back at another extraordinary year, with special guests, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at guardian.live
