Best Of

So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?

I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.

All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.

Evening all

While you've been talking about God knows what, I've been doing some politics and had a chat a party leader this afternoon.

No, not Kemi, Ed or even Zack but Mehmood.

Yes, that Mehmood, Mehmood Mirza, leader of the Newham Independents who had a stall in the High Street outside Poundland this afternoon. While Mrs Stodge dived for cover in the charity shop, I introduced myself to Mr Mirza, We had an interesting discussion on crime, housing and how badly Newham Council is run (in both his view and mine).

Mirza is adamant the Newham Independents will run a full slate of candidates as well as a Mayoral candidate next year and he thinks they can take control from Labour. He loathes Labour but has some time for the Greens - I told him I could see an easy route to 15 Councillors and possibly 23 but after that it would be much tougher.

His line was to blame the Government and the incumbent Council and unfortunately most of his solutions began with "if we had more money". That may actually convince quite a few in Newham but not me.

"At no point were the Cabinet told about the reality of the OBR forecasts."

https://x.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1995233439767798232


She's done. Be gone.

It told Reeves on October 31 that she had a £4.2billion surplus ...

No she f###ing does not!

The Budget deficit is in the hundreds of billions. There is no surplus! WTAF!? 😡😡😡

Ridiculous reporting. Our journalist and MP classes are genuine morons. It's little wonder the country is fucked.

"The current budget is the difference between total current spending (i.e. day-to-day spending excluding capital investment) and total current revenue. It is a similar measure to PSNB in that it includes all public sector current receipts plus current spending, however it excludes depreciation and capital spending." - OBR

Presumably that means it is a kind of real-time measure of tax/revenue income vs day-to-day spending in that current year/quarter?

It's not that either, they were talking about the fiscal headroom figure which is tangentially related to the deficit. It's the amount of money the government has available to overspend or undertax and still meet the fiscal rules of having debt falling over a 5 year cycle. The OBR told Reeves that she had £4.2bn in headroom available and then Reeves went on TV and implied that there was a big blackhole which would require tax rises, which was clearly not true.

Though you would surely have to be insane to run the fiscal headroom down to zero.

I don't disagree with you but it was an outright lie that the government had a new fiscal blackhole. That lie kicked off months of speculation on tax rises which damaged investment and jobs. She needs to resign for that.