Oh dear. It seems that Rachel Reeves’ Sunday media round has done nothing to answer questions about whether she misled the country about the national finances. The Chancellor – or ‘the Chancer’ in the words of the Sun – has repeatedly denied lying about the size of the fiscal black hole in the run-up to the Budget. But her protestations of innocence have not been enough to convince a growing band of skeptics, which now, er, include members of her own front bench. Talk about losing the faithful…
A series of ministers have told the Times that the cabinet was misled in the weeks ahead of Wednesday’s Budget. One says:
Why did Keir and Rachel allow the country to believe for so long that we would break our manifesto by putting up income tax by 2p when they would have known that wasn’t true? At no point were the cabinet told about the reality of the OBR forecasts. Had we been told, we might have been in a position to advise against setting hares running on income tax and giving the public the impression we are casual about our manifesto commitments. The handling of this Budget has been a disaster from start to finish.
Others are predictably withering about the country’s first female Chancellor. One minister calls her ‘weak and incompetent’ while another bemoans ‘this hokey-cokey about income taxes going up and then not going up’. They added that while ‘the argument about living in uncertain times and needing more headroom makes sense’, the way ‘she presented it, by saying there’s a big hole we need to fill, is frustrating.’ So much for all that talk about no more red-on-red briefing, eh?
The report comes ahead of the Prime Minister’s big speech on Monday morning, in which he plans to boast about all the wonderful things contained in the Budget. Perhaps he ought to share a copy of it with his cabinet colleagues…
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