Rachel Reeves sounded bored by her own Budget

The Tories lied! That was the thrust of Rachel Reeves’s first Budget today. She was very specific about the falsehoods. At the time of the spring financial forecast, she said, ‘they hid the reality of their public spending plans.’ Parliament and the public were the victims of ‘a cover up’ about pressures on our economy. The cunning Tories even duped the Office for Budget Responsibility by failing to provide ‘all the information’. But hang on. The OBR is staffed by the brainiest economists in the country, if not the world. Is possible that this synod of geniuses were duped by a few Tory wonks armed with dodgy spreadsheets? Reeves appears not to have asked why the OBR were so easy to swindle. She simply accepted their account of the fiddle. 

‘Had they known about these undisclosed pressures,’ she droned, ‘then their forecasts would have been materially different.’

Well no wonder she didn’t probe them too closely.