Budget 2024

Tuesday

Michael Gove

Farmers won’t be quick to forgive Labour

12 min listen

Thousands of farmers descended on Westminster today to protest the inheritance tax changes proposed in Labour’s Budget. Amidst a sea of tweed and wellington boots, speeches and support came from the likes of Kemi Badenoch, Ed Davey, Nigel Farage and Jeremy Clarkson. To what extent is this just a fringe issue that the government will be able to brush off? Or has the issue exposed a rural blind spot for Labour? And how lasting could the damage be? Katy Balls and Spectator editor Michael Gove discuss with James Heale.  But first, William Moore has been out and about getting the views of farmers directly from the protest… Produced by Patrick

Wednesday

Martin Vander Weyer

Is No. 10 coming for game shooting next?

I confess I was lunching at L’Escargot in Greek Street as Rachel Reeves delivered her Budget. My excuse was that I thought I already knew what was in it – but in reality the package was even more anti-business than I feared. My punishment was a risotto too glutinous to finish, but the Chancellor’s 76-minute sermon proved just as indigestible when I tuned in later. Like the wild mushrooms in my dish, the more pungent Budget measures had to be picked out of a blander mass – and I was roused from postprandial torpor by a call from a veteran entrepreneur, regularly quoted here under a variety of disguises, in

Friday

James Heale

Can Labour save its Budget?

14 min listen

The fallout from Labour’s Budget continues. On the media round this morning, Darren Jones, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, admitted that it will hit working people, and the cost of government borrowing has only risen since Rachel Reeves delivered her speech to Parliament. Katy Balls, Kate Andrews and James Heale take us through the reaction from various groups, including small business owners, farmers and the markets. Is the Budget unravelling? Also on the podcast, they look ahead to tomorrow’s Tory leadership result; could low turnout make a difference? Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Thursday

Katy Balls

Labour’s new cabinet divide

There were no civil servants present when ministers gathered for their weekly cabinet meeting on Tuesday. The reason? It was time to talk politics. On the eve of Labour’s first Budget for 14 years, Keir Starmer tried to rally his ministers around a common message: blame the Tories! He spoke of the so-called fiscal black hole bequeathed to Labour before he handed things over to his Chancellor to explain why difficult decisions were required on spending, tax and welfare. Plenty of Labour MPs and aides question the wisdom of an election campaign which has boxed them in For all the attempts to unite against a common enemy, just a glance

The Spectator

Rachel Reeves is taking us back to the 1970s

The first fiscal event to be delivered by a female Chancellor of the Exchequer is a landmark moment, but in every other regard this Budget was a return to the familiar, and failed, approach of Labour governments past. This was the Life on Mars Budget – a journey back to the 1970s, only without the cheap booze and fags. Tax rises, increased borrowing, a bigger state, spending on public services unaccompanied by meaningful reform and additional costs for those businesses which create wealth – we have seen all these before and we know they are the markers of decline. This Budget was a journey back to the 1970s, only without

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Tax rises, a cheddar heist and snail delivery man gets slapped

Home Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, repeatedly mentioning an inherited ‘£22 billion black hole’, raised taxes by £40 billion in the Budget, while saying she was abiding by Labour’s manifesto promise not to increase taxes on ‘working people’. A big hit came from increasing employers’ contributions to national insurance; the threshold at which it begins to be paid was reduced from £9,100 to £5,000. But income tax and NI thresholds for employees would be unfrozen from 2028. Capital gains tax went up; stamp duty for second homes rose. Fuel duty would again be frozen. The non-dom regime was abolished. Tobacco went up; a pint of draught went down

Wednesday

Katy Balls

Labour’s low growth Budget

15 min listen

Rachel Reeves has announced that taxes will rise by £40 billion in Labour’s first Budget for 14 years. The headlines include: an increase in employers’ National Insurance contributions from April to 15 per cent, raising £25 billion; that the freeze on income tax and National Insurance thresholds will not be extended past 2028; that the lower rate of capital gains tax will be raised from 10 per cent to 18 per cent, and the higher rate from 20 per cent to 24 per cent; that fuel duty will remain frozen for the next two years; and the introduction of VAT on private school fees from January. The Chancellor didn’t want

The Spectator

Who first classified ‘working people’?

Working people Government ministers may have had trouble defining what was meant by ‘working people’ in the Labour manifesto, but where did the idea of classifying people who earn their living as a distinct group come from? – According to the OED,the term ‘working class’ has been traced back to the 1757 edition of the Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce written by Malachy Postlethwayt, a former adviser to Horace Walpole. Postlethwayt was born the son of a wine merchant in Limehouse, east London, in 1707. He certainly fitted Starmer’s definition of a working person in that he appears to have died, in 1767, owning no assets. But he would

Monday

James Heale

Budget week: Labour braced for backlash

13 min listen

It’s Budget week (finally)! How this week goes will set the tone for Labour’s first year in office. It’s fair to say that expectations are relatively low – with the Prime Minister himself warning of ‘painful decisions’ ahead. We know a lot of what will likely be included and Treasury sources are keen to play down talk of any Budget rabbits – suggesting a mix of the measures currently being discussed in the media. So what should we expect? And can Labour ride out the week unscathed? Also on the podcast, Labour have suspended the whip for Mike Amesbury, MP for Runcorn and Helsby, after he appeared to threaten a

Wednesday

Martin Vander Weyer

In defence of eating out

Scheduling the Budget almost four months after their election victory would have counted as a monumental misjudgment for the Labour government were it not for all the other cock-ups that turned their first 100 days into a sitcom. Still, the extended period of speculation about which taxes Rachel Reeves is really planning to raise has done no good at all to her carefully groomed reputation as a ‘serious economist’ (to quote Mark Carney) who is somehow uniquely pro-business and pro-worker. On the contrary, there have even been suggestions that she could be about to unleash chaos on the financial markets akin to the Truss-Kwarteng fiasco of two years ago. But

Wednesday

Matthew Parris

The sugared-almond theory of economic consequence

Let me ease you gently into a big and boring-sounding word for a small dishonesty that today corrupts the language of politics. Doubtless we shall be encountering it (though never by name) in Rachel Reeves’s looming Budget. If you step away from levying the new taxes you must then cut the goodies they were to pay for But we’ll start at my mother’s knee. I was five, and she was teaching me reading: an activity I viewed with displeasure. I did, however, like sugar-coated almonds – very much. So Mum undertook to give me one sugar-coated almond for every chapter I read aloud to her from my First Reading Book.