IF the news is a trumpet (bear with me) an impeding Budget is a great buoy-shaped mute jammed into the bell.
The volume has been turned down on politics this week as Rachel Reeves and her aides put the finishing touches on the first Labour Budget since 2011.
Money is the root of all evil and the root of all politics – there’s little point in playing until you know the ante.
At the moment, the Government is pleasing practically no one. Still fresh from the almighty row over cuts to the Winter Fuel Payment, they seem intent on upsetting as many people as possible.
Perhaps that is the freedom of being still the best part of five years away from an election (though not in Scotland).
The early release of prisoners has angered the hang them brigade on the right – and the distinct absence of any ideological argument for alternatives to prison means none on the left are cheering it, either.
Keir Starmer’s announcement that those who earn income from shares and rents don’t meet his definition of “working people” won him some tongue-in-cheek praise from online Maoists (a hang them brigade of a different bent) – but has the makings of yet more drear headlines for him in the Tory press.
Speaking of Starmer (above), he has spent altogether too much time either in Samoa, on a 28-hour flight there or another one back, for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, which carries the displeasing acronym Chogm – pronounced “Chog-um”.
His refusal to entertain the notion of reparations for countries historically pillaged for slaves has infuriated his critics on the left – but sensing blood, Tory leadership candidate Robert Jenrick now wants statues for the British sailors who helped to end the slave trade.
It seems that Starmer is allergic to good vibes. Hardly a shocking insight if you’ve watched even five seconds of an interview with the man but worth repeating in the run-up to the Budget.
Back in the olden days, the Chancellor used to deliver the Budget with a tipple in hand. No one really knows why, but maybe it was a nod to the generally celebratory mood you hope to encourage.
It’s fallen out of fashion nowadays and Reeves (below) seems a decidedly unlikely candidate to revive the tradition of her predecessors.
But it might not stop the public hitting the bottle in what is sure to be both a sober and sombre affair.
She will no doubt go on about the mess the last lot left and all the “tough choices” she’s had to make to pick up the pieces – including boxing herself into a tight corner with tough rules on taxes and borrowing.
They were based more on making Labour seem electable than any economic insights.
But there is always room for creative accounting. It really helps if you’re the one who gets to make the rules.
Borrowing rules will likely be tweaked to allow more while the weaselly qualification that Labour won’t put taxes up on “working people” means that some taxes (some even paid by working people) will go up.
The English public was, on the whole, cheered by one piece of news this week: Labour are ditching their plans to ban smoking outside of pubs. It seems even they have a limit to the amount of bad vibes they can create.
For those concerned about the ban on fruity disposable vapes, perhaps consider the example set by one anonymous denizen of the Commons who left a honking great cigar butt in the ashtrays of the terrace bar on Thursday night.
Its chewed-up end remained when your author went out for a breath of fresh air on Friday morning. A reminder that while the days of boozing at the Budget are over, there are still a few Jurassic beings roaming these halls.
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