What a budget week!
Gordon McKee serves global economic insight with more snacks than stability.
Reeves sees through taxing month, but finds more headroom.
And Farage in a banquet of trouble with in some of the thanks giving his senior team have been dishing out.
Read all about it in Who's Top Who's Not by the Whitehouse Communications team
Top - Gordon McKee
While Sky News, the BBC, ITV and just about every broadcaster have been pelting us with graphs and data for the Budget that look indecipherable to many, it has been genuinely refreshing to see an MP explain the state of the economy using… biscuits.
Ahead of the Budget, Gordon McKee released a video charting the rise in national debt, why it’s gone up, what’s happening now, and where the UK is heading, all demonstrated with nothing more than Bourbons and custard creams.
Not only did he manage to break down our economic muddle in a way that didn’t immediately send us to sleep (unlike certain broadcasters), but he also did it with enough charm and novelty to catch the attention of those who usually glaze over at the first mention of GDP or “fiscal headroom”.
And at a time when some of the more skittish Labour MPs seem to be eyeing up the new and romanticised Tribune group, it must be a relief for the Starmer/Reeves project that some inventive backbenchers are backing the government’s plans and communicating them effectively.
All in all, this week it looks like McKee has proven himself to be one smart cookie (Sorry, not sorry).
Middle - Rachel Reeves
It’s fair to say it has been an arduous month for the Treasury. Between leaks to journalists, swirling rumours about tax rises, and, at the final hurdle, the OBR accidentally revealing parts of the budget before the Chancellor even reached the dispatch box, the run-up was anything but smooth. Yet when many of us tuned in to hear Rachel Reeves, the mood that followed was not the horror the newspapers had primed us for, but rather the sense that a mountain had been made out of a molehill.
Of course, economists will be poring over her decisions, and we’ll learn more about the long-term implications in the coming weeks, but for now, the situation looks less dramatic than expected.
Yes, Reeves froze tax brackets, meaning that as wages rise, more people will drift into higher bands and, through fiscal drag, pay more tax. But this still falls short of the changes that had been predicted.
More importantly for Reeves, there was a silver lining: her fiscal rules appear to be holding together, or at least giving a convincing impression that they are. She now has greater fiscal headroom, and the economy turned out to be larger than previously calculated, even if growth forecasts for the coming years have been nudged down.
All in all, most Labour folk will be sighing with relief that the budget and its whirlwind of speculation is over for another year.
Bottom - Nigel Farage
Nigel Farage has been back in the spotlight this week, though not for the reasons his team might have hoped for. As he tries to give Reform UK a more voter friendly glow up, the universe has apparently decided to schedule a back-to-back marathon of bad headlines just for him.
First up: Nathan Gill, former Reform leader for Wales, found guilty of taking bribes from Russia. Not ideal timing when Farage has already been fielding growing questions about his own alleged Russian sympathies.
But the fire didn’t stop there. Old classmates have accused Farage of racist and antisemitic behaviour from his school days. Farage tried waving it off as nothing more than “banter” and saying he has never been directly racist, but it is hard to convince people this is the case when those same classmates remember things very differently.
All in all, it’s looking like Farage might need more than a PR extinguisher, which seems to be coming in the true Trumpian style of threatening to sue over every negative story about the party.
Although the next general election is still years away, there’s a growing sense that Farage’s past may follow him around like a political bad smell. If this keeps up, we may be comparing Farage to Corbyn’s 2019 election campaign, but with Russian vodka-flavoured plot twists.