Rupert Harrison

Rupert Harrison is an economist and was George Osborne’s chief of staff when he was chancellor

Thursday

Rupert Harrison

Labour’s growing pains, survival of the hottest & murder most fascinating

From our UK edition

43 min listen

This week: why is economic growth eluding Labour?‘Growing pains’ declares The Spectator’s cover image this week, as our political editor Katy Balls, our new economics editor Michael Simmons, and George Osborne’s former chief of staff Rupert Harrison analyse the fiscal problems facing the Chancellor. ‘Dominic Cummings may have left Whitehall,’ write Katy and Michael, ‘but his spirit lives on.’ ‘We are all Dom now,’ according to one government figure. Keir Starmer’s chief aide Morgan McSweeney has never met Cummings, but the pair share a diagnosis of Britain’s failing economy. Identifying a problem is not, however, the same as solving it.

Rupert Harrison

It’s time for Rachel Reeves to stop gambling

From our UK edition

Next Wednesday Rachel Reeves will stand up in the House of Commons to deliver what she is calling her ‘spring forecast’. As so often with political language, everyone in Westminster knows it is no such thing, just as there was nothing ‘mini’ about Kwasi Kwarteng’s Budget of September 2022. The ‘spring forecast’ will be an emergency Budget, and the reasons for it reveal a surprising truth about the Chancellor of the Exchequer: she is an inveterate gambler. Unless everything turns out to be a brilliant exercise in expectation management, the worst-kept secret in Whitehall is that Reeves has already broken her ‘iron-clad’ fiscal rules.

Wednesday

Rupert Harrison

Should Rachel Reeves be at Davos?

From our UK edition

12 min listen

It’s Davos day two, and Rachel Reeves has touched down in Switzerland to continue her hunt for growth. On the agenda today was a fireside chat with the Business Secretary on ‘The Year Ahead for the UK’, and she will also be attending a series of meetings with business leaders. The party line is that ‘the time to invest in Britain is now’; however, she will be doing this from the sidelines, having not been given one of the headline speaking slots. Can she bring home the bacon? And why is Davos so important? Oscar Edmondson speaks to Katy Balls and Rupert Harrison, former chief of staff to George Osborne. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

Thursday

Rupert Harrison

Reeves’s gambit, a debate on assisted dying & queer life in postwar Britain

From our UK edition

52 min listen

This week: the Chancellor’s Budget dilemma. ‘As a former championship chess player, Rachel Reeves must know that the first few moves can be some of the most important of the game,’ writes Rupert Harrison – former chief of staff to George Osborne – for the cover of the magazine this week. But, he says, the truth is that she has played herself into a corner ahead of this month's Budget, with her room for manoeuvre dramatically limited by a series of rash decisions. Her biggest problem is that she has repeatedly ruled out increases in income tax, national insurance and VAT. So which taxes will rise, given that the easy options have been ruled out? The answers appear to be evolving rapidly when ministers are confronted with the OBR’s harsh reality.

Rupert Harrison

Rachel Reeves has backed herself into a corner on the Budget

From our UK edition

As a championship chess player, Rachel Reeves must know that the first few moves can be some of the most important of the game. In preparing her Budget, she appears to be starting her tenure as Chancellor from a position of strength. Her background in the Bank of England gives her institutional credibility, and the size of Labour’s majority means she faces little opposition in the Commons. But the truth is that her room for manoeuvre has been dramatically limited by decisions she has already made. Unforced early errors, as well as an election strategy that prematurely took options off the table, have left her with only a handful of choices, fewer of which are palatable.

Wednesday

Rupert Harrison

The moral of the Olly Robbins row? Don’t base policy on a lie

From our UK edition

Olly Robbins will be trying to avoid the Prime Minister today after his hurricane strength gaffe was splashed all over the newspaper front pages. He deserves a fair share of the criticism that has come his way, but I'm sure most of us have mouthed off a little too loudly in the pub after a stressful day in the office. The PM will be especially frustrated because he has undermined one of Theresa May's central claims – that the choice facing Parliament is a binary one between her deal and no deal. But she can't blame Robbins for the fragility of her position. In fact this is just a specific example of a wider truth: it's almost never a good idea to build a governing strategy around saying something that isn't true. Government is too big and the truth will out somehow.

Wednesday

Rupert Harrison

Are the Tories giving up on balancing the books?

From our UK edition

Today's budget forecasts a £20bn reduction in the tax receipts by 2021-22. That's the cost of the productivity downgrade: The Treasury got a £9bn windfall this year from a lower borrowing forecast. That's the same as the £9bn peak fiscal loosening in 2019-20: The £14bn higher borrowing by the end of the period is roughly the same as £13bn higher borrowing in 2019-20. But in 2019-20, most of that is £9bn of giveaways (which fall away in the final two years). By the end, the fiscal deterioration is, basically, lower tax receipts as a result of slower growth: So we have fiscal loosening and higher borrowing. Still, the deficit is still forecast to be low as a percentage of GDP – below two per cent and falling towards one per cent.