Sophia Falkner

Some of my oldest and dearest school friends absolutely hate reading the news. One called me up nearly a week after Rishi Sunak called last year’s election to ask if I fancied a weekend in the countryside. ‘That sounds great,’ I said ‘but you know I’m working on the election?’ ‘Oh my gosh, there’s an election?! Totally missed that!’ she squealed. Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss. Her bliss, however, has been somewhat disrupted by TikTok. I nearly fell off my chair when she asked if I’d seen Keir Starmer’s Labour party conference speech last year. Starmer’s demand for the release of the sausages (instead of hostages), had understandably, gone viral, reaching even my staunchly anti-media friends. While recruiting influencers shows No.

When chancellors approach a major moment like a Spending Review, they tend to have a figure in their mind’s eye – someone who embodies the type of voter they hope to win over at the next election: a Mondeo man or Stevenage woman. Rachel Reeves clearly had a very specific figure in mind for today’s Spending Review. But unlike her predecessors, this was no Labour voter. Her Spending Review was laser-focused on Nigel Farage. So why double down on a strategy that was hardly popular with the electorate? Between a laundry list of spending pledges that would have you believe Britain is in a boom, Reeves took aim at Farage. She castigated him for backing Liz Truss’s mini-budget and for spending too much time at the pub (arguably one of his best attributes).

The Work and Pensions Committee’s recent safeguarding report reminded me of the worst thing about working in politics: other people finding out you work in politics. There was the wedding where four men took turns giving me 30-minute monologues on why the Conservatives lost the election (as if living through it once wasn’t enough). My friends now roll their eyes and laugh when a guy at a party starts talking at me: ‘Oh god, he’s into politics’. Even I couldn’t believe my luck when last month, in a Parisian bar at 1 a.m, I was cornered by someone shouting over the music about u-shaped parliament and how select committees don’t get enough media attention (I’m still cringing). Having worked in No.

If ever there were a week for me to commit a crime, this was it. The Sentencing Council – which advises judges on how long convicted criminals should be locked up for – was poised to implement guidance that would mean that, as an ethnic minority, I stood a better chance of avoiding prison than a white male. But at the last minute, they capitulated. Fortunately, as a woman, I still stand a good chance of avoiding being locked up if I end up in trouble. Rhetoric from both parties against two-tier justice – where criminals are treated differently because of who they are – has been strong. The Lord Chancellor, Shabana Mahmood, has declared that she is against ‘any differential treatment before the law for anyone of any kind’.

It was an ominous start to the day of Rachel Reeves’s Spring Statement, when she had to rush out messy, last minute changes to Labour’s package of welfare reforms. To unhappy Labour MPs, this confirmed their belief that the policy is Treasury bean-counting masquerading as reform. They’re not wrong. The current trajectory was unsustainable. We were on track to spend £1 in every £4 of income tax on health and disability benefits by 2030, according to the Policy Exchange think tank. Tightening the qualifying criteria for Personal Independence Payments (PIP) and more frequent reassessments are clearly sensible and necessary.