Tim Shipman is political editor of The Spectator.
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Lots has happened over the weekend – Your Party (as they are now actually called) have proven to be the gift that keeps on giving, there been another defection to Reform and Rachel Reeves stands accused of lying about the extent of the fiscal blackhole in her pre-Budget briefings. Some within Labour see it as
I think we will look back on this week as one of the most pivotal of this government. It was the moment when Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves revealed themselves. This week’s Budget showed clearly what Reeves’s revealed preferences are – and what they are not When we were all trying to work out what
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With Budget week finally at an end, certain mysteries remain. Chief among them is why the Chancellor decided to give an emergency speech preparing the public for a rise in income tax. On 4 November, Rachel Reeves summoned journalists to Downing Street early in the morning to warn that ‘the productivity performance we inherited is
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‘Marriage is the real rebellion’ argues Madeline Grant in the Spectator’s cover article this week. The Office for National Statistics predicts that by 2050 only 30 per cent of adults will be married. This amounts to a ‘relationship recession’ where singleness is ‘more in vogue now than it has been since the dissolution of the monastries’. With
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Tim Shipman sits down with Professor David Miles of the Office for Budget Responsibility the day after a Budget overshadowed by an extraordinary leak. David sets out what the OBR now believes about growth, headroom and productivity — and why the UK’s long-term prospects look weaker than hoped. He discusses the political choices behind back-loaded
With his owlish expression and affable manner, Nick Thomas-Symonds looks more like the academic that he was, rather than the political bomb disposal expert he has become. Brexit is the greatest political issue for a generation, yet Keir Starmer has chosen to put this softly spoken Welshman in charge of defusing it. The Cabinet Office
Rachel Reeves is lucky that the name ‘omnishambles Budget’ has already been taken. When the entire document was published long before she got to her feet in the Commons, the only thing that would have made this most chaotic pre-Budget period more shambolic would have been if the Deputy Speaker had banned her from making
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As Budget days go, today was unprecedented. The complete list of measures announced by Rachel Reeves – along with their costings and economic impacts – was leaked by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) an hour before the Chancellor took to her feet. The OBR apologised and called it a ‘technical error’. The headline is
While Westminster is consumed by the fallout from the Budget, I can reveal there is another major headache on the horizon for Keir Starmer – a new confrontation with the armed forces over defence spending. I’m told there was an extraordinary meeting on Tuesday in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in which the Chief of
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Britain has an energy problem – while we produce some of the cleanest in the world, it’s also the most expensive, and that’s the case for almost every avenue of energy. On the day the Spectator hosts its Energy Summit in Westminster, a report commissioned by the Prime Minister has found that the UK is
Denis Healey’s ‘caretaker Budget’ on 3 April 1979 is an odd focus for Labour nostalgia. It came a week after Jim Callaghan’s government had lost a vote of no confidence, paving the way for Margaret Thatcher’s arrival in No. 10. Healey was reduced to merely introducing the finance bill to maintain normal tax collection functions,
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This afternoon, the Home Secretary will set out in the House of Commons her proposed reforms to the asylum system. The headline changes proposed by Shabana Mahmood have been well briefed in the weekend press: refugees will have temporary status and be required to reapply to remain in Britain every two-and-a-half years; those arriving would
What a week. Seven days ago, we were wondering what Rachel Reeves was up to with her pre-Budget messaging. At the start of this week the future of the Prime Minister was seriously called into doubt with a bunch of calamitous late-night briefings to the media. At the end of the daftest seven days in
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With less than a fortnight to go until the Budget, it seems Rachel Reeves has performed an almighty U-turn. At the beginning of the week, the established consensus in Westminster was that the base rate of income tax would rise, breaking Labour’s flagship manifesto pledge. The Chancellor had already rolled the pitch, holding a press
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It’s been another bruising week for the British economy. New GDP figures reveal that growth has almost flatlined, inching up by just 0.1 per cent between July and August – a sign, many fear, that the UK is drifting into deeper malaise. With the budget less than a fortnight away, can the Chancellor square the
Keir Starmer is stuck in a catch-22. If he is to avoid the threat of continual leadership challenges, the Prime Minister will need to deal with what every poll shows are the public’s three overriding concerns: the cost of living, rampant illegal immigration and the state of the NHS. But if serious progress is made
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Conspiracy or cock-up? Westminster is abuzz after what appears to be a plan to decapitate Wes Streeting has spectacularly backfired. A flurry of late-night briefings designed to shore up Keir Starmer’s position turned personal against the Health Secretary, suggesting he was plotting a coup in advance of the Budget and in anticipation of – what
Welcome to my first Evening Blend. Unless there are earth-shattering events each Friday, my intention is to try to cut through the events of the week and say what really mattered over the past five days. This week, it was the Treasury’s relentless efforts to ‘roll the pitch’ for the Budget. But the frenetic pace
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What lessons does America have for our politics? While progressives look to Zohran Mamdani for inspiration on how to get elected successfully, the really important question is how to govern effectively. And here it is the Trump administration which is setting the standard, writes Tim Shipman in this week’s cover story. On day one, Donald Trump stepped into
A year ago, the Chancellor called her £38 billion tax rise a ‘one-and-done’ move. Now she looks set to rinse and repeat, with reports that a 2p increase in income tax is on the table. According to The Times, she has informed the Office for Budget Responsibility that a rise in personal taxation is one
