Sparing the "change"

The good thing about writing a ‘Budget look ahead’ article these days is that its contents can almost entirely be recycled for the post-Budget analysis the next day. Such is the volume of information released ahead of the speech itself, which increasingly just provides the connective tissue between policies and a spectacle at the dispatch box.

The frontbench has defended this year’s slew of pre-match policy announcements as necessary to ensure the Budget lands ‘in the right context’. Specifically, Rachel Reeves is hoping that while some policies will spook the public, some will find some credit with the financial markets.

Taken together, the policies confirmed so far indicate that it will be a defining post-election Budget. Hikes to employers’ NI contributions and freezing tax thresholds, right down to a 50% increase to the bus fare cap (and all preceded by the end of the winter fuel allowance) points to a government with an appetite to make tough choices to fix the foundations of the UK economy.

Tough choices have not been on the menu for some time, and Starmer is keen to press this point to justify why they are needed now. He contends that 14 years of fiscal irresponsibility under the Conservatives has forced the government to bend it’s Change manifesto around a £20bn black hole. In his own words: ‘things are worse than we ever imagined’…a far cry from Blair’s ‘things can only get better’ 17 years earlier.

 It's a message that needs to land. The more important question is, how long can it last? The government has shown a particular penchant for sacrificing itself for the greater good, spilling out bad news seemingly at every opportunity in order to temper public expectations.  Take the past 48 hours. Yesterday, promises not to raise the three main taxes this time were caveated by Starmer’s ‘yet’. Today, messaging that the Budget will deliver desperately needed funding for the NHS (which most people theoretically support) comes after the byline: ‘Labour’s budget will not be enough to fix the NHS or prevent a “dire” winter, ministers have said.’

While today appears to have brought a tonal shift – highlighting the above-inflation rise in the minimum wage, and fleshing out how funding for the NHS would be used - some could say it’s too little too late. As me colleague Dafydd Rees writes below; ‘Labour’s spin doctors need to square the circle that the harsh reality of tax rises needs to be tempered with hope. Doom and gloom on their own won’t cut it.’