Kemi Badenoch is having as good a post-Budget review as Rachel Reeves is having a PR and political nightmare.
In many ways having gone toe to toe in the Commons for possibly the most significant Budget in years, it was inevitable the two front-of-house protagonists would have a mirrored aftermath.
For every fist-bump Badenoch gets, Reeves is taking blows, from politicians, from the media and from the public – the Mail and the Sun today pointing to negative public reaction to the Budget.
‘Kemi has accused Rachel of lying’ about the state of the public finances in that weird ‘will they won’t they, I could tell you but I’d have to kill you’ nonsense we could in good conscience now call the “Phoney Budget” period before last Wednesday.
Whether conspiracy or cock up hardly matters it has concreted another damning flaw of this Government. We knew they were hypocritical, they spent year one demonstrating that, they’ve been busy in year two building their image as dishonest. And they are.
When mendacity becomes a viable policy option inside a Government it’s bad for everyone. When they lie about a lie it’s catastrophic.
It’s not Reeves’ first mythical black hole either. I almost squeaked like a Birdwatcher who’s seen a species die out only to spot a now rare survivor in the wild, when she raked up the ‘22billion black hole’ – the original one – last week. It’s the second promise to her own voters she’s broken, and it seems about the only people happy with it are her back benchers and a rump of cultist believers who still vote Labour if they decided to sell out to the Chinese Communist party…oh wait, that’s December.
The substance of her Budget that so pleased Labour’s backbenchers who, and the Tories know just how toxic this gets, now run the Government by threat, has embraced ballooning the welfare Budget and created the worst of economic worlds, that for some people welfare pays more than hard work.
Reeves gave her Budget speech and it was Labour focused, brutal and game changing. Badenoch’s Budget response was laser focused, brutal and brilliant.
It has been noticeable, again, how the mood amongst the many still angry and unimpressed with the Conservative Party pivoted to a version of ‘she’s good, I quite like her actually but I couldn’t vote for them’. Tiny steps but vital.
I’ve spent days eye rolling at the pathetic bleating from Labour die-hards, and some broadcasters who pretend they aren’t the same, who muse publicly whether she was a bit mean, because, you know, ‘the Chancellor is a woman, and she has cried, and it was quite personal.’
Rishi Sunak, who’s TV election debate accusations about Labour’s inherent addiction to taxing anything that moves is getting a noticeable revival, actually responded to Reeves’ first Budget. It was his swan song as leader and he delivered it with all the unburdened damnation of a man who wanted to scream “I told you” at the public.
Did anyone say it was ‘mean’? Not that I can remember. When Keir Starmer weekly, and weakly, tries to belittle Badenoch, which is mean, because she’s no basketball player let’s face it, do these Labour empaths say a word? They do not.
What can possibly be invalid about a woman, pointing out that the first female UK Chancellor who has complained about mansplaining and misogyny when people criticise her, suggesting it’s desperately grabbed convenient camouflage for genuine concern and criticism of how she’s doing her job?
Badenoch deserves whatever boost it gives her. Not least because it will be smaller, and shorter lived than Conservatives might wish. It’s a really important, well taken step on a long and hard journey still to go. That’s all.
As Nigel Farage would tell you, and Zia Yusuf shout at you, May 2026 is still a judgement to come, and as potentially hard and harsh as it is undoubtedly going to be for Labour.
He would point this out to you himself more forcefully but he’s gone a bit quiet since Nathan Gill was jailed for a decade for taking bribes to schill for Putin. Gill was never really Reform UK in the way he was as close as it gets to Nigel in the UKIP days, but so toxic is the crime nobody wants the man being contemplated as the potential next PM covered in the radioactive blast range.
Nigel is only ever quiet for two reasons: he’s either said it enough, or he’s been shamed by something awkward. I’m wary of judging anyone on things they said as a child forty years ago but after a gut full of Gill, the multiple accusations of schoolboy nazi-esque nastiness have not helped him, and seemingly sent him to ground for a bit.
Besides what would he say about a Budget that balloons welfare spending in exactly the way he asked.
Badenoch has done it again.
Reminded Labour and Reform that they took their eye off the Tory ball, hoping to persuade anyone and everyone that the party is dead. It clearly isn’t and the official, real, opposition is doing its job, very well, of opposing. It’s not polling like Reform, and not doing its job nearly enough to stop being in opposition, but as we’ve heard over an again, there’s still a long time to go.
So much for the Westminster bubble’s busiest week in a long time. The real world of course is reeling from the consequences of the Budget.
This is where the Conservatives need to stay. Polling suggests this is where trust has returned to them. Immigration is still a self-gifted albatross around the party’s neck but on the economy – which it still is, stupid – they are in opportunity rich territory.
Because it’s about the only bit of politics that is rich, that and the welfare budget.
The almost casual abandonment of the apparent defining mission of Starmer’s government is astonishing. No folks, how could you possibly have ever thought economic growth was Starmer and Reeves’ lodestone and guiding star. I mean never mind that they banged on about it forever and said and did all sorts of things to show it, including suspending the whip from some Labour MPs for their insanity in suggesting the two child benefit cap should be lifted. Honestly more fool you.
No, the defining mission of this Government was ending child poverty all along, which I’ve been trying to find evidence of them saying repeatedly, but how cynical and sexist of me to try and catch the Chancellor out.
The most damning of the Tory leader’s jibes was that it should not be the Labour party anymore but the Welfare party. The even more damning and toxic hangover of the Budget that might bring Reeves down is best expressed by a senior party activist and donor:
“Reeves has ushered in the ‘why bother’ economy’. A lot of my business contacts UK wide are telling me they are currently treading water with their and are not looking at taking more risks, taking on more debt, making more investments and creating more jobs due to the combined measures and effects of the last two budgets. If this attitude among my business contacts is widespread across the country and takes a firm hold and in fact speeds up and expands further into actual cutting back and retrenchment – we will be in really big trouble!”
When your own government, hampers growth, boosts welfare spending, and borrowing, raises taxes whilst trying to look like it isn’t, those working people they are supposedly ‘in the service of’ are right to wonder why am I bothering, if they are able to work at all?
We should quickly move on from the shell shocked faces of Starmer, Reeves and Cooper after they got Kemi’d. It was good to see, but it’s not the game. Now it is going after every single way the Government is failing, the economic risks it is exposing us all to, and most crucially how you stop it, and genuinely boost growth.
There is now a clearly drawn chasm between how the Tories see that mission, and how Labour do. For as long as Reform champion removal of the two child limit, Badenoch is able to honestly say the Conservatives are the only ones offering to get Britain to live within its means.
Only growth will offer the keys to tackling everything else.
Reeves and Starmer haven’t forgotten that – they’ve chosen to throw it away.
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