Chris S

👏 Brilliant from Sophy Ridge as she told the Chancellor to his face: your budget does NOTHING. The Chancellor walked in expecting soft questions on @RidgeandFrost about “change”. What he got was a direct challenge over the gap between the big promises and the empty budget he just delivered. Sophy didn’t let him hide behind spin for a second: “When Andy Burnham came in he promised change, not just any change, big change! He promised to end 40 years of neo-liberalism. Don’t take this the wrong way, but that wasn’t a budget to end 40 years of neo-liberalism, right?” Chancellor: “I would say that is wrong.” He claimed he’d set out decisions that would change Britain’s energy system and market for good. Sophy: “Like what?” Chancellor: “Like an end to levies on household bills.” She cut him off: “Come on! You’ve been talking about nationalisation of our utilities and ending 40 years of Thatcherism.” Chancellor: “He’s talking about bringing energy bills down and in line with Europe.” Sophy wasn’t having it: “You’re talking about levies on bills, this is a different order of magnitude.” Then the line that finished him: “Give me one thing in this budget that Rachel Reeves wouldn’t have done as chancellor?” He had nothing. This is a big nothing burger. Starmer 2.0. No fundamental change. Absolutely nothing in there for the working men and women who get up and graft all day for nothing. Nothing to incentivise work. Nothing to reward effort over dependency. Is it any wonder people are happy to sit on their backsides and get paid by the state? This government shows no sign at all of addressing that. They promised to end 40 years of the status quo. They delivered more of it.

😬 Nick Ferrari properly embarrassed the Chancellor on @LBC this morning by mocking his Budget. The first 30 seconds of the interview basically summed the whole thing up. He didn’t ease in. He went straight for the jugular and treated the Budget like the joke it is: “4p off the price of gherkins, 2p on a pint and a return to public/private partnership. This is not groundbreaking, Chancellor!” That’s it. That’s the big offer. 🤷‍♂️ Healey immediately said he “disputes that” and tried the old “if I can do the small things, I should do them” line, then claimed credit for freezing fuel duty. Ferrari was having none of it: “That was already frozen, wasn’t it? Where’s the big BOLD ideas, Chancellor?” And that was basically the interview. They could’ve ended it there. This Budget has gone down like a lead balloon. It does almost nothing for anyone. No one is coming away from it today thinking things are turning. It’s just a dull, unambitious continuation of the Starmer-Reeves government, the same tinkering, the same lack of vision, the same refusal to actually change anything that matters. The Burnham bounce is well and truly over. He talked a big game: we’ll do this, we’ll do that, things have to change, government working for the people, blah blah blah. Then he delivers this. 💀

😂 Nick Ferrari bursts out laughing as Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds is forced to sell the latest government gimmick live on @LBC Reynolds looked thoroughly embarrassed as he tried to sell the plan to scrap import tariffs on a list of “everyday essentials”. When Ferrari asked him which products were included and what the actual savings would be, Reynolds immediately started dampening expectations, sheepishly admitting these were “not huge reductions” before reeling off the list: baked beans, chocolate, gherkins… That’s as far as he got. Ferrari could not contain himself and burst out laughing. 😭 Nick then pointed out that the Conservatives have called the projected saving of £21 per year “derisory”. You could see Reynolds was mortified reading it out. Imagine the brief he opened this morning and realised he had to go on air and sell this to the public. 😬 What a farce. Even on the government’s own figures, this works out at roughly 40p a week for the average household. Forty pence a week. You lucky people. Another pointless gimmick that will have zero material impact on people’s lives.