You would think we were in the final three months of a general election campaign, not three and a half years out. Everywhere you look there’s a party leader giving a press conference. Demanding attention from a public that just wants to be given a break.
Even the news channels are losing interest. Sending along a reporter more on the off-chance someone says something idiotic, than in any expectation of anyone committing hard news. Well, anything more idiotic than usual. This far out from an election we’re just dealing in political fever dreams.
On Tuesday morning it was the Tories and Reform fighting for airtime. Appearing simultaneously, and less than half a mile away from each other in central London.
It was hard to escape the feeling this was Westminster talking to itself. Existential crises being played out in real time as pre-budget statements of little importance from Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage. Imaginary numbers in front of an imaginary audience made up of imaginary friends.
Kemi’s presser took place in a tiny annexe of the British Academy. There was barely enough room for three rows of chairs. The front row reserved for a smattering of shadow ministers, there under duress. Armed with instructions to nod vigorously and laugh and applaud in the right places. A thankless task as they couldn’t even manage that. This was going to be an hour of their lives they would never get back. All out of some misplaced notion of duty.
Every day is a four-flag day for Kemi. She won’t even appear for a selfie unless there is a minimum of four union jacks in the background. We live in a time of competitive patriotism. Satisfied that everything was in place, Kemi took the stage alongside the shadow chancellor, Mel Stride. This was her chance to shine. #WinningAtLife.
“Rachel Reeves will tell you a story next week,” she began. And this story would be of how Brexit, energy prices and Trump’s trade tariffs had damaged the economy. But Kemi was here to let us know this was all fiction. None of this had ever happened.
It’s curious how keen the Tories are to distance themselves from Brexit these days. It’s like it was an embarrassing affair that took place a while ago that no one can now bring themselves to talk about. It is a form of derangement. A clinical psychosis.
The Tories had the answer. Rather than raising taxes, they would make £47bn of savings off the welfare bill. First by keeping the two-child benefit cap – it was apparently very important for some children to fall into poverty as it would teach them to live within their means if they didn’t die first – and then with various other benefit cuts that she couldn’t bring herself to mention as that was all top secret and she hadn’t yet found the back of an envelope on which to work out the numbers. All of which was code for she really didn’t have a clue.
Next came Mel. The man with the demeanour of a downtrodden King Charles spaniel. Lovable but totally useless. He really should have been given a knighthood by Rishi Sunak for services to futility, in being the last person standing in the Tory party who could be persuaded to make a fool of himself on his boss’s behalf at the last election.
Even Rishi had given up before Stride. Ideally, the Melster would have been put out to grass, but there appears to be no one better than him to act as shadow chancellor. Says it all really.
Mind you, it wasn’t that hard being Mel, because his sole purpose was to repeat everything that Kemi had just said. The welfare budget was far too high, he said. Now let me think. Who was the work and pensions secretary on whose watch the benefits budget soared by 20% to record levels?
Let me think. Oh yes, it was the Melster himself. Mel, meet Mel. Sometimes you wonder if politicians think we were born yesterday. Their capacity for self-forgiveness is unparalleled. Amnesia is their greatest friend. But really there’s no reason anyone should take anything Mel says about welfare seriously. The credibility gap is an abyss.
He ended by reiterating Kemi’s insistence that freezing tax thresholds would be the greatest betrayal since … since the Tories had frozen them in 2021. You could sense his disappointment that Reeves has done a U-turn on increasing income tax by 2%. Quite taken the wind out of his and Kemi’s sails. No one has had the heart to tell them it makes no difference. They aren’t a government in waiting. They are an irrelevance.
The rest of the press conference passed in a desultory Q&A. A necessary performance we all had to go through for the sake of completion. Kemi’s answers grew increasingly wild. Reform was a leftwing party but was somehow copying the Tories. Go figure. The problem with austerity was that it hadn’t been austerity enough. Go figure.
Labour shouldn’t still blame the Tories for the economy they had inherited last year but it was fine for the Tories to blame Labour for their legacy in 2010. Go figure. Kemi was closer to God than the archbishop of Canterbury. It was a relief to get out into the late autumn air.
Over in another part of Westminster, Farage and Zia Yusuf – whose ascendancy suggests that Dicky Tice’s days as chancellor designate are numbered – were indulging their own budget fantasies. No more foreign aid bar the absolute bare minimum. The poorest countries should learn to look after themselves. They were all far too lazy. Charity begins at home and all that.
An increased NHS surcharge for foreigners. You know what they are like. They come over here and have far more babies than us. Using up all our NHS resources. Make them pay if they can’t be bothered to use contraception.
Stop all universal credit payment to foreign and EU nationals. How did he know the EU wouldn’t retaliate with a trade war? Because Nige was the master negotiator. The EU would just stare into his millpond eyes and crumple. Brussels had always been so fond of him. Love at first sight. It was out and out insanity.
There must have been something in the air. While all this was going on, Keir Starmer was giving his cabinet a bollocking. All briefings about the budget and against each other had to stop, he said. That would be the briefings for which he was mostly responsible. It’s politics, Jim. But not as we know it.