It was quite the moment. The first Labour budget in 15 years. The first ever UK budget delivered by a woman. Labour backbenchers had been queueing up since 8.30am to get their place in history. The moment the doors were opened three hours later, they dashed for their seats. Within minutes even the standing room was gone.
The Tory MPs, not so much. Ten minutes before the largely pointless prime minister’s questions began there were still plenty of seats free on the opposition side of the chamber. One of the upsides of having only 121 MPs is that there is no premium on space these days. Up in the gallery above, Theresa May sat impassively apart from the odd shake of the head. The Maybot never gives much away. She inhabits a world of her own.
Once the formalities of PMQs were over, the speaker – as is traditional on budget day – made way for his deputy, Nusrat Ghani. On his way out, Lindsay Hoyle whispered “good luck” to Rachel Reeves. She was going to need it. Fair to say that public speaking doesn’t come naturally to the chancellor, and she was to be on her feet for the next 77 minutes. It felt far longer.
“My optimism for Britain burns brighter than ever,” she said. Trying to generate a feelgood factor. You wouldn’t want to meet Rachel when she’s having a bad day. No matter. We were all in it together for the duration.
Labour was promising a decade of national renewal. Now was the time for responsible leadership. It made you wonder if the rest of us would ever catch a break. We never got to enjoy the irresponsible leadership. You’d have thought that at least might have been fun. Instead it just brought austerity, a cost of living crisis and interest rate rises. Responsible government didn’t sound a whole lot more fun. Taxes raised to their highest ever levels, borrowing up and growth mediocre. Hardly sunlit uplands.
Then to the foundations. This wasn’t the budget Reeves wanted to give. She’d have loved to be loved. To make tax giveaways. But that was how the Tories had created the mess she had inherited. A £22bn “black hole” in the nation’s finances. Broken public services. Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt hadn’t even put aside the promised £11bn in compensation for victims of the infected blood scandal.
Nor could the chancellor guarantee to fix 14 years of decline in one budget. Though she sincerely hoped this would break the back of it. Far better to get the bulk of the pain over and done with early in the parliament. That might leave some leeway for her to be Nice Rachel a few years down the line. Though this was implied rather than said. It was up to us to join the dots.
There were a few lighter moments, though blink and you might have missed them. Reeves is not blessed with great comic timing. There was one joke about Kemi Badenoch’s bullying behaviour. Though not one about Robert Jenrick to even things up. Then again, Honest Bob hadn’t bothered to show up.
Reeves also got into a long buildup to a gag about private jets aimed at Sunak that completely escaped the leader of the opposition. Only some forced laughter from her own MPs came to her rescue.
Rishi was nose down in his notes, preparing his reply. To his left was Laura Trott, passing him useless bits of information. To his right, Jezza was in a world of his own. Almost in a state of dissociation. As with Sunak, his time is up and he has already checked out. Only interested in preserving what remains of his reputation. Hard to believe he was the ersatz future once. He exudes the unbearable lightness of being.
On we went, the Labour backbenchers getting steadily louder and more enthusiastic throughout the speech. Even Reeves was beginning to relax a bit. These were her choices. Her budget. A bold budget. A serious budget from a serious person. She was never going to die wondering. She even promised an end to fiscal drag in three years’ time. We’ll see about that.
Nor were there to be any great surprises. Almost all the tax rises and spending commitments had come pre-trailed. These were presented as keeping Labour’s manifesto commitments. Which was a bit of a stretch. Most of us could have sworn she had said there would be no rises to national insurance or changes to the fiscal rules. Perhaps we hadn’t been listening properly.
Finally. Rachel used that word at least 20 times. But eventually she meant it, having delivered a rise in the “national living wage”, billions of pounds in public sector investment and increased spending for public services. Austerity it wasn’t. She sat down to sustained cheers from her own benches. Waves of the order paper and loud whoops. They had waited a while for a moment like this and they were going to enjoy it.
Responding to a budget speech is one of the more thankless jobs in the parliamentary calendar, even when it has been extensively pre-briefed. But Sunak made a decent fist of it, though he was given a bum steer by Jezza who had briefly woken up to inform him that the Office for Budget Responsibility hadn’t found a black hole in his finances. Not for the first time, Jezza had read the wrong document and sent his boss running in the wrong direction.
Sunak did his best – the Tories will miss him when he’s gone – ranting and raving about broken promises. He should know about them. That was his speciality. The Tories had had their chance and the public had made their feelings felt at the election. And this budget was very much for them. If you get paid a monthly salary, drive a car and use the NHS then you’re quids in.
The OBR wasn’t quite as impressed with the budget, observing that it foreshadowed low growth and high borrowing. But Reeves could go to bed happy. It had been a balancing act between audacity and caution. She had staked her own and the government’s future on improving public services. And if in five years’ time the NHS was functioning better and the trains were running more or less on time, it was job done.
Taking the Lead by John Crace is published by Little, Brown (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
A year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar. On Tuesday 3 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back at a political year like no other, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at guardian.live.
