It normally takes at least a couple of days for a budget to unravel. But the chancellor’s spring statement had landed dead on arrival with not even the usually friendly voices of the rightwing media finding anything positive to say about it. Instead the headlines had been damning. The worst fall in the standard of living since records began. The highest level of taxation since the 1940s. More than a million people to fall into absolute poverty. Nothing for the out-of-work and disabled. Food and energy prices spiralling out of control.
Worse still was the implication that Rishi Sunak was financially illiterate. The incompetent former Goldman Sachs banker who couldn’t make his sums add up. Hopelessly exposed as out of his depth. He had put up national insurance to pay for the NHS and was now reducing the take by raising the threshold. As if he had never intended to hypothecate the tax rise. Fancy that! Then there was the cut in fuel duty that no one would notice as forecourt prices were going so fast. He’d said he would raise them by 5p again in a year’s time, but everyone knew that was a lie. So how was he going to afford the cut long term? As for the opportunistic income tax cut before the next election … the less said the better.
So it was a decidedly tetchy – sulky, even – Sunak who embarked on the morning media round. The chancellor loves a lap of honour when he can smile coyly and luxuriate in the “Dishy Rishi” applause for his generous cash bailouts. But when things all go tits up and it’s clear there is no real plan for protecting the economy then he’s as thin-skinned as any other politician with an eye on the top job.
Things got off to a bad start when Sky accused his wife’s family of benefiting from a stake in a company with links to Russia – sanctioning the billionaire in his own home would be a hell of a statement of intent – and quickly turned to farce as he tried to explain that he was completely in touch with working people because he had to buy different breads for every member of his family. As you do. Or rather as your staff do. Sunak hasn’t been near a supermarket in years.
By the time the chancellor made it on to Radio 4’s Today programme, he was near the end of his tether. He couldn’t understand why Sarah, a carer with two children, wasn’t more grateful for all that he had done for her. When it was explained to him that none of the spring statement measures helped Sarah at all, he lost it. “If I might just have an opportunity to answer the question, that would be marvellous,” he said, snarkily. It was like this. He had done his bit for the little people last November. So if they were still broke, it was entirely their fault. Tell them to turn off a light or something. And give him Sarah’s details so he could bung her £20 or so.
That was pretty much all he had to say. He couldn’t help everyone. It wasn’t his fault if energy prices kept rising. So there just had to be a point at which the government let people starve and freeze. This was what any financially prudent chancellor would do. And while he was about it, he might as well help people move along the path to poverty by capping the rise in state benefits to well below inflation. As for what might happen next, he really didn’t have a clue. He was completely out of ideas. Mishal Husain was left speechless. As were we all.
Still, Rishi could console himself he wasn’t the only person having a shit day. Over in Portcullis House, Peter Hebblethwaite, the chief executive of P&O Ferries, was up before the combined business and transport select committees. Darren Jones, the business committee chair, cut to the chase. Was the chief exec just really bad at his job or was he a shameless criminal?
Hebblethwaite – who looked like a man you’d appoint to head up a Ponzi scheme – shifted uncomfortably in his chair before choosing to answer. It was tricky, he said. But he would try to tell the truth. Something that didn’t come naturally. Yes, he was seriously hopeless at his job. Really he should never have made it above junior management level. But also he was a shameless criminal. So when he had reached the conclusion that the only way to save his £325k a year job was for everyone else to lose theirs, he hadn’t hesitated to break the law by sacking everyone without consultation. And with any luck he’d get a performance-related bonus for having done so.
It had been completely deliberate not to consult the unions, he said. Because it was inevitable that the unions would have kicked off and he didn’t want to stress out officials by forcing them into negotiations that would inevitably be pointless. And the presence of security guards on the ferries when the sackings were announced was entirely for the seafarers’ benefit. Some people needed to be handcuffed to help them find their way off the boat.
Hebblethwaite also observed that he had done the mass sackings by a live Zoom call. Not a pre-recorded message. He seemed to think this was a very human touch. He was also at pains to point out how generous he was being by paying some of the new workers £5.50 an hour. The minimum wage under international maritime law was £5.15. And he couldn’t really explain why it had only been British seafarers who had been sacked, rather than the French and Dutch. Though at a guess it was because he reckoned the British government would be much less bothered.
“I’m very sorry,” he said at the end. Though not enough to be arsed to do anything about it. He’d take his chances with the changes in UK labour laws brought in by Failing Grayling. Not forgetting the catatonic idiocy of the attorney general, Suella Braverman. And the chances of the PM having told the truth in prime minister’s questions about taking P&O to court were near enough zero. Hell, the Suspect could barely even dress himself, judging by the pictures coming out of the Nato meeting in Brussels. He looked a total car wreck. None of the other Nato leaders had wanted to go anywhere near him at the group photo.
So yes, Hebblethwaite would do the same all over again in a heartbeat. What’s more he looked as if he thought he’d get away with it. Just an expression of ersatz remorse and he would be out of there.
