It used to be a strong requirement that no-one in the know leaked anything about the budget. When I was Margaret Thatcher’s adviser I read draft budget papers in controlled conditions in No 10 to protect me and the budget from any leaks. I usually gave my advice to the PM one to one in person. Like the few others who did see the budget papers we never spoke to the press about any of these matters.
This latest budget farago shows why secrecy is a good way to deal with highly market sensitive matters covered by a budget. It is an offence to disclose inside information that can move share prices. When papers picked up the idea that the budget might introduce a higher gambling tax, gambling shares reacted. When someone proposed a bank tax, bank shares fell. When the later leak or comment confirmed no bank tax they rose.
Of course in the run up to any budget many people not seeing the budget papers or helping with the decisions make public comments on likely tax changes and other matters. Share prices may gyrate around these speculations, depending on who said them. This however needs investigation because many people who deal in shares woke up morning after morning to what looked like authentic steers or briefings from inside the advisory and ministerial tent handling the budget data and decisions. When several leading papers and the media all have the same story about likely tax changes there needs to be an enquiry to see if the rumours came from those in the know. It would be unusual if all backed the same hunch of someone on the outside at the same time.
Part of the process was on the record. The Chancellor herself gave a strong steer in her emergency statement from Downing Street about the need for higher taxes, with the implication being she was looking at Income tax.
I do hope the Chancellor reviews the disaster brought about by misleading statements over debts and deficits and over the need for tax rises. Far from pinning the blame for tax rises on past governments she has succeeded in highlighting how the extra tax was needed to meet her extra spending plans, particularly on the ballooning welfare bill.
November 30, 2025
Surely the lies about intentions and the state of the economy and now the leaking, possibly deliberately, of Budget information are offences in criminal law? Malfeasance? Misfeasance in a public office is, apparently, a unique common law tort.
November 30, 2025
I think the word you may be looking for is, corruption ?
November 30, 2025
@Peter Gardner – could even be ‘market manipulation’ for profit. As no one in Parliament cares would suggest they are all at it.
November 30, 2025
Did either Sir Two Tier or Chancellor PPI clerk mislead the house?
November 30, 2025
The problem appears to be that all the hyperbole, outrage, and punishment have been used up on Boris and Miss Truss, so there is nothing left for the real malfeasance in high office.
November 30, 2025
I thought the latest position on the budget logic of a need for more taxes was revealed as false.
I believe the OBR have come out and said the much trumpeted gap, or black hole as these things are referred to today, re projections of spending versus tax revenue did not actually exist.
With that being the case the battery of little tax tweaks Rachel introduces was simply pointless interference with our economic activities.
I get the impression the much touted uplift in income tax that never materialised was simply theatre. It looks like the chancellor has no idea what to do because all the tax and spending changes needed to inspire growth and more importantly wealth creation are being blocked by back bench Labour MPs who refuse to pass any decrease in welfare spending.
She did block people on PIP choosing BMW or Mercedes SUVs as their essential mobility vehicles though. Maybe that was considered taking a swipe at the toffs in Labour back bench minds?
November 30, 2025
I don’t know about this supposed £4bn “surplus”. As I see it, the country is forecast to borrow north of £100bn in the next 12 months. That looks to me like a massive black hole.
November 30, 2025
DA :
Agreed. In fact, is not our £2.9 trillion national debt a “black hole”? An amount, according to Professor Dieter Helm, is matched by our personal debt.
November 30, 2025
Indeed “the ballooning welfare bill” but also net zero bill, the Chagos bill, low skilled legal and illegal immigration bills, the non doms are leaving bills, the more state school places needed bills…But from the hugely over taxes already position increasing tax rates will decrease the actual tax take, the doom loop lunacy continues and they will be doubtless be back yet again.
November 30, 2025
Working families would need to earn £71,000 annually before tax to receive the same income as jobless households with three children, according to new research from the Centre for Social Justice.
The skivers are behaving rationally given the moronic tax and benefit system we have in place and had in place under the Con-Socialists. The above figures are even before commuting costs, works clothing, lunches, childcare, and saving mate by having more time to shop and cook, prescription changes, dental, free school meals… then perhaps a bit of eBay dealing and bartering with free time on the side!
AI tells me:- The “strivers vs. skivers” narrative is a political and social myth that divides people into “good” (strivers) and “bad” (skivers) groups to justify austerity policies and cut social spending by blaming welfare recipients for economic problems, according to sources like the New Economics Foundation.
I mainly blame not the skivers but the system that makes skivers better off and augments their numbers in a crazy doom loop agenda!
November 30, 2025
So a senior fireman, Simon Bailey, who resigned after being disciplined for failing to ensure his staff used the gender-neutral term “firefighter” instead of “fireman,” has lost his unfair dismissal case. The incident occurred at Avon Fire and Rescue Service in the UK.
Who would want to join such an organisation the term man clearly includes women be it for chairman, manhole, workman, mankind… he did not even use the term himself merely did sensibly not discipline others.
Perhaps why we get halfwitted senior fire officers telling residents to go back to their flats many hours after it was obvious to anyone (with even half a brain) that they should clearly not do so at Grenfell. I do not imaging the Grenfell tower victims cares much about whether they used the term fireman or firefighters.
November 30, 2025
The firewoman who complained was awarded over £50k so they will need more tax income to find that too for Avon fire service!
November 30, 2025
And money for the £50million “Salmon” saving plan for Hinkley Point.
November 30, 2025
What happens if the budget to pay the compensation is refused by the government department that controls the fire service? Perhaps the tribunal judge might put his hand in his own pocket if he thinks the award is justified. He might have second thoughts then about how much it was worth.
November 30, 2025
Leaking the budget was actually similar to insider trading. Perhaps it was no accident and it would be interesting to know who profited out of it.
The government was kite flying for months before the actual budget to gauge public response.
In the end it was another attack on anyone with aspiration.
As someone posted elsewhere, if you are an out of work Somalian with 6 kids it was terrific. If you eereca young working couple striving to better yourself it was a disaster.
It was no accident the budget was leaked, it never is.
November 30, 2025
The Speaker should require an investigation and censure the Chancellor and Treasury.
They were deliberately manipulating the market with their kite flying …. and mendacity about the “black hole.”
November 30, 2025
And Kemi should propose your idea to the Speaker
November 30, 2025
Too many kites being flown by the out of depth Reeves.
November 30, 2025
To be fair to Reeves she has an impossible job – given the make up of the Labour MPs. She should resign and point out that what is needed is incentives for the strivers not the skivers but labour MP will not let her do what is right and would work. But then the lass chose to join the Labour Party.
Reeves cites the influence of her father on her social-democratic politics and those of her sister Ellie Reeves, also a Labour politician. She recalls how, when she was eight years old, her father, Graham, pointed out the then Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock on the television and “told us that was who we voted for”. Reeves says she and her sister have “both known we were Labour since then”.[4] She joined the Labour Party at the age of sixteen. From Wiki
Surely a form of child abuse indoctrination like many religions! She is a bright lass though 4As Maths, F Maths, Economic and Politics so why did she never grow up? How do you get an A in Economics as a socialist flat earther? Alas no physics as is usual with most politicians!
November 30, 2025
Political journalists briefed “off the record” will protect their sources. Otherwise they are out of a job. It suits politicians to brief them “off the record” to roll the pitch or start hares running. It is clear that briefings ahead of the last budget got totally out of hand. It is clear they moved markets including the gilts rate. The only solution is a return to silence before the budget and the standards in public life that caused Hugh Dalton to resign as Chancellor for breaking that rule.
Reeves should resign, must resign if any integrity is to be restored to public life. There should be a general election too. No one voted for the measures in this budget. Starmer should call that election to seek support for this budget that taxes the workers and rewards the shirkers (as Mr Rees-Mogg so succinctly put it).
November 30, 2025
She should resign because she’s wrecking the country’s finances. Not that they were in a great shape when she came in to office.
These accusations about lying are a minor issue.
I’m angry about what she has done to farmers and would like to see her go immediately.
November 30, 2025
Over tax the worker and reward the shirkers – a menu for doom loop destruction of the economy as the rational will leave, work less, shirk or go black market. This after all is what the budget and Labour are telling them to do!
November 30, 2025
The day ‘we’ get to vote on the Budget will be the day ‘we’ get what we want and even promised.
It’ll never happen of course.
November 30, 2025
What do you expect from the dire people we have in politics today? We are now experiencing the results of decades of DEI hires and faux university degrees. You have to look at the maths abilities of certain politicians and others’ performance on Mastermind to see how far our academia has fallen. If this is the result of universities like Cambridge, then I’m glad I never went there. Lying and leaking policy used to be a sackable offence, now it’s just accepted as normal. What a shambles this country has become.
November 30, 2025
+ 1
November 30, 2025
Our Parliament, Civil Service and judiciary continue to be infiltrated by ex Cambridge students with ideologies and aims little different to the Cambridge Five of WW2 and the Cold War.
November 30, 2025
Blair and his spin merchants (some of whom are back in No 10) started the rot in Government communications and that corruption has continued ever since. Controlling the news agenda now consumes much of our ‘Leaders’ time. If they worried more about the actual management of our country and much less about controlling the media, then maybe voters would have more faith in them. Reeves is a walking/talking disaster…
November 30, 2025
+1
November 30, 2025
I think it goes a bit further than ‘budget leaks’ It now seems Reeves invented the size of the defecit ?
November 30, 2025
Well they largely created it with their policies of ever higher taxes, every more state sector and state sector pay increases, every more red tape, higher inflation and thus higher bond interest cost to pay. Plus ever more skivers!
November 30, 2025
@Old Albion – spouting what’s she is approved to say by Cabinet and 2TK(PM). Also approved by the majority in Parliament that are paid and empowered by us to hold her to account. While the ‘buck stops’ with 2TK it is Parliament that has the overall responsibility for any miss-information.
Such is the quality of people finding their way into the HoC that these things are a regular occurrence
November 30, 2025
What ! You mean she lied ?
November 30, 2025
When you start to believe your own lies, it can be a symptom of mythomania (pathological lying disorder), where you may have repeated the lies so often that they feel true
November 30, 2025
Like when someone says on their CV that they once worked as an economist when they were in fact just working in Customer Complaints ?
Surely when such a person is discovered you would dismiss them immediately wouldn’t you ?
November 30, 2025
OA
I think the term is:
She lied to suit her own budget aspirations and plans.
November 30, 2025
Many people were drenched with privileged information the budget plans carelessly leaked, leading to what would be illegal gains. In circumstances where someone knows what the future will be it and others don’t, it is so easy to gain unfair advantage. Yes, there should be a thoroughly penetrating enquiry to identify and penalise wrongdoing.
November 30, 2025
There won’t be enquiries into anything the politburo doesn’t want investigating.
November 30, 2025
Political behaviour has changed considerably since Hugh Dalton’s resignation in 1947, which he did without question, and delay, when it became apparent that he had given a passing reporter information on the Budget when he was on his way to the House of Commons to deliver his speech. For the current budget we have had a series of leaks and kites being flown to test reactions, as if that was the norm. But as you say, the reasons for secrecy remain exactly the same, as does the need for the Chancellor to resign for her incompetence, and by the sound of it, dishonesty.
November 30, 2025
Rachael Reeves should resign immediately for lying to the public and markets. If she does not, then there is no integrity or honesty left in MPs. The lies were deliberate and not the only ones she has told. Reeves is a complete and total busted flush! Who will believe a word she says again?
Likewise, Starmer should go, both for knowing Reeves was lying and doing so himself.
Imagiune the media, especially the BBC, if a conservative PM and Chancellor were caught in outright lies!
November 30, 2025
Oh do, let’s have an enquiry. Let’s spaff say £50 million on a very thick report that takes ages to produce, no one will read and no one will care about and we then chuck in a skip. Keeps the lawyers employed.
Britain is the Go-To country for pointless legalisms. We have absolutely oodles of geriatric do-gooders and redundant bureaucrats, politicians and academics absolutely aching to do long boring and pointless reports – for a fee. It is the only thing parliament is any good at.
Ferrgeddit, yesterday’s chip paper, merely Yah Boo Sucks politics – which is all we have left.
November 30, 2025
It will be like the inquiry into who at No 10 briefed against Streeting – Starmer will just announce there was no briefing. More interesting will be the reaction of those journalists who were briefed lies by the Treasury and then reported them. Too much to hope the FCA will investigate market manipulation.
November 30, 2025
The Blob. It seems to work against elected governments and us the taxpayers. This time to bring down the government.
In this they have form, look what they did to Boris when he wasn’t even there most of the time.
Don’t know why they didn’t do it to Blair/Brown, but they did leak to a few of us. And to other parties. When I demanded the Head of the Home Secretary, I was told, “Just putting you through”. Then, what for? I’d been mugged by someone recently released by him to make prison space. They already had the goods on the HS, complaints about female staff in the Home Office. He resigned. Two weeks later a phone call back, “Will you be supplying the plate?”
November 30, 2025
Sir John
‘Budget leaks’? on contrived ways of testing the water? On the morning of the budget the media gets served a PR puff piece that those in the BBC club report verbatim. As a political entity and State broadcaster they see it as their job.
Labour’s PR guru (guru, that’s a joke) along with the ‘Resolution Foundation’ has been controlling the narrative, testing the water seeing how far they push things to the left along with creating the forced return to the unelected unaccountable EU.
Every time us extreme ‘right-wingers’ on open forums such as this highlight what we see as fault lines, they get to pat themselves on the back. It confirms they are destroying the country suppressing and controlling the people – the ‘plan is working’
I cant believe anyone believes the budget was unofficially leaked
November 30, 2025
As for the OBR, an unelected, unaccountable (unaccountable only in the minds of those that refuse to manage them) cabal that since its inception has proven to be wrong for the majority of time. Surly we cant be saying they are now getting things right.
Lets not forget the OBR was created to get Ministers of the hook, they took over the roll of a Government managed Treasury. Did the Treasury get reduced in size?
The OBR by its very nature is not and never can be impartial or even correct, its members are appointed by Ministers and overseen by Parliament.
The OBR as with the Treasury can only suggest if you do this, then that. The don’t define, its the same job as a spreadsheet or even the basic AI, just very expensive and unproductive. They are not creating or managing budgets, its Parliaments Government of the day that makes the choices, that is then held to account by Parliament itself. Back to the old scenario as with the Quangos it ‘jobs for the boys’ that cant find proper jobs elsewhere. Another tier, on top of a tier of administration the country and its people cant afford, all because those in Parliament are not fit for purpose. No wonder they are desperate to get back under EU control, they don’t like taking charge and being responsible. The need to discharge the thinking to others while the get to go back to sleep and freeload
November 30, 2025
Good morning
Given the examples our kind host has provided regarding the effects leaks have markets, taking into account past events of various MP’s, one can only suspect foul play is at work.
And who would not put it passed this lot of rouges ?
November 30, 2025
Many of those calling for the Chancellor’s head today will have defended President Trump against the accusations that his many tariffs u turns were manipulating shares for him and his mates.
Many of those defending President Trump are now calling for the Chsncellor’s head.
We need more principled and talented people in politics but we also need the media and voters to follow principles not their favoured side.
Reply I do not recall defences of Trump’s tariffs from present critics of Reeves. Give us a quote and name who you mean.
November 30, 2025
express.co.uk 13/04/2025 ‘Trump’s tantrums are frightening but provide huge opportunities to the UK’.
telegraph.co.uk 03/03/2025 ‘Trump’s new tariff war is perfectly rational’.
December 1, 2025
Share prices will rise in America if an American President enacts sensible policies which stop other nations unfair competition.
November 30, 2025
As you point out, Sir John, it was not only the Budget that was leaked, but proposed taxes that were made public – clearly so that reactions could be gauged in advance, to maximize their positive electoral effectiveness for the Labour Party. (Ironically, though the benefit class, and mass-unionised and state-employed staff ‘support’ Labour, many of them do not bother to vote at all.
The advance ‘threat’ to increase income tax was imo never real, simply a method of keeping the bond hawks contented when the benefits expenditure was announced before the Budget.
As to the undoubted effects on the stock market of the leaks, today’s political and senior state-sector class (as any IFA will tell you) cannot be persuaded to invest, as their salaries, expenses and gold-plated pensions more than suffice: they need neither savings not investments, and they are in any case barely numerate, and personally averse to any idea of risk-management.
November 30, 2025
enquiries in this country are a waste of time, as shown by the covid enquiry, post office enquiry, and so on.
November 30, 2025
…and extremely expensive
November 30, 2025
From the Telegraph
‘I did not lie about black hole, insists Reeves’
‘Chancellor denies misleading the public after exaggerating shortfall to raise taxes in Budget’
‘Ms Reeves went on to confirm revelations in The Telegraph that Sir Keir Starmer had known there was no black hole in the public finances.’
‘She said: “We are a partnership and we have a Budget board, the Prime Minister, Keir, and myself met regularly to discuss the Budget and the choices, because these are the choices of this Government and I’m really proud of the choices that we made to cut waiting lists, to cut inflation and to build up the resilience in the economy.”’
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/11/30/rachel-reeves-budget-black-hole-obr-labour/
They meet regularly, they all own the choice each single one of them utters, Cabinet is a Collective, a collective responsibility team held in check by an empowered HoC of 650 MP’s – they all own the choices the State makes. Their is no individual to blame
‘She said: “Look, I’m a Labour Chancellor. I want to reduce child poverty. I make no apologies for that.’
As with many people I have no problem with the ‘child poverty’ aspiration, but as with the greater majority of people I know to ‘give’ one sector money you don’t have by stealing it from others is a vicious circle of decline. Their mind is implementing things more children will be forced into poverty the opposite of the ‘sound-bite’. As Chancellor and with those in Parliament and Government, expanding the economy growing the nations wealth would mean extra money for the Chancellor without resorting to ‘stealing’. Pure ‘spite’ is just ‘spite’
December 1, 2025
I interpreted that as a warning to Two-Tier “if you dare try and sack me over this, I’ll bring you down with me.”
November 30, 2025
Was it a lie, or a lie about a lie! todays interviews.
‘I did not lie about black hole, insists Reeves
The OBR told the Chancellor on Oct 31 that there was no deficit in the public finances, and that higher-than-expected tax receipts meant there was a surplus of £4.2bn before policy measures had been taken into account.
Sir Keir also knew what Ms Reeves would say in a press conference on Nov 4, when she suggested she would have to break manifesto pledges on top of raising taxes to fix the public finances.’
We also now need to add lying to Parliament a trait we have seen from this administration since they have been in power. The again we know that those we empower and pay to keep the administration in check, no longer care – we can all lie, all lie and it know longer is a ‘thing’. The integrity and meaning of Parliament, its MPs, is shot – so why are they and it there ?
November 30, 2025
her biggest lie is her tweets where she claims she is paying down the national debt with this budget, when in fact the budget plans an extra approx 650 billion is added to the approx 3 trillion national debt over the next 5 years.
she has also shown repeatedly that she doesnt know the different between debt and deficit, basic knowledge for a chancellor.
November 30, 2025
Remember, she has form …..her own CV
November 30, 2025
Well, when she said I am “asking” people to pay a “little” more those were very clear lies. The idea that he doom loop lunacy will fix the foundations is also surely a lie – unless she is totally mad and deluded perhaps!
November 30, 2025
Budget leaks used to be a resigning matter because they make possible illegal market manipulation and insider trading.
Dozens, possibly hundreds of people at all levels in Westminster and Whitehall are in a position to profit hugely from leaks. I simply do not believe all are honest. I do believe some are dishonest and will have filled their boots over the last six weeks.
A government that makes, tolerates and excuses Budget leaks is complicit in serious criminality.
November 30, 2025
No-one has mentioned Insider Dealing.
November 30, 2025
So according to this government ….
Large Head-Room = Budget Surplus
Small Head-Room = Black Hole
November 30, 2025
It’s a complete shambles I’ve never seen anything like this before. Ms Reeves looks incompetent and surely is incompetent. Fiscal drag is a cynical way of drawing people into taxation just as their pay increases the heavy hand of HMRC takes 40% of the income away. It’s a disgrace. Leaks, 8am press briefings, constant uncertainty has been this Chancellor’s modus operandi culminating in the entire budget leaked before she started speaking. She exudes uncertainty, her taxation policy will not produce growth and our country is facing massive increases in welfare benefits. It’s unsustainable and it will fail.
November 30, 2025
From the BBC
Shadow chancellor Mel Stride has called for the UK’s financial regulator to investigate “possible market abuse” by people working in the Treasury and Downing Street in the run-up to the Budget.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1kpjwee3g7o.amp
To fund the benefits giveaway every one is paying, yet logic says others are profiting big time. What other logic is behind what if not a lie is a big scam and fraud
The big question is what is Parliament, those we pay to hold these people to account going to do?
If they do nothing…. then aren’t they also culpable?
December 1, 2025
Budget leaks are one thing. Preparation to implement budget plans another: changes have to be evaluated for feasible implementation, and that may require further legislation to enable mechanisms to handle them. In turn those need scrutiny, not implementation by quango and statutory instrument, even if they provide the initial analysis.
I have had to write to OFGEM seeking clarification for how the budget changes will be implemented. They seem to have had no announcement drafted to explain, leaving significant uncertainties for electricity businesses and their customers. I highlighted some of the potential impacts.
December 1, 2025
In Saturday just before the Wales v S.Africa rugby match was a program about the plight of ex postmaster Noel Thomas sent to gaol miscarriage of justice. He was exonerated after decades and given an honorary doctorate. Asked on hindsight what had changed as he grew older he noted that lying had become so prevalent throughout many circles even politicians with degrees from Oxford and Cambridge must be trained by a degree in lying as there’s “No other explainable reason” .
So much lying we have almost become immune to it sadly.
The saying “you may kid others but should never kid yourself” never goes out of fashion, unlike free designer clothes (on the cat walk today, in the bin tomorrow).