Has Chancellor Rachel Reeves abandoned growth?

Political Currency

Persephonica

Money, Politics, Economy, News, Ed Balls, Business, George Osborne, Westminster

4.1 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 27 November 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Does Rachel Reeves have a credible plan for growth? One day on from her Budget Statement, George Osborne and Ed Balls debate her headline measures and ask if she’s built enough of a narrative to save her job. Health Secretary Wes Streeting asks about two Osbornian policies: the sugar tax and two-child limit. How can Labour win the argument?

They also talk about the disastrous OBR leak, whether anyone will be sacked, and ask how it stacks up to some of the biggest leaks in budget history… Is it worse than Ken Clarke in 1996? Or the Evening Standard beating George to the punch in 2013?

Finally, they briefly turn to the war in Ukraine and debate the peace negotiations. The big question now is whether Putin has been strong-armed into signing a peace treaty, and if that means a lasting cease-fire is in sight.

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Credits:

Research: Sam Burton

Production: Caillin McDaid and Paige Reynolds

Video Editor: Maha Al-Badrawi

Executive Producer: Ellie Clifford

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Political Coency with Ed Bulls and George Osborne.
0:32.9	So it is the morning after the budget day before and we are remote this morning.
0:38.5	Seems just a few hours that we were recording our budget hot take, which dropped on the afternoon of the budget yesterday for us. This morning, as you know, George, it's a time where, as the
0:45.5	chancellor, you find out how your budget is actually landing. And I think sometimes the media
0:51.2	interviews reflect that. And Rachel Reeves' bravora performance yesterday in the commons,
0:56.8	but the newspapers, especially the sun, the mails, the telegraph, were pretty damning of the budget,
1:02.7	lots of benefit street and Skyvers versus strivers type headlines back to the old George Osborne language of 10 years ago in the papers this
1:11.6	morning. There was something I actually noted yesterday. I said to you that I thought there was a lot
1:17.2	of I and my in Rachel Reeves's budget performance. And that's partly because she's making
1:22.9	a very personal appeal to Labour MPs back me. I am the one who's going to stave off the market pressures.
1:30.4	And so I went back to Hansard and I did a search on I and Mai. And in their last ever budgets,
1:38.0	Jeremy Hunt used I or My 154 times. Gordon Brown in his last ever budget, not 154, but 114 times. I also checked out your
1:48.4	last ever budget. Have a guess. How many times do you think you used I or my in your last budget?
1:54.0	I can't believe I did it at all. I'm so modest and retiring. Well, so the answer is 139 times. So you
1:59.7	were midway between Gordon Brown and Jeremy Hunt. That compares to Rachel Reeves in her first budget last year, 170 times. And in yesterday's budget, 191 times. So much, much more kind of evoking of her personal commitment and importance than even you.
2:23.1	Can I ask you a question?
2:24.1	Haven't you got something better to do with your time?
2:26.7	Well, I know, but I think having said it on the podcast yesterday, on our hot take, I thought I should check.
2:31.8	I was right.
2:32.6	There we are.
2:33.1	We're going to start.
2:33.9	Look, we did our hot take yesterday on the budget. check. I was right. There we are. We're going to start. Look, we did our
	...

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