Keir Starmer is in denial
The Politics Show
The New Statesman
4.2 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 1 December 2025
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Keir Starmer has backed Rachel Reeves – but the Prime Minister has miscalculated.
After weekend front pages accused the Chancellor of lying about the "fiscal black hole" which, Reeves says, necessitated last week's tax-and-spend budget, the PM has given a speech supporting Reeves and saying he's "proud" of the budget.
Meanwhile polling reveals a majority believe "the cost of living crisis will never end", and see no hope for improvements in their immediate future.
Tom McTague and Rachel Cunliffe join Oli Dugmore to discuss whether the Prime Minister has grasped quite how broken the social contract is, and what's next for the government – and the country – following the budget.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The New Statesman. Is Kirstama standing in a burning building, smiling, waving, and telling us everything's okay? |
| 0:12.9 | Following the delivery of last week's budget, the Chancellor is facing claims of misleading the country. |
| 0:18.0 | This morning, the PM made an announcement. His trust and loyalty lies with |
| 0:21.8 | Reeves, and she has not misled us. He also declared that Britain is back on track, a statement |
| 0:28.1 | which begs the question which Britain is Stama living in. I'm Olly Doug Moore. This is the New |
| 0:32.4 | Statesman podcast. I'm joined now by Tom McTake. Hello, Tom. Hello. And Rachel Cunliff, |
| 0:36.0 | hello. Hello. I want to start by asking both of you. |
| 0:38.0 | Rachel, I'll ask you first. |
| 0:39.5 | Do you think Britain's back on track? |
| 0:40.9 | It doesn't feel like Britain's back on track, does it? I wouldn't say so. No. Tom, any disagreement? Not at all. Desperately, desperately sad. Well, I guess we can just park the podcast there, then that's that one. |
| 0:53.3 | Done. |
| 0:53.6 | Depends which track. |
| 0:54.6 | Yes. |
| 0:55.1 | Yeah, that's a good point, actually. |
| 0:56.0 | Where are we going? |
| 0:57.9 | Um... Well, I guess we can just park the podcast there, then that's that one. It depends which track. Yes. Yeah, that's a good point, actually. Where are we going? Rachel, Rees has been accused of misleading us. How? In what way? By saying that there was a black hole in the budget that she needed to fill with tax rises and really by making that speech at the start of November where she didn't explicitly say |
| 1:11.3 | we're going to increase income tax, but this big speech about how the productivity downgrade |
| 1:16.7 | figures that she'd got meant that we were going to have to make tough choices. And it turns out |
| 1:21.5 | that while the OBR did indeed downgrade the UK's productivity by about 16 billion. This has been offset by weirdly |
| 1:30.1 | inflation because inflation has meant prices are going up and so the government has been able to |
| 1:34.7 | get more money from VAT and from income tax. So even though the productivity downgrade did happen, |
| 1:41.3 | it was compensated in a different way. And strangely enough, she didn't mention that |
... |
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