So, big budget, Rachel Reeves, got leaked by the OBR, the Office for Budget Responsibility.

I think a good opportunity to just get rid of the OBR, because leaking budgets is the least of the problems.

They're killing the country.

But what does the budget all mean?

Is it going to turn everything around?

Rachel Rees is the most unpopular chance for the Exchequer since records began, in the most unpopular government since polling records

began. So is this going to turn it all around for her and more importantly the country? Well,

we've got Jay's Veedway, who is the superb economist who I always have on at this time. This is

like, you know, I guess economics Christmas. And he's also co-host, for example, of Macrodose. Do you check out that podcast? Are you still co-hosting? I am, yes, yes, yes. Yes, well, there we go. Nothing's changed. Please, Sash, orange. Right. Okay, let's go straight in, James. Okay. Bam. Right. Okay, overall take. Now, this is interesting because George Eaton, who works for the new statesman,

and I think it's fair to say often shares briefings he's clearly getting from the government.

He said, as I reported, number 10 slash number 11 are happy for this to be seen as a left turn.

Star-manism is entirely based on defining itself against the left. That is literally all they had for years. That is the complete opposite of the whole point of Starmerism. What does that tell us? Just for that alone, what does that tell us? It tells us that finally they're under some pressure from the left. I mean, they're feeling the pinch. They will know they have backbench MPs. They were already up in arms over this year, rightly so actually, over assorted welfare cuts. And that's one of the things that Rachel Reeves was attempting to find money for in this budget. But more than that, every single Labour MPs now knows very, very well that they have the Greens in particular breathing down their neck from the left, but it's actually a reform on the right. That's kind of exercising in one way. You can see this kind of balancing act that probably makes sense in like number 10's head if it makes no sense to anyone else, which is like you've got one week Shabana Mahmood saying, variance of send them all back. And then this way you've got Rachel Ree saying, aren't we good lefties introducing a mansion tax. It's confused, but you can see the pressure they're under.

Now, let's just start with some good stuff to show that, you know, I'm not just here to, you know,

I suppose go for the starmerite nonsense. Two-child benefit cap. Now, that is, that drives hundreds of thousands of children to poverty. It's the biggest single generative child poverty in the country. And, you know, for ages, they refused to do anything about it. They suspended Labour MPs who voted to get rid of it, but they've got rid of it. That is a big wing. You know, we can on the left, we care about things like children being in poverty. That's what kind of drives us. What does that, what do you think about that? Just talk about that. What it tells, look, first of all, it is a win, and it's an important one because this was driving hundreds of the thousands of children to poverty. It was like the primary driver of child poverty, which has been rising. I mean, to its credit,

Labour in government last time saw a big decline in child poverty. This is the thing that it did.

It is a historic achievement to do that. What we've seen under austerity and now continuing

under this Labour government is at least in the forecast child poverty was rising again.

So get rid of that. That will definitely help hundreds of thousands of children. This is a very good thing. And it's a political win too because of course, exactly as you said, there's a bunch of Labour MPs lost the whip over this. There's been people campaigning outside of Parliament about this. The government has listened, is generous, being forced to, might be more accurate, turn around and say, okay, it's gone. So that's very, very good that this is done. Let's take that and actually start to think about, okay, what are the other welfare changes that we can start to think of that would improve people's lives? How can we have a more generous welfare system in general? Because it's not good enough to just sit there and say, okay, some of the very worst, the most egregious cuts, the very worst things that we saw under the

coalition and Conservative Governments is now being scrapped, fine, but we can do better than this.

Now, I mean, in terms of then presenting this as an actual left turn, they've come into pressure.

Is it, is this socialism in our time?

It's a political rather ask you, James.

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