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Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots. I'm James Hill and I'm joined today by the Spectators,

political editor Tim Shipman and Paul Johnson, former director of the IFS. Now today we've had new GDP figures

out, Tim, showing that between July and August the economy slowed down and there's only 0.1% growth.

It all adds up to a sort of bad picture. Now we're recording this less than a fortnight

before the budget for Rachel Reeves. Yeah, that's right. I think these numbers were a bit worse than expected. And it just sort of contributes to the general sense of malaise and the feeling that a shot in the arm is needed. And I'm not sure that it's going to come from the budget. And Rachel Reeves' challenge is just sort of intensified. I don't think it materially

really changes the fact that they were in a mess two days ago and they're still in a mess now.

And it's quite hard to see how they make all the numbers add up in a satisfactory way that also

boosts growth. So she's got an economic and a political challenge. And this will generally contribute to the picture that things are a bit poor in this country.

But the challenge for the budget is much bigger than that.

And it's sort of 4D chess in terms of balancing tax rises, very tiny number of spending cuts,

somehow trying to keep the left of the Labour Party happy

and not egregiously upset the public any more than they are already.

So it just provides further context and says that this is a massive approaching economic

and political moment for the country.

Paul, at the beginning of the year, Rachel Reeve said growth was going to be a number one priority.

I talk a lot about tax and spend coming to the budget, obviously. But how would you sort of evaluate her performance thus far? Well, growth clearly hasn't been her number one priority. So you just look at, you can look at what she says, but you then look at what she does. And what, what, what, what, what, what is she done over the last 18 months? Well, she's increased employer national insurance

contributions. She's increased stamp duty. She's increased the minimum wage. She's increased

regulation on housing. She's increased regulation on employment. She's made it much, much

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