Post-Budget briefing: what will it mean for your finances?
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.4 • 785 Ratings
🗓️ 10 December 2025
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the wake of an extraordinary Budget – leaked an hour before the Chancellor addressed Parliament – The Spectator brings clarity to a turbulent political and take stock of how the announcements will impact you.
Michael Simmons speaks with John Porteous of Charles Stanley and James Nation, formerly of the Treasury and No. 10, to discuss how the events unfolded and the deeper implications for long-term financial planning, taxation and market confidence.
The conversation explores whether the government’s approach represents a credible fiscal strategy, what savers and investors should infer from changes to ISAs and pensions, and whether concerns about a growing UK ‘brain drain’ are justified.
This podcast was created in partnership with Charles Stanley; editorial control remained exclusively with The Spectator.
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Transcript
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| 0:26.6 | Hello and welcome to this special Spectator briefing brought to you by Charles Stanley on the Budget. |
| 0:33.6 | Joining me today is Managing Director and Chief Cl client officer of Charles Stanley, John Porteus, |
| 0:41.5 | and also joining us is a friend of the spectator, James Nation, who we've got along today to keep us |
| 0:47.6 | right because he's worked in both the Treasury and number 10. |
| 0:55.5 | So the day that we're recording this were exactly a week from what was a pretty chaotic |
| 1:01.8 | budget day. John, what was it like in your office when we got the unexpected news of the |
| 1:07.7 | entire budget leaking an hour before it should have? It was an incredible experience because rather than huddling around and watching the budget |
| 1:15.2 | and taking notes like we would do, we were kind of head down analyzing the document itself. |
| 1:20.1 | So the budget speech largely passed us by. I think we watched the last 10 minutes or so, |
| 1:26.6 | but we're too busy into the detail |
| 1:28.4 | itself, which I guess probably characterises the week that we've had in review. Yeah. And James, |
| 1:34.6 | obviously, you're no longer in the treasury, but can you give us a sort of picture of what the |
| 1:38.4 | atmosphere might have been like when someone presumably quite junior said, you know, the EFO is on |
| 1:43.2 | Twitter? Oh, gosh. Well, I was saying to mate over the weekend, it's apt that last week saw the release |
| 1:48.8 | of a new season of Stranger Things because I have never seen anything like that with a budget |
| 1:53.5 | before. So I just think what will have happened is you'll have had Treasury officials, |
| 1:57.8 | probably the comms team, checking Twitter or X, and I think that's how I saw |
... |
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