Rachel Reeves and the art of pitch rolling the Budget

Inside Briefing with the Institute for Government

Institute for Government

News, Politics, Government

4.6 • 252 Ratings

🗓️ 6 November 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Taxes set to rise? Spending set to be cut? Promises to be kept – or maybe broken? Whatever chancellors choose to reveal on budget day, it’s normally a good idea to let people know what they can expect… So has Rachel Reeves done a good job of rolling the pitch? How did former chancellors go about warming up their party, voters, the media and business? And what can they do to make sure the right people are listening Stewart Wood and Giles Winn, former advisers to Gordon Brown and Philip Hammond, join this special Inside Briefing episode to reveal how chancellors get ahead of the big day in parliament – and give their verdict on Rachel Reeves’ attempts to set the scene for the November 26 budget. Presented by Gemma Tetlow. With Jill Rutter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Tax is set to go up, spending set to be cut, promises set to be kept or maybe broken.
0:14.3	Whatever choices chance was make at the budget, it's normally a good idea to let people know what to prepare for.
0:20.4	I'm Gemmatello, Chief Economist at the Institute for Government, and this is Inside Briefing,
0:24.5	the podcast from the Institute for Government.
0:27.5	The budget is now less than three weeks away, and on Tuesday, Rachel Reeves gave a speech
0:32.0	setting the scene.
0:33.8	The Chancellor said very little on exactly what choices she plans to make, but her early morning intervention was recognition that it matters not just what you plan to do at a budget, but also how you do it.
0:43.9	So in this special episode of Inside Briefing, we're going to explore how this, and any government, should go about rolling the pitch for big budget choices.
0:52.2	To make the case for major tax changes and spending changes,
0:55.6	and to manage expectations, and to head off any possible backlash. To take us behind the scenes
1:00.8	to explore how past chancellors have approached this tricky balancing act, we're joined by two
1:05.4	former special advisors who have been in the room with chancellors ahead of previous budgets,
1:09.7	setting the strategy and out there rolling the pitch with the media. Giles Wim was a special advisor to form with chancellors ahead of previous budgets, setting the strategy and out
1:11.0	there rolling the pitch with the media. Jarls Wim was a special advisor to former Chancellor
1:15.2	Philip Hammond from 2017 to 2019 and is now a communications consultant. Hi Giles. Do you miss being
1:22.0	in the room at times like this? Of course. I mean, there's nothing quite like being in the
1:26.1	treasury in the run-up to a budget. It's
1:27.7	tremendously exciting, as I'm sure Stuart will agree. But what I don't envy is the size of the
1:33.1	challenge they have at the moment, and that makes the pitch rolling extremely hard, as I'm sure
1:37.5	we'll get into. And our second guest is Stuart Wood, who is a special advisor to Gordon Brown
1:42.1	for almost a decade, first as Chancellor and then as Prime Minister and is now Labour peer.
1:47.6	Hi, Stuart. Do former Treasury advisors like you get phone calls at times like this?
	...

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