Coming up on the Peston podcast, Rishi-Soonak has announced a splurge in spending for the next couple of years and then very big tax increases especially

tax increases on big companies is that the right recipe to fix Britain after

COVID and then there's another huge story at the moment which is the battle

between Alex Salmon the previous First Minister of Scotland with the current

first Minister of Scotland Nicholas Surgeon current First Minister of Scotland, Nicholas

Surgeon. So what impact will that have on the forthcoming elections in Scotland? And what impact

would it have on the SMP's hopes of taking Scotland out of the UK, making Scotland independent?

All that and more to talk about with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Stephen Barclay.

Labour's Lisa Nandy, she's the Foreign Affairs spokesman, but I suspect I'll be talking to probably more about the budget of foreign affairs.

Sir John Curtis, the great polling guru, then Baroness Morgan, former member of Tory governments, now in the House of Lords and John

Macdonnell, who was shadow chancellor until the last election for the Labour Party.

And joining me as ever, Anushkrastana and Screeny.

So I'm going to go to you, Nikki, first.

You stayed in the Cameron Osborne government?

Their big tax achievement was cutting corporation tax from 25% to 19%.

Rishi has just abolished that as a stroke.

You must be feeling profoundly uncomfortable about that.

No, look, I think the situation has changed so dramatically.

In the 10 years since I served in the

Treasury, those decisions were being made. The Chancellor had to signal today how the enormous amounts

of spending the whole, therefore, that's caused in the public finances, was going to start to be

plugged. So it's not a surprise

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