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Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots.

I'm James Hill and I'm joined today by our economics editor Michael Simmons and James Nation, former advisor to Rishi Sunak as both the civil servant and special advisor and now the MD of Forefront Partners. So James, it's one day until the budget. Talk us through the kind of past few days and what the Treasury and number 11 will be doing and thinking as we get closer to 1230 on Wednesday. So right now in the Treasury, or actually these past few days,

the majority of the Treasury team will be in presentation mode, James. And that means going through

the Red Book, literally signing off every word. So I always say this to people. Look at the actual language that the

Treasury use on a particular policy measure, because if something is described as an ambition

or you get quite woolly or wonky language, that is deliberate. They literally sign off every

sentence. So that will have been going on, preparing the kind of final presentation of policy

measures in the Red Book. Then obviously around the Chancellor's team, you'll have had people

focused on her speech. And then for the select group of real top advisors around the Prime

Minister and the Chancellor, they'll have got the final forecast through on Friday. And that will

have told them the final

headroom number, how far they're going to be able to increase this buffer above the

9.9 billion, and that then, you know, I think will dictate some final issues around presentation

on the day. So really, what you see is over this past week, the kind of Treasury tanker switch away from a focus on

policy advice and the OBR and towards actual presentation in the documents and obviously

in the House of Commons tomorrow. There's been lots of talk, James. I have to say that this year,

you know, this budget may be the case to abolish the whole process. And you've had people

our own cover last week. Tim Shipman was very critical about the budget process. You've had people like Hugo Jive, the eye, suggesting that maybe it's time to abolish it. I mean, what's your sense of all of it? It does seem to be a particularly mismanaged and leaky budget from an outsider's perspective. Well, firstly, I thought that was a brilliant piece from you guys in The Spectator looking at alternatives.

I have to say, though, and I should say I'm not just saying that so I can come back, but please be happy back.

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