Annually, press officers from establishments reminiscent of Oxford College Press (OUP) compete to cheapen the names of their employers by selecting a crass neologism as “phrase of the yr”. The hope is that if the OUP sufficiently debases itself by selecting “bovvered” (2006) or “youthquake” (2017) to encapsulate the political and cultural second, individuals who use phrases like that can cease “vibe coding” or “vajazzling” or no matter it’s they do as an alternative of studying, and run to the closest bookshop to top off on dictionaries. Good luck with that. Anyway: Oxford’s 2025 phrase of the yr is “rage bait”. (A correct college would recognise that that is really two phrases.) “Rage bait” means saying or writing stuff you don’t imply, and that are calculated to be irritating, to impress a response. The one who has performed this most efficiently in 2025 is Rachel Reeves.
On 4 November, Reeves gave a “scene setter” speech wherein she set the scene for greater taxes. It was a speech about realities that needed to be understood, about “primary info” which “no accounting trick” may change. The which means was made clearer in authorities briefings: Reeves was seeking to fill a gap within the public funds of £20bn to £30bn towards the Workplace for Funds Duty’s new, extra pessimistic forecasts, and a 2p rise in revenue tax was “nailed on”. After her speech, a cupboard assembly befell wherein ministers have been additionally led to imagine that revenue tax could be raised. This meant breaking each a manifesto dedication and a political taboo that has endured for half a century (the fundamental fee was final raised in 1975), nevertheless it was introduced as inescapable. The forecasts have been too grim for anything.
Ten days later, on 14 November, Reeves modified her thoughts: a blunt tax hike wouldn’t be mandatory, due to improved forecasts. This raised some eyebrows. It additionally raised the yields on authorities debt by ten foundation factors (or 10 per cent of a Truss-Kwarteng). And it raised a query: what modified, and when?
On the morning of Funds day (26 November), employees on the Workplace for Funds Duty (OBR) arrived for what could be a memorably terrible day. Unbeknown to the OBR wonks, from 5.16am onwards a small quantity of people that had guessed the net deal with for the most recent OBR forecast had been attempting to entry it. Shortly after the doc was uploaded at 11.30am – an hour earlier than Reeves’ speech – somebody who had already tried 32 instances to entry the web page refreshed it for the thirty third time, and the complete 205-page doc appeared. Within the Commons, about ten minutes later, Reeves was handed a telephone on which she may see that everybody else – together with the MPs on the opposition benches, who have been themselves staring on the report on their telephones – already knew what was in her speech. It was a masterclass in political humiliation, however the OBR’s blunder was merely the starter: the principle course was but to come back.
Meg Hillier, the Labour MP and chair of the choose committee that scrutinises the work of the Treasury, is just not somebody who permits element go unobserved, even when it’s element her personal authorities would favor to maintain someplace safer, like the within of a volcano. Instantly after the Funds, Hillier wrote to the chair of the OBR, Richard Hughes, asking for extra data on the timing of the forecasts. His response contained what opposition MPs have claimed was a smoking gun: that the OBR’s productiveness downgrade had not made tax rises inevitable – it had been greater than lined by greater tax receipts – but in addition that Reeves had identified this from 17 September. Headlines requested if Reeves had “lied” to justify £26bn in tax hikes. Kemi Badenoch started instantly to emit the type of livid denunciation that she solely normally emits for 14 to 16 hours a day. Nigel Farage – sure, the Nigel Farage who declined to research his personal occasion after his Reform colleague, Nathan Gill, was sentenced to a decade in jail for taking bribes from the Russians – reported Reeves to the impartial ethics adviser.
Keir Starmer’s political week started, on Monday 1 December, in a nursery in London. Infants from 9 months to 4 years previous gathered across the Prime Minister. For a second he felt at peace, after which: “Did ooh misrepresent the OBR pre-measures forecast?” requested a two-year-old lady, thrusting a rattle in direction of his face. “Did Wachel Weeves mislead the general public in regards to the quantity of fiscal headwoom offered by tax receipts?” demanded one other toddler, chewing furiously on a handful of rusk. The PM, having tried and didn’t distract the infants with an excruciatingly awkward rendition of the “six-seven” meme, moved rapidly to a different room. To his dismay he discovered it populated by a bunch much more simply bored than the toddlers, much more liable to tantrums and uncomfortable flatus: the press.
“The Funds,” Starmer declared with a hopeful frown, “was a second of private pleasure for me.” It positively wasn’t, however what he meant by this was: “The great a part of the Funds, the lifting of the two-child cap on advantages, was a second for which I might personally prefer to take credit score.” Nobody within the crowd cared. They’d a narrative to inform: lies! Lies had been advised! The tax hikes have been a swindle!
The identical afternoon the BBC’s political editor, Chris Mason, advised the nation: “We have been misled,” which is kind of the place for the state broadcaster to take. Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak have been requested in the event that they’d lied, however no such judgement was issued. What about Donald Trump, Chris? Is Donald Trump a liar? Or is that one a bit dangerous?
It didn’t assist that Richard Hughes, the top of the OBR, stop on 1 December. You don’t should be Claudia Winkleman to know that if somebody who has made you look unhealthy doesn’t flip as much as breakfast (or, on this case, to offer proof to the Treasury Choose Committee), that simply makes you look extra responsible. Which is unlucky, as a result of the accusations towards Reeves don’t make any sense.
When the press requested Starmer if his Chancellor had lied in regards to the UK financial system being in a worse state than it truly is, he stated there was “no deceptive”. What he may need stated was this: “Go searching you. Take a look at the roads. Take a look at the native leisure centre, if it’s nonetheless open. Take a look at the colleges, riddled with asbestos and spongy concrete. We’re speaking about eliminating trial by jury to save cash. We’re already letting convicted criminals out as a result of we will’t afford to maintain them in jail. Our tanks vibrate so badly that troopers fall out of them lined in puke. We spend extra on debt curiosity in two days than we spend on libraries in a yr. On what fucking planet do you assume it’s credible to argue that this authorities has been too downbeat in regards to the state of our funds?”
There was lots in regards to the Funds that was dishonest, as a result of all budgets include a little bit of subterfuge. Stealth tax is dishonest and everybody hates it. Ten million individuals are being pushed into new tax brackets; none of them assume the federal government hasn’t raised their taxes. The large central authorities effectivity financial savings used to stability the books might be very arduous to realize, and the headroom created may simply be wiped by an exterior occasion, such because the popping of the AI bubble. The truth that all of the ache of this Funds is clustered across the subsequent normal election suggests it will likely be deferred but once more when the time comes (maybe the concept now’s to make the subsequent parliament so fiscally disagreeable that nobody else even needs to win?). It’s a grim, determined Funds and a wasted alternative, however each one of many roughly 4,000 selections in it was the Chancellor’s to take; she didn’t owe the BBC a full rationalization on each level.
[Further reading: The OBR is pushing us into a doom loop]