It’s turning into the mother of hoary old chestnuts. Yeah yeah, Labour’s going to do what it promised not to. Whack up income tax. It’s getting as boring as Keir Starmer endlessly banging on about his dad being a toolmaker. Tell us something new. Please. And yet, as our Political Correspondent Peter Spencer reports, what’s going on actually is new, as governments are not in the habit of fessing up to the hole they’re in.
Consider the alternative. Chancellor Rachel Reeves waiting for budget day in a couple of weeks or so before spilling the beans to a gobsmacked nation. She’d be lynched by friend and foe alike. There’d be calls for a general election.
So instead she’s smoothed the path. Got her defence in early. And as well as dulling sensibilities about what it’ll cost us she’s also made a start on explaining what’s got us in such a pickle. Not just the what then, but the why.
Of course it’s desperately risky. No Labour Chancellor has upped income tax for half a century. It’s a big deal anyway breaking a key pre-election promise. And, a year down the line, blaming the Tories for everything is wearing thin.
So instead she’s been trying to get the word out that we’re just not as well off as we once were. Largely thanks to external factors, like the US-inspired financial crisis all those years ago. And the crippling Covid pandemic.
Plus of course the punitive terms meted out following the hard Brexit that, yes, the Conservatives under Boris Johnson, were unwise enough to go for.
The upshot being, the narrative goes, that make do and mend can only work for so long before the fabric itself starts to tear apart. Putting that right costs a fortune and can hardly be expected to happen overnight.
None of this will wash, needless to say, when Ms Reeves waves her red box around on November the twenty sixth. But, with all this groundwork laid, she will at least live to fight another day.
In the meantime, the legacy of threadbare public services continues to leave the government lurching from crisis to crisis. Dumbo screws letting old lags out by mistake being just the latest.
No getting round it, Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy looked a right nincompoop when he stood in for Starmer at question time on Wednesday and didn’t come clean about what had just happened.
Yes, he was in a tricky situation with some of the facts a bit blurry. But yes also it was a skilfully laid trap by the Tories, and he did lumber right into it.
And this was part of a pattern of senior members of this government looking perpetually cackhanded, handing out ammo to their opponents like tasty sweeties to hungry kids.
None of which changes the underlying reality, specifically in this case, of years of underfunding and neglect of what’s always been seen as the Cinderella service.
Our jails are overcrowded to bursting point. So it’s no wonder that crims are being let out way before they’ve done their time. And it’s a bit rich of the Tories to get so cross about it when they could have but didn’t increase capacity.
As for accidental early releases, like the ones that hit the headlines last week, it turns out that this happens hundreds of times every year. Largely apparently thanks to hopelessly outdated admin.
Instead of having all the relevant info sensibly stored on computer databases it’s scribbled out on bits of paper. Talk about analogue thinking in the digital age. You really couldn’t make it up.
Talk of making stuff up brings us neatly on to this week’s climate change summit in Brazil, which the United States, along with the other biggest polluting nations will not be attending.
A no-brainer for Donald Trump, as his settled position on global warming is that it’s: ‘The greatest con-job ever perpetrated on the world.’
Seems no one’s told him that UK’s just experienced its hottest summer on record, two million people in Pakistan had to be evacuated from floods and parts of the Amazon rainforest are now so dry that they get wildfires.
Given the broad scientific consensus that this stuff is man-made, and set to get worse, quickly, the Prez does rather sound like a little boy swearing blind that his plastic toy sword really is the mighty Excalibur.
In sharp contrast, the heir to the British throne, Prince William, is following in his dad’s footsteps and speaking out passionately in praise of anything that can be done to ease back emissions before it’s too late.
And his highly-publicised appearance at the Brazil get-together might have the added advantage of helping the image of the royal brand just as it’s taking such a hit thanks to the seedy past of ex-Prince Andrew.
The latest twist in that sorry tale, the US Congress closing in on him over what appears to have been his long-standing friendship with the sex-trafficking paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, really is twisting the knife in the wound.
His nephew Prince William, by contrast, is unquestionably squeaky clean, as well as a prominent ambassador for British soft power overseas.
Little wonder then that Starmer’s been making such a point of being photographed with him as the save-the-planet shindig gets under way.
As a sidebar to all that, incidentally, Reform leader Nigel Farage’s deputy, Richard Tice, does at last seem to be spotting a glimmer of light somewhere.
Having until earlier this year aligned himself with The Donald, stolidly maintaining that talk of man-made climate change is ‘garbage’, he’s now conceding that humans have ‘possibly, modestly’ done some harm.
No? Really? It fits, however, with The Nigel himself also conceding that he won’t after all cut taxes when/if he gets the keys to Number Ten. A bit like admitting you might be a teeny bit damp when you’ve just fallen into the sea.
All rather of a piece, mind, with eight of the thirteen town halls controlled by his party now hiking council tax. In spite of having sworn blind they’d slash it by cutting wasteful spending. Which they couldn’t seem to find after all.
All rather of a piece also with the boxer Mike Tyson’s famous adage: ‘Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.’
One plan by contrast that definitely did come up with the goods was a project to free Jorge, a middle-aged loggerhead turtle. Out of a tank where he’d been in captivity for forty years back to the ocean, where he belonged.
Of course they couldn’t just splosh him out there as he wouldn’t know what to do with himself. So instead they made his pool water more salty and his diet more natural, and created currents so he could build up his strength.
Then when the big day finally arrived he was off. Releasing him a few miles off the coast of Argentina where he’d been all these years, his handlers watched in delight as he headed underwater without a backward glance.
And that was just for starters. The tracker they’d discreetly popped onto him showed that in a couple of months he’d covered getting on for two-thousand miles.
There’s making up for lost time. Definitely the right sort of prison release.
Watch Peter’s report at peterspencer.org
Peter Spencer has 40 years experience as a Political Correspondent in Westminster, working with London Broadcasting and Sky News. For more of his fascinating musings on the turbulent political landscape, follow him on Facebook & Twitter.