Politicians lie, we all know it. It’s what they do. It’s one thing, though, for them to lie through their teeth to us plebs, but lying to parliament is still a serious matter in Westminster systems. Or at least, getting caught lying to parliament. That’s a whole ’nuther ball game. Misleading parliament is such a serious sin in the Westminster system that unequivocally getting caught out at it is a sacking offence. Think of it as the flipside of parliamentary privilege.
And it’s raising new questions over just how UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves is going to keep her job – and even if her boss, PM Keir Starmer is in serious trouble. Well, even more serious than usual.
The storm over Reeves and Starmer’s horror budget – which gauges the workers in order to shower massive largesse on welfare bludgers – took a whole new twist when allegations emerged that both had lied to parliament over the state of the British economy. That the UK economy is supposedly in the shitter was their justification for breaking key election promises and going full-socialist in the budget.
But it turns out that it’s not nearly so bad as they made out – and they knew full well that it isn’t, but lied about it anyway.
On November 4, three weeks before the budget, Reeves held an extraordinary press conference. She used it to signal that a downgrade in the public finances by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) meant that taxes would have to rise.
She said: “That [the productivity downgrade] has consequences for working people – for their jobs and for their wages, and it has consequences for the public finances too, in lower tax receipts.”
She signalled that she would break the Labour manifesto and raise income tax. She also made clear that she had made “choices” not to return to austerity – meaning she would protect public spending – and that she wanted more fiscal headroom to act as a cushion against future changes in the public finances.
Except, that wasn’t true and she knew it. The Office for Budget Responsibility (surely a joke?) informed Reeves as far back as mid-September that, in fact, tax receipts were significantly higher, improving the economic bottom line. In fact, four days before Reeves’s press conference she had been specifically informed that the budget was in surplus to the tune of £4.2 billion.
Yet at no point in her Downing Street press conference did Reeves make this clear. She chose to highlight the bad, omitting the good. This has led to accusations that she at best misled the public and at worst lied.
The chancellor has insisted that she did not mislead voters about the state of the public finances.
So, not quite misleading parliament, but skating right up against it, especially by lying to cabinet. Reeves is resorting to an unconvincing, yeah-but-no-but-yeah-but defence that £4.2 billion isn’t really that much of a surplus and, if you twist the figures hard enough, she was kinda-sort-almost telling the truth.
In defending her to the hilt, Starmer has made himself complicit in the lies. Worse, he repeated them. So, now he’s tainted by yet another scandal – all in just over a year in government.
Reeves’ critics, even some of her fellow cabinet ministers, aren’t buying it. Nigel Farage has written to the government’s independent ethics advisor (another joke?) demanding a formal investigation. The Tories are not just hammering Labour in parliament, but also demanding an investigation, this time by the Financial Conduct Authority, arguing that her lies amount to manipulating the markets.
However, there is a high bar for both to carry out an investigation, and because the crux of the issue lies with something Reeves did not say – rather than something she explicitly did – it is not clear whether there will be any formal inquiry.
More pointedly, the scandal smashes the intraparty gains the budget bought for the Labour leadership. The budget might have infuriated British taxpayers, but it went down a treat with their socialist party members. Enough to stave off the immediate threat of a leadership challenge. But now, ministerial insiders are saying that Reeves and Starmer’s positions are finished. A leadership challenge in the next six months is looking likely.
