Budget Fallout: Sir Keir Starmer Denies Misleading on the State of Public Finances

Budget Fallout: PM Defends Chancellor Amidst “Misleading” Claims, Economic Uncertainty Lingers

When the Chancellor Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Black Hole

What does it tell us about the state of British politics when even the BBC’s political editor, typically as circumspect as a Victorian undertaker, feels compelled to accuse a Labour Chancellor of misleading the public? Chris Mason’s unusually blunt assessment that Rachel Reeves “misled” voters in the run-up to her Budget represents more than journalistic candour. It exposes the rot at the heart of a government that has mastered the dark art of manufactured crisis.

The facts, when stripped of Treasury spin, are damning. On October 31, the Office for Budget Responsibility informed Reeves that she possessed a £4.2 billion surplus, not the yawning chasm of fiscal doom she had been painting for public consumption. Yet days later, at an extraordinary pre-Budget press conference (the first of its kind, a theatrical innovation that should have raised eyebrows), the Chancellor delivered grim warnings about economic catastrophe. Treasury officials whispered to journalists about black holes ranging from £20 billion to £30 billion. Meanwhile, leaked plans suggested a 2p income tax rise that would breach Labour’s manifesto, a threat that conveniently disappeared once the political groundwork for alternative tax rises had been laid.

This is not merely spin. It is systematic deception dressed in the language of fiscal responsibility.

The pattern is familiar to anyone who has watched Britain’s political class operate over the past four decades. Create a crisis (real or imagined), use it to justify harsh medicine for ordinary people, then claim credit for prudent management. The neoliberal playbook has been refined to such perfection that even supposedly left-wing governments deploy it without shame. Reeves’ performance recalls nothing so much as George Osborne’s “maxed-out credit card” rhetoric, the austerity mythology that ravaged working-class communities while protecting the wealth of those who caused the 2008 crash.

What makes this episode particularly galling is not simply that the Chancellor misled the public. Cabinet ministers have now revealed that they too were kept in the dark about the true state of the finances, with only Starmer and Reeves privy to the OBR’s improved forecasts. One Cabinet minister asked pointedly why the country was allowed to believe for so long that manifesto commitments would be broken when “they would have known that wasn’t true”. This is government by inner circle, the Whitehall equivalent of smoke-filled rooms, where democratic accountability extends no further than the Chancellor’s immediate orbit.

The political consequences are already visible in the wreckage of Labour’s approval ratings. Starmer’s net satisfaction score stands at -34, making him the most unpopular Prime Minister at this stage of a first term since Ipsos began measuring in the late 1970s Ipsos. Even among Labour voters, the government now faces division, with 38% holding negative views YouGov. This is not the normal ebb and flow of political fortune. It represents a fundamental breach of trust between a government elected to serve working people and the electorate that put it there.

Consider what this theatre of fiscal crisis was designed to achieve. By exaggerating the scale of economic challenges, Reeves created political space for £26 billion in tax rises that disproportionately affect working people. The income tax threshold freeze will drag more than 1.7 million workers into paying the levy for the first time or push them into higher bands by 2030-31. National Insurance hikes will hit employers and, inevitably, be passed down through suppressed wages and reduced employment. These are the material consequences of political dishonesty.

The real scandal here is not that Labour raised taxes (though the targets of those rises deserve scrutiny), but that they felt compelled to manufacture a crisis to justify decisions they had likely already made. This reveals a government terrified of its own electorate, unwilling to make an honest case for its fiscal choices, preferring instead the path of managed panic and controlled revelation. It is the behaviour of politicians who believe their voters are too stupid to understand economics, too gullible to question official narratives, too exhausted to demand better.

The irony would be amusing if the stakes were not so high. Labour came to power promising to restore honesty to politics after years of Conservative mendacity. Instead, we have a government that conceals surpluses to justify austerity-lite, briefs journalists with inflated deficit figures, and keeps its own Cabinet in ignorance. The machinery of deception has simply changed hands, operating now under the red banner rather than the blue.

Some will argue that politics requires such manoeuvring, that governing means making difficult choices and managing public expectations. This is the excuse of the technocrat, the administrator who has forgotten that democracy demands more than efficient management. It demands truth. When chancellors hide fiscal reality from cabinet colleagues and voters alike, they do not strengthen government. They corrode the foundations of democratic accountability that make legitimate government possible.

Even when confronted with old adage of "telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth", #Starmer denies misleading cabinet or voters as he declares ‘pride’ in Budget.

The step change is clear; this is not only the most unpopular government in modern history,… pic.twitter.com/BIPjx3nrTb

— Labour Heartlands (@Labourheartland) December 1, 2025

The government’s approval rating now stands at -51%, with 62% disapproving of its record Statista, YouGov. These are not the numbers of a government experiencing normal political turbulence. They represent a collapse of confidence barely six months into office. A majority of 53% now view the Labour government as incompetent, including 31% of those who voted Labour. When a government loses the faith of its own supporters this quickly, it suggests something more profound than policy disagreements. It suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of what voters expect from those they elect.

The real tragedy is that this entire debacle was avoidable. Had Reeves simply been honest about the fiscal situation (a modest surplus requiring careful management), she could have made a coherent case for her chosen tax rises based on Labour’s actual priorities: funding the NHS, addressing child poverty, investing in infrastructure. Instead, she chose the path of manufactured crisis, political theatre, and controlled information. The result is a government that appears simultaneously dishonest and incompetent, unable to level with voters and incapable of managing its own message.

Working people watching this spectacle are entitled to ask what, precisely, has changed since Labour took office. The party that promised to restore integrity to government instead offers Westminster games, Treasury spin, and the same old tricks dressed in slightly different rhetoric. The faces have changed, the party colours have shifted, but the fundamental disrespect for voters’ intelligence remains constant.

This is not what Labour was built for. The party was founded to give working people a voice in parliament, to challenge elite power, to speak truth to those who would prefer comfortable lies. Somewhere along the way, it became just another vehicle for career politicians playing Westminster games, more concerned with managing narratives than serving the people who elected them.

When your Chancellor needs to hide a surplus to justify a tax rise, you no longer have a Labour government. You have a management consultancy that happens to wear red rosettes.

The step change is clear; this is not only the most unpopular government in modern history, but it’s now a government under siege.