Reeves's welfare Budget betrayal

0:28The Telegraph And are the Reform Party Nazis? We speak to Dr David Ball, who says, Nine!

0:38Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Camilla Tomini. And me, Tim Stanley.

0:52Camilla, are you sick of being mansplained to? All the time. Hang on. Do you know what it means? or do you need me to explain it to you? Can you explain it to me? Because my husband tried to explain that when he was telling me to do something very obvious yesterday in regard to something cookery related, I said he was mansplaining. And he said, did you know, like, did you know before what I've now explained to you? I said, to be honest, no, I didn't. He goes, you can't just call it mansplaining if a man explains something. Yes. It needs to be something bleeding obvious, doesn't it? Isn't that the case?

1:24I also feel there's a lot of womansplaining going on in my life. You, my mother I love how you're putting me on a par with your mother I feel touched by that Am I a significant in your life? Now the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves has said that she is sick of being mansplained too and in an interview with the Times she singled out quote boys who now write newspaper columns for doing it I think if any newspaper is going to mansplain it will be the Times The Telegraph takes itself slightly less seriously I don't think We need to be careful here that we are not passing off incompetence as sexism.

2:02Well, that's my question. Has she got a point? No. Do you think the coverage of Rachel Reeves' chancellorship is tainted with misogyny? No, I think it's tainted with reality. There was a YouGov poll out at the weekend. The Chancellor's approval rating is now minus 57, which is the lowest for any Chancellor in history, including Kwasi Kwarteng. and therefore I don't think that she is being criticised because she's female. I think she's being criticised because she's bad. Yeah, yeah. I think you're right. And there's a lack of self-awareness in some of what she says. Yes. I think the mansplaining thing is a very good example of that because, by the way, whether you were male, female, trans or a duck, columnists would write about how bad you are if you were bad.

2:48Yes. That's kind of our job and what we do. But as to that lack of self-awareness, I noticed in her latest column in The Times, we're giving The Times a lot of coverage here, but... Yes, can you stop it? Sorry. She wrote, To blame the hand you're dealt with is a dereliction of duty. It is my job as your Chancellor not to spend my time gazing in the rearview mirror, but to make the right choices that change our future for the better. She blames... She talks about her inheritance all the time. I know it's all the Conservatives' fault, because I don't know if you know, but along with the Prime Minister's father being a toolmaker, there is a 22 billion black hole in the economy and it's all of the Tories making.

3:2814 wasted years. 14 wasted years. So this whole let's not look back, let's look forward and not blame others for our own mistakes is ridiculous. Also, by the way, on this whole Rachel from Accounts thing, if it was Rick from Accounts, we would have made the same joke because this is a reflection not of her being female, it's a reflection on the fact that she lied in her CV. And that she's popularly regarded as having worked in accounts. Yes. So if anyone had told Fibs, that would be applied to them because she didn't do the job she said she had done. Yes. And that would be the same if it was a bloke.

4:00But Ben Riley-Smith, political editor of this paper, joins us now in the Daily Tea studio. Is she the victim of sexism, Rachel Reeves? Well, I think the Rachel from accounts one is possibly one where she's got an argument. Really? Clearly you two don't think that. Well, does it not try and conjure up a picture of a kind of nagging female in a company boss who's telling you what to do with your expenses? Of a Karen. There seems to be a kind of image that people throw that at. She clearly does feel, she did an interview piece about her approach to the budget with the Financial Times at the weekend.

4:35And they have this scene where I think they're up in the Northeast talking about oil and somebody, a regular punter, challenges her. and as described in the scene, she gets very frustrated and she says, hang on, show me some respect, I'm the Chancellor of the Exchec and she then told the reporter they would have never talked to George Osborne or Gordon Brown like that. So she certainly feels that she is judged by some people on a different metric. Doesn't this all come back to that point about a lack of self-awareness because she is the person who has emphasised again and again that she is the first female Chancellor.

5:05Well, if you talk like that, you make people look at you like that and is it really a surprise that the debate becomes framed around her gender. But I do feel some male commentators talk about her as if they were helping her to park a car. Yes. It's a bit, come on, sweetheart, bit to the left, bit to the right. There is a touch of that. Maybe there is. Yeah, but it was ever thus. I mean, I'm sorry, but you're saying that with respect to both of you guys, who I love and admire on a level, traditionally, the lobby, the Westminster lobby is the preserve of stuffy old men saying to people like me, should you reflect?

5:44Should you really be here? Because I'm not sure if you've noticed, but you do have a pair of breasts and we're doing very serious journalistic business here. It's always like that. That's what life is like for females. I'm not condoning it, but it's like, oh, you know, generally Westminster in blokey shock. We've discussed her as a female chancellor, but let's talk about her as a bad chancellor. Ben, tell us about the big U-turn that adds up to 15 billion pounds. Well, this is all about benefits and the approach to benefits. I think I'm not wishing to mansplain, but it does take a moment that we need to step back and just appreciate where she is leading up to this huge budget on Wednesday and the choices she had.

6:21So broadly, she is facing a 20 to 25 billion black hole in the public finances as it's dubbed, which is basically she's promised to control debt and borrowing. If she wants to do that and leave a bit of money aside, she's decided, right, I need about 20, 25 billion more than I've got currently. Now, the two obvious ways to do that are to get more money in, raise taxes, or to make sure less money is coming out, just cut spending. We know she's going to do a lot of the former. That's the decision she's made. And for weeks, we've been speculating about what the tax rises are going to be. What the Tories are doing and political opponents are doing is saying, well, hang on, is there nothing you can do more on the latter bit, actually, to control spending and specifically looking at welfare and benefits?

7:03and so in the paper today we zoomed in on four choices they have made that have massively increased the benefits bill by 15 bill a year so 15 bill is quite a big chunk of that 20 to 25 bill she needs to find so what are they one is the two child benefit cap is going and that's been a talking point all this year labour mps are pushing for it obviously that limits the amount of kind of universal credit and tax credit you get beyond your second child george osborne austerity year proposal. Keir Starmer and Rachel Ease are under pressure from their backbench to keep them on the side. We talked previously about the leadership problem.

7:37Can I interject here? Yeah. Why? He's got 169 majority. What on earth is this ridiculous pandering to Nadia Whithome, Rachel Maskell and others? He would have to do this if he was Theresa May in 2017. What's wrong with these spineless people? Well, I think there's two explanations. One is I think the Labour cabinet and those two individuals genuinely want to tackle child poverty. That's one of their stated aims whenever they ask what they want to do in office. They're never going to tackle it. A simple way of doing it is if you scrap the two child benefit cap, hundreds of thousands of people, 400 ,000 kids are taken out of poverty.

8:14Get teachers to brush their teeth. And then the second one is they are genuinely concerned about that, not just unpopularity in terms of the country, but the solidity of their position inside the party. I mean, the last time I was on, we talked about all those leadership briefings and what was going on. I think the only conclusion of the last three or four weeks is number 10 is really concerned that somebody is going to come for the prime minister in the next six to 12 months. So giving them something that everybody has been pressing for in the Labour family largely, which is removing the cap helps them on that score.

8:44So we've got removing the benefits. Yeah, so that's number one. The second one is uprating benefits. Now, this is what they're expected to see. So each year, the chancellor needs to say, how much am I going to increase working age benefits, universal credit, personal dependence, payments, child benefit. And they're doing it in line with inflation, which you could say that's perfectly rational to do if you want. It's higher than inflation. It's 4%. Well, they picked the figure of CPI inflation in September, which is 3.8%. But that cost 6 billion. And other chances in the past have made different decisions.

9:17For four years, under different Tory Chancellor, starting with George Osborne, they froze working age benefits except for the disability element. So when you're looking at all these trades and balances, you could say, well, actually, I think the benefits bill is growing too quickly. So I'll do it at 2%, not 4%. But they've made a decision to do it in line with inflation. That adds another sixth bill. And then the last two are actually U-turns that they've done in the last six months, which I think our listeners will remember. Winter fuel payment. Remember when she came in after last summer's election, she said, right, I'm going to scrap the winter fuel payments for pretty much everybody.

9:51Cut through with the public. They absolutely hated it. So she ended up actually giving it back to most people. So that means she's got to fund another 1.5 billion. And then the last one is this big welfare reforms package that became a big story in the summer. They decided to try and tackle the ballooning welfare bill, reform personal independence payments, which are given to disabled people. It would have saved about 5 billion. There was a huge Labour rebellion going back to why do they have to do this with these huge Labour numbers? I mean, they lost the support of their own MPs, couldn't get it through, so they ditched it.

10:21So that's another£5 billion she's got to find. So when you add it all together, between this year and next year, they are spending another£15 billion more in benefits. It just raises that question. When we hear it on Wednesday, we've got to find the money. It's got to come through tax rises. Is that our alternatives? I'm sorry, I think this is complete and utter madness. Jeremy Hunt, writing for the Sunday Telegraph, made the quite cogent point, actually. If you just return benefits to pre-pandemic levels, If you just return benefits to pre-pandemic levels, you save 47 billion quid. Why can't you make an argument with the public?

10:56We can't afford this. Covid let this get completely out of control. All we're doing is going back to pre-pandemic levels. It's actually a perfectly useful, sensible political argument that can be made. But politicians are reaping their own whirlwind, aren't they? We are where we are because they said COVID is serious and people need support. Where we are where we are because for about a generation, they have said mental health is as important as physical health. Therefore, PPE, motability. We are where we are because they have been very generous in benefits to pensioners. And they believe it's political death to take them away from them.

11:37Same with child. If Labour's entire mission is the abolition of child poverty, hence they are very proud of the Breakfast Club. stuff, then it's logical. It's logical when you're polling your own supporters. It's logical when you are polling the people that you are thinking are your arch rivals, which are presumably now the Greens, some your partiers and possibly some Liberal Democrats. OK, if you poll all these kinds of people and you ask them loaded questions like, would you like to pay an extra P in the pound to improve the NHS? People go, yes, please. If you say, would you like to pour more into an NHS that is less efficient now and less productive than it was pre-COVID?

12:18They say, no, of course not. More in common poll this weekend. The public in general, not just Labour voters, are asked, should taxes go up or should spending come down? 61 % go for spending coming down. They've all accepted now that we have been spending like drunken sailors, the Tories and Labour, and that this simply cannot continue. And on the argument on benefits, you merely say this. Unfortunately, this parity of esteem has now equated somebody who lost three limbs to sepsis with somebody suffering mild anxiety. Those two people cannot be on the same plane. We've got we've completely got rid of face to face benefits checks so that people are claiming more benefits than they deserve.

13:03The state cannot support it. The state cannot continue to get bigger and bigger. We've now got spending 45 % as a percentage of GDP. It's ridiculous. That figure needs to start with a three. Can we all just please get a grip? The public opinion business is actually quite interesting because when you look at the two-shell benefit cap specifically, that is a popular measure. So most of the public want to keep the two-shell benefit cap. And George Osborne talks about this a lot. And the way he frames the argument when he pushed the policy and it's remained in place for a long time is what every family needs to has a financial hit if they have more children.

13:38That's just the nature of a growing family. And should it not be the case that if you make that decision and you're at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale, you also have to accept that there's a kind of financial consequence to having more children. But removing the cap means that the state will cover you for some of that. So actually, when you ask the public, they do buy into the idea that, yes, the state will help you with the cost of two kids. But if you have more than two kids, you kind of need to pay your own way beyond that point. But the public are horrible, right? That's because they're looking at their neighbours and saying they've got too many kids over there.

14:11But when you come for the public's benefits, when you start talking about tackling the triple lock on pensions, then suddenly everyone's like, well, now that's something I've paid in for my whole life. I think the triple lock argument is actually because of the generational difference now between your boomers and your Gen Zs, I think that's becoming an increasingly more difficult argument to sustain. Yes. Because let's be honest, boomers with the assets that they hold, and this is why the mansion tax, by the way, is counterintuitive. If you've got Gen Zs who cannot afford to pay into pensions because they can't even afford to build up a deposit to buy a home, the only hope they have of getting onto the property ladder is via inheritance or equity release from their boomer parents or grandparents' homes.

14:54If you're then going to slap that end of the market with a mansion tax or property taxes, it affects a prince and a pauper in equal measure because somebody that bought their council tax under Margaret Thatcher might not have a big pension pot but has got a lot of money in property, particularly in the southeast. And by the way, in affluent parts of the north or just generally, you know, they still bought that home, whatever it was, a council flat, a four bedroom semi for a much, much lower amount. The only way they can pass this on generationally is to pass on their property to their children.

15:27And now you're going to clobber that and clobber inheritance. It doesn't make any sense. Well, Ben has laid out how the spending is going to go up. But talk to us about the taxes that we know about. Yes. Well, it's worth cavitating all of this is we haven't seen the budget. They don't hand that over to us. So we are having conversations with as many well-placed people as we can and trying to get a sense of what's coming. I think the big one is income tax. and it now looks very certain that the route they were going down, which was to increase income tax rates, they backed off because of the political backlash that it would be just such an explicit breach of the manifesto.

16:01But they're still, we think, going to do something on income tax rates and that is freezing the thresholds. So there is a salary level above which you flip into the higher income tax band. Rachel Rees made a huge play last year of saying, I'm not going to extend the freeze. the Tories froze it all the way to 2028. She said, well, I'm not going to freeze it because that would be a tax on working people. And our manifesto says we shouldn't do that. We now think she's going to have to eat her own words and she will extend the freeze. And it all gets a bit complicated, the impact of that, but it's dubbed this terrible phrase fiscal drag, which basically means if the point at which you start paying the higher rate of tax doesn't change, but your salary rises with inflation, then more and more people each year being dragged into higher tax bands and having to pay more tax.

16:46I think Lib Dems put out in an ad to say over the weekend, They said 9 million people are going to be dragged into higher tax bounds by the end of this decade by that policy. So they call it a stealth tax because the country ends up paying a lot more income tax, but it's not as easily understandable as saying the rate will increase from 20 to 21 percent or whatever. Put a small point on that. I just thought with the rail fare freezes, we're freezing rail fares. OK, that's great. I mean, they're already extortionate. They're already too high. You're going to freeze them. You're going to say that we should all be grateful for wage growth.

17:17But that's largely reflected by the public sector pay rises that you've given to rail workers and junior doctors, both of whom are still threatening strike action despite having been given record pay rises. So you're actually going to tax people to freeze rail fares because you have given money to rail workers. and in the round of all this, you're going to try and tell us on Wednesday that a working person is defined as somebody who earns up to£46 ,000. That then discludes the rail workers and the junior doctors that you've given the pay rises to. Is the Chancellor suggesting that she isn't a working person?

17:59Under her definition, nobody in the House of Commons is a working person. The Prime Minister isn't a working person. She isn't a working person. Neither are doctors, some nurses, rail drivers, teachers, head teachers, small business owners. Well, I think also if this all continues, there are going to be a lot more people in this country who are not working people. It's not just a sort of smoke and mirrors. It's just, it's economically illiterate nonsense. Yes, yes. And they're all getting tied up in what they did in that manifesto because when you talk to a lot of people, But they said you didn't need to be so specific on the promises you made in the manifesto.

18:39And I believe there's possibly going to be a tax rate on pension contributions, right? Yes. So income tax is the big tax increase we think they're doing in terms of freezing the threshold. And then you've got what has been described. I think the FT first came up with this phrase. The smorgasbord of other smaller tax rises. Because they're not doing the big rates thing. They need to find six, seven, eight, nine, ten pots of money to get a little bit here and there. And that's quite complicated politically doing that because you potentially piss off a lot of different vested interests. But to run down the list, salary sacrifice schemes, this idea that you take a little bit less of your wage than you are entitled to.

19:14And it goes into another pot, be it to your pension or to pay to get a nice bike. And you don't pay national insurance on that chunk. So actually you get a bit of tax saving. Sounds like they're going to reduce that a lot. Let's talk about capping that at£2 ,000. And they're worried about people not saving enough into their pensions. Carry on then. That's the problem with all these things. Yeah, dividend taxes, we're expecting the tax on dividends to increase a bit. It is much lower than the tax on income in terms of rates. So I think the lowest percentage is 8%. And if you push it up to 10%, 11%, 12%, you get a bit of money.

19:47We don't know the exact figure. Sorry, context to that. Lakshmi Mittal, the latest billionaire to be leaving the country. Business startups at a record low. Business folding at a record high. And they think it's a good idea to put up a dividend tax. Again, nonsensical. And then I'm not going to give you the whole exhaustive list, but there will be a new paper mile scheme on electric vehicles. There'll be an increase in some candling duties. There's going to be an increase in the sugar levy, so milkshakes are going to be hit. And lots of these little pots. Honestly, like you've never had less sugar in drinks.

20:19Try going back to the 1980s, drinking a Coke and losing all of your teeth. Electric vehicle tax. Oh, well, well done. Brilliant idea. Everyone get out of their diesels. Let's have congestion charging through the roof in the capital. everyone forced into electric vehicles they can't afford, and then we're going to tax them on top. Again, I don't think I've ever known of a more chaotic prep to a budget in history, unless it's all a massive sham and that they are making it look this disastrous now, so that on Wednesday, when we're not quite taxed until the pipsqueak, maybe fresh air won't be taxed and we're all going to be grateful for it.

20:57We should also mention that the OBR is poised to lower growth forecasts. So Labour is all about growth. Growth ain't so good. The CBI, Confederation of British Industry, which has been meeting today, is very worried about the effects of the Employment Rights Bill. Labour has said it was all for deregulation, but here's one of the biggest pieces of regulation in a whole generation. And then there's the debate we've been having about for the last year about whether or not rich people really are leaving the country. And Peter Kyle, the business secretary, seems to have conceded that they are. I'm not going to duck the fact that we have put up taxes and we've closed some of the loopholes for non-DOMs.

21:34On the other hand, we've set up a global talent task force. We have set up a global talent visa. We are making it easier for people to come here who have high talents. Now, some people are going to leave because they were here because of the way the old non-DOM system worked. There are other people who are coming to this country because of the excitement that's in our economy at the moment, the fact we're investing in AI, that people like Jensen Wang from Nvidia, the biggest company in the world, says we're going through a Goldilocks moment as a country when it comes to AI. So lots of people are coming here because of the new excitement in our country.

22:06But I accept, because of some of the decisions we've made, like closing those non-dom tax loopholes, some people will feel the need to leave. That was Peter Carr speaking this morning. Right now, the top 1 % in this country are paying 29 % of all the income tax. Yes. That's unsustainable. It's arguably unjust. It's very kind of them to do it. And if more of them leave, then if they're already financing almost a third of the income tax take, you can see the knock-on effect it's going to have on public services. Yes. That's why Labour thinking it can just take a bit of money here and there, individual taxes, mostly from better paid voters, they think that's a cheeky, clever way of closing this hole which they have expanded.

22:58What it's actually going to do is reduce the tax intake because people will move overseas. Also, what's their excuse for having such a short memory? I mean, the likes of Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, unlike Zach Polanski, banging on about wealth taxes. I mean, to be fair to Polanski, he doesn't remember the 70s. for anyone you know it's only in recent memory and we can have the whole joke about yeah you know show us where communism's succeeded and we'll show you a fallacy it's in recent memory that all this stuff was tried and it failed spectacularly and yet again the definition of madness is repeating the same mistakes over and over again and expecting a different result ben well i think rachel reeves and her team would say they're not going for this huge one-off wealth tax or something to absolutely sock the rich.

23:47They're taking small amounts from small pockets. When you look at the bigger picture, they are going after people with wealth. That's something I... Or they're going after people, ironically, with jobs. They're going after working people, people in middle England, people on middle incomes, and actually giving their hard-working tax pound, increasingly, just to bring this whole conversation full circle, to people on benefits. Yeah, and that is to finish where we've begun. isn't there an argument that they could have been more stringent on benefits and welfare and you wouldn't have had to go to so many of these different pots to raise taxes?

24:21It sounds like you're mansplaining to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I apologise. Maybe she could do with it. Coming up next, Dr David Bull, Chairman of Reform, will react to being compared to the Nazis.

24:46Tim Stanley, as a really enthusiastic football fan, not, you will be very interested to know that Reform have got a new football shirt out and it's got a badge on it that Kevin Hollingrake, the chairman of the Conservative Party, thinks looks like a Nazi badge and therefore by implication Reform are Adolf Hitler sympathisers. Do you follow this line of thinking? The first surprise was that Reform has a football team. Yes. The second is, looking at the badge, if it's worth taking a look at, and comparing it to a Nazi emblem, they look nothing at all alike. No. I'm not a fan of Reform UK's symbol.

25:27It looks like one of those Monopoly hotels that's been knocked over. And also, it has a touch of toilets this way about it. Yes, it does. There's an arrow as if we're going to the distance. It could be the loos in Fortnum's, but it's still, as I say, got a hint of disabled access over here. Although the euro is pointing to the right. It is, so it's pointing in the right direction. Yes. It could be up if it was their poll rating. But I find Hollenrake's attempt to suggest that there is some sort of hint of Nazism here a bit of a stretch. I'm wondering whether that link was just circulated among a number of Tories for a laugh internally and then Hollenrake just put it online and then it's all blown up in his face.

26:10I think you might be right. It's like it's not hard to take a photo of a politician when they're raising their right arm. Yes. For instance, to stop a taxi. Happened to the late Queen once. And it's... At Sandringham in the garden. That's grim and low journalism. Isn't it? Well, let's speak now to Dr David Bull, the chairman of Reform UK, to find out if he is frog-marching around his building as we speak. Dr David Bull, thank you for joining us I know you're going to a rally tonight Is it in Nuremberg? How dare you, how dare you There's a really serious story behind this No, I'm in Wales actually Where we're polling really well actually This all started yesterday with Kevin Hollingray I messaged to say I actually put on X That we had won two more councillors He replied saying how well the Conservative Party Was going And then he obviously has said what I think is the most disgraceful and appalling comments, likening hundreds of thousands of members to Nazis.

27:10And I mean, I think you have to take a step back. First of all, I thought whether he'd really understood what he was saying. But actually, just in terms of the framing of this, when he is talking, and I mentioned I'm in Wales, when you're talking to people here who are sick and tired of the open border policy to immigration, when people say they want their country back, When people say things have to change and that is the response from the Tory party, then you know how desperate the whole thing has become. I suggest actually he should concentrate on resuscitating the dead corpse, which is the Conservative Party.

27:43What are we to make of the fact that he tweets it, then he deletes it, then he puts it back up? I mean, he may be of the theory, you know, if in doubt, just double down. Sometimes you have to do that on X. You have to stick to your guns. but there was clearly a slight crisis of conscience in the middle of it all. I just wonder what the thinking was because, of course, the trouble with the Tories using this attack line, which we would more closely associate with the left, let's be honest, who are quite happy to bandy around terms like Nazi, far-right, whatever, is that he's actually using that term to describe his own voters who are undecided about whether they're Tories or reformers, like many Telegraph readers, by the way.

28:24And that is absolutely the case. That is the point. And so you're absolutely right. So he tweeted the picture. Then he took it down. Obviously, he had buyer's remorse. Then he put it back up with a link to it. So as you say, he doubled down on the whole thing. But actually, at no point did he actually think this is a really bad idea. I'm insulting our former voters who have come over to Reform UK. But what I find even more shocking is the Conservative Party seem to be standing by him. Now, what does that show about their sense of judgment? because it is woefully wrong. I think actually, I'm a great believer in not playing the man, but you play the ball.

29:00But in this case, I actually think his comments are so disrespectful, so distasteful that he should actually resign. There are, of course, a lot of Tories and Tory MPs who do think you're Nazis. They do think that. I'm not saying he necessarily does, but there are some who do think you are a far-right danger. And why do they think that? What exactly would they... What's their evidence for that? Well, because your badge looks a bit like someone else's badge. But aside from that, my point is that it's possible it was a poor taste joke. But I can tell you from speaking to some Tories, they really do think you are the Fourth Reich and they are very worried about you.

29:35Well, they're very worried because they're going to lose. They're going to have 14 members of parliament given the latest polling. If you look at actually the polls now, we're at 33%. What's that? 373 seats or thereabouts. No wonder the Conservative Party is panicking. But I go back to the original point I made, which is I believe that if you're going to fight a campaign in the election, it needs to be a positive campaign. Set out to the electorate what you as Conservatives will do to change this country for the better. Now, this open border policy on migration, by the way, let's not forget, goes back to the Conservative Party.

30:06The 3.8 million people who came here legally under Boris Johnson, those people who are going to get indefinite leave to remain, that was under the Conservative Party. So they need to take a long, cold, hard look in the mirror as to what they actually did to this country. And that is why people who formally voted Conservative are coming across to us. Do you think that Nigel Farage has done his own self-reflecting in recent days, David, after the Guardian's expose of his childhood flirtations, can I put it like that, with anti-Semitism? We've done and we've covered with Michael Crick, the original journalist that broke the story that he may have sang Nazi songs in the streets of Dulwich.

30:44And we debunked that. And we did say to Crick, is he a racist? and Crick said no. So I just want to just clarify that. But it would be remiss not to ask you what the Reform UK's leader's reaction is to a huge expose with people who were at school with him accusing him of some pretty unsavoury views, talking about the gassing of Jews, making jokes about the Holocaust. I think for all of us in Reform UK, we can see the amount of scrutiny we're now under and how much stuff is being thrown at us. And that is because we're doing so well in the polls. And I think as a party, look, I've been involved since 2019.

31:22We have had to grow, mature and develop. And I think sometimes we need to now think very carefully about how we position ourselves in a statesman like manner. I have no idea what went on when Nigel was younger. And hopefully none of that is true, as you've debunked it yourselves. But the point is that actually we are going from a party which was a protest party in many ways to a party of government. And I think we have to also choose the battles that we fight and the way that we actually phrase some of the stuff that we talk about now has to be incredibly careful as we go forward as well. I mean, is it right to accuse somebody of something now that they may have been guilty of at school?

32:00He's definitely not a racist. I know Nigel very well. And obviously we have lots of people in this party, all different face and walks of life and colours and races and all the rest of it. So he's definitely not a racist. I don't know what he did at school. I don't know. In the playground, lots of kids say all sorts of terrible things that they regret later in life. Well, shouldn't it just be something we don't touch upon just because it's childhood? Well, I'm not sure there is much to be gleaned from what children say. I would agree. What was your reaction to Nathan Gill getting 10 years, by the way, for taking bribes from Russia?

32:37Because I know you knew him. I did. And I mean, there's the Welsh connection because you're there today, David, just to ask about that, please. I'm really sad, actually. Nathan, I met him when we were in the European Parliament. He was leading the group in the European Parliament. He'd been there. I think it's desperately sad that he sunk that low. And in fact, my response was to his sentencing that I didn't think it was long enough, actually. If you take money and you betray this country, in my view, you're a traitor to the country. But I think there are some questions to be asked of other politicians who seem to have found themselves in very hot water and having dalliances with foreign powers.

33:15We have a budget on Wednesday. We've just been discussing tax rises. Will you make the same commitment that Labour made fatefully in 2024 that there'll be no major tax rises to personal taxes? Look, I think you have to look at the economic situation. I think it was a very rash promise of theirs, as you know, to not to increase income tax, VAT or national insurance. And of course, they then increased employer national insurance from 13.8 % up to 15%. They think that will bring in more money. As we know, the employers now can't afford to employ anyone. So we have put forward an alternative budget to Rachel Reeves.

33:47Remember, she has caused this£25 billion black hole, and this is up to her to get out of it. Now, we have put forward proposals, which include increasing the immigration health surcharge, for example. It's capping foreign aid, making sure money goes back into this country. For example, it's removing all foreign criminals out of this country. So we've put forward proposals going forward. I think also just in terms of if and when we get into government, there are going to be some very hard decisions to be made in terms of the finances of this country. But actually, what I want to see, what we want to see is lower tax.

34:22Because if you empower people to employ people to grow their businesses, then the economy grows. What we're doing at the moment is stifling anyone who is an entrepreneur. Literally, when you look at the number of people leaving this country, 11 ,000 non-doms have already left the country. Something like a quarter of a million people have left the United Kingdom already since Labour came to power. And do you blame them? Because actually, I think most people are thinking about whether a life in another country is better than staying in this country. Look, what we have to do is empower those people who create wealth.

34:52I founded a company. I employed 50 staff. It is not easy when you have a salary bill of a million pounds every single year. You need to feel the state is on your side to employ more people, to ensure that actually the one million kids who are not in employment, education or training between 18 and 25 have a place, have a home, have a way of earning money. So those are the things that we would look at. I think making promises which are rash before you get into an election are going to be difficult to keep, given the mess that we're currently in. David Bull, before you go quickly, how are your badges doing then?

35:25You're sticking with them. They've been flying off the shelves. Do you know, I haven't been involved with football kit. It's not my look. No, indeed. But still. But your look, you're wearing a sweatshirt with no bull on it. For those who are listening to this, they need to know. So you do have a look. And it's very personal. I do. It's very nice. Good luck in Wales later. Thank you for your time. Thank you. I was just stumbling there because I was going to say, can you send us a couple of black shirts? No, but there is an issue with this because they have produced a black shirt. Right. I'm not for one minute suggesting it's racist or they're Nazis.

35:58Does it come in brown? I don't know. I think we're all getting a bit... I think we're all being a bit silly about this, looking for these little hints of fascism or Nazism. But equally, I think if Hollenrake tells a joke, even if it's a bad one, I think one should be old enough and bold enough just to walk away and say whatever. We're too quick to say he should be cancelled. Yeah, I don't think it needs to be a cancellation. It was just a joke that landed rather flat. We're going to be joined on Thursday by former Treasury adviser Cameron Brown, who is going to answer all your questions about the budget.

36:31So please do get in touch with us as soon as Rachel Reeves delivers what she's going to cripple us with tax wise at the despatch box. Please do get in touch with any questions because we can ask an expert. The email is thedailytea at telegraph.co.uk. Or, of course, you can contact us via our socials, Instagram, TikTok and X at Daily Tea Podcast. we'll be back tomorrow 5pm