The State of It's Christmas Awards

0:00Welcome to the state of its inaugural Christmas Awards. We've had a bounteous political year with extraordinary U-turns, scandals, civil wars, you name it. And we thought it was only right to dish out some awards to recognise some of the extraordinary lengths that our politicians have been to this year to keep us all informed, interested and, in a way, entertained. So we are going to kick off with our first category, which is Moment of the Year. And there were some rich pickings here. Does anyone want to kick off on one of the moments of the year? well i would have to advocate for rachel reeves in the chamber when it was it was doing pmqs and suddenly there is this rumor doing the rounds that spread like wildfire that the chancellor was sitting on the front bench and weeping and you know i think about it now and i you know there's a part of me that feels desperately sorry for rachel reeves that this happened i mean it's like crying in front of your boss, really, isn't it?

1:02But, you know, if there was anything that you could have possibly said to me, and we've had a wild sort of few years in politics, would not happen. It wouldn't be somebody sitting on the front bench and crying. It's a proper human, but also really significant because the markets didn't like it. They didn't like it. And actually, arguably, it saved her job because, you know, it was just after the welfare rebellion and everything was incredibly raw. and there were knives out for literally everybody. The only person that really came out of the kind of welfare rebellion reasonably well is somebody that I'm sure we'll be talking about later in the pod, was Angela Rayner.

1:39But, you know, the people that hadn't come out of this at all well was Rachel Reeves. And of course, the Sunday just before, Gable and I had actually revealed in one of our big reads that the Chancellor had had a really unpleasant bust-up with a backbench MP who had a particular disability and had made this particular individual cry, we think, although it was never actually confirmed. But this had also been the gossip in the tea rooms. And I think that Rachel Reeves was feeling particularly raw about this. And, you know, she happened to have had a conversation with the speaker as she was, I think, walking in or walking out of the chamber just before this particular moment.

2:22and he had said something to her which had clearly driven her over the edge. And during Prime Minister's questions, we saw this incredible moment of the cameras panning in on Rachel Reeves with tears dripping down her cheeks. And, of course, that led to just days and days of speculation about what on earth had happened that had led this poor woman to end up crying. We still don't know. We still don't know. That's the weirdness of it, isn't it? I think it's sort of one of those moments where in the absence of any confirmation, it just ended up serving as the ultimate illustration of her weakness and the government's weakness.

2:58There were people saying, she has to explain it. Well, she hasn't. And I suspect that may be one for her memoirs. I have to say, for me, my abiding memory of that day is I went on Times Radio and said, I think Rachel Reeves is finished and she won't be chancelled by the end of the day. I have to say, Rachel Reeves' teams have been good supports for me about that, although they do occasionally remind me that I said that their boss would not be in a job for about six months. But you're half right. I mean, she is finished. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I also said I wouldn't be surprised if Pat McFadden was chancellor by the end of the day.

3:33And I remember a lobby colleague texted me to say, the sort of person who talks to the mythical bond traders who control our economy. Well, they're not mythical, but they have mythical status. And they said, OK, they sent me your Times radio clip. And I said, oh, right. What did they say? They said, is Pat McFadden left wing? And it was at that point the sort of scales from my eyes fell and I realised, oh God, bond traders know as little about politics as lobby journalists sometimes. So that was a... So were you responsible for the bond market shaking? Well, maybe one fund who listened to Times Radio, who knows?

4:05Mel Stry will refer Patrick to the FCA. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. So that was my main takeaway. But I would like to nominate Wes Streeting, another cabinet minister for the moment of the year. and this is a an incident I can have some claim to being at least the partial author of given that three or four other lobby journalists it turned out a couple of hours after we did our podcast had been receiving similar briefings but it was of course the day after our podcast in which I revealed that Keir Starmer's allies and number 10 advisors had made clear that he would fight any leadership election and that they thought a leadership challenge could come from a number of cabinet ministers including one where's streeting and as you revealed gabriel in the sunday times that weekend he'd had a furious conversation with morgan mitsweeney on his way back from a remembrance service event it was shouty and sweary and you've got to wonder in the chaos of that day you know people wondering how why is the prime minister chosen this moment in the run-up to budget to declare that his leadership is under threat and he's going to fight it why are people briefing against the cabinet's best media performer you have to wonder whether anyone in number 10 remembered who's on the media round tomorrow which cabinet minister is on the media round tomorrow and it was one wesley paul streeting i think his middle name is if i've got that right i'm actually outraged if you get that right i think it might be wesley paul or wesley william street i think it's wesley william street okay i've got a scoop coming up um which is that it's paul william Paul and William Wesley Paul Williams treating there you go I was right on both counts that and I will show you my the depths of my memory now because it's such a memorable broadcast round because he went out accused number 10 of sexism he said well it's nice they're briefing against a man for a change he sort of did the more in sorrow less in anger thing where he sort of said look I've got a great health announcement to make he said and actually I did say to West Streeting fairly recently the problem with your media round is Wes students of West Streeting know full well that you use this formulation at Labour conference in 2024 when all the briefing was about Sue Gray he said I don't know where Lord Lucan is I didn't kill JFK I didn't fake the moon landings and I didn't do anything to Shergar and how we all laughed but the connoisseurs among us knew that hang on that's Wes's line about Sue Gray recycled for himself but fair enough but I think it just left number 10 completely humiliated at a stroke it enhanced his status and the great irony of all of this for those in number 10 who wanted to take West Streeting down a peg is that it undid or partly undid one of the most toxic things for any West Streeting leadership campaign which is hang on you're the Morgan McSweeney continuity candidate I mean, Gabriel, we wrote sort of a third of a book about the private dinners, Wes Streeting and Morgan McSweeney and a few others used to have at the South London home of Lord Liddle, where they get together on a Sunday evening and talk about the future of the Labour Party and the Keir Starmer, without Keir Starmer being there.

7:15But at a stroke, it was, Wes is not Morgan's candidate, Wes is his own man. Oh, and by the way, you know how the Prime Minister can't string a sentence together? This guy can do it, he can tell jokes, and he's been briefed against and belittled by them, just like us. So I think that was, one, very funny. Two, I have a proprietorial ownership of it, given that I helped light the kindling. And three, I think it will prove very significant. Say one more thing, too. He made it a moment himself, streeting. It's one of those occasions where newspapers and events aligned so beautifully. It was a little bit like Vic Starmer going to London Fashion Week shortly after the emergence of those Waheed Ali revelations.

7:59what more could we have asked for than Streeting himself doing a tour of every broadcaster just sandpapering down and finessing each line with every round he only became more fluent as it went on and yet how do you come out that morning and said you know I'm not going to get into that and studiously trained his eyes on his NHS reforms it might mightn't have been so but he he decided to elevate it and I think you know we have have to credit him as political observers for that he leaned into the moment and he used humor yeah uh in the most withering way imaginable and i'm sure and that is he is quite funny even sort of privately i mean i'm sure he won't mind me telling me this particular story but i mean as we all do on these days when there is a pile in on a particular story or a particular individual you know we all get in touch to see if we can flush out any sort of further information about what has happened and um i messaged was just to check in, see how he was doing.

8:54And he confidently told me he was about to do a speech on leadership and then left it a few more seconds slash minutes and said, of the NHS, you know. So he, even in private, is a funny guy and gets the kind of comedic timing of these things. Look, I think this round is a slam dunk. I was going to talk to you about Robert Jenrick's decision to confront Fair Dodgers on the Tube, which went viral. He's over now anyway. Kemi's back. We could come on to that for another podcast, but she certainly has more momentum now. But I mean, it's a slam dunk. It's the greatest breakfast round in the history of breakfast rounds.

9:31It's simultaneously almost, you know, full frontal assault on number 10 with loads of repeated and identical jokes about celebrity traitors thrown in. Yes, I forgot those. It was the Joe Marla joke on celebrity traitors. He just kept saying, I'm a faithful. This is the most treacherous thing to happen since Joe Marla was betrayed by Nick on traitors. just vaguely have vaguely memories of that. But yeah, and that was clipped off of I Got News For You because he said the same line with the same delivery eight times a row on consecutive. It was a polished performance and it was really damaging for number 10.

10:03So moment of the year there. Right, let's move on to the second topic, which is U-turn of the year. And this is a really hotly contested award. I'm going to give you a broad overview before we dive into a couple of them. There was the Island of Strangers comment, which Gabriel's going to talk to in a moment. There was welfare, which was an unbelievable U-turn that went down to the wire with a note being handed to Stephen Timms in the Commons before the government capitulated at a cost of, I think,£7 billion last time I checked. And then there was obviously income tax in the budget recently. But let's begin, Gabriel, with the island of strangers.

10:40Yeah, let me begin with that. I think, so for those that need reminding, Starmer had delivered this speech in which, earlier in the year in which he said that britain risked becoming and i an island of strangers which uh you know shortly after transmission emerged had a echo or two of enoch powell um starmer shortly before labor party conference gave an interview to his official biographer tom baldwin in which he stated that that was a mistake that he wished he hadn't said it and and that he wished he'd read the speech and he wished he read the held it up to the light a bit more and read it more closely yeah now i you know this might be a bit westminster brain of me because unlike winter fuel or welfare which no doubt will come on to uh it wasn't a policy u-turn but it was him disowning language but i think if you think about what the core critique of so many bits of the commentary but but also the public is about Starmer.

11:40It's that we don't know what it is that he stands for and who the real Starmer is. And in this instance, nobody thought when Starmer delivered that speech that he would have penned it himself. It is not faithful to the Starmer human rights, the human rights lawyer, the Starmer that we know about. But then to actually say the quiet bit out loud, to acknowledge, yeah, I didn't write it and I don't even believe the words I have myself uttered. It was a massive moment within Downing Street as well, because the one thing that you, you know, you pay a big price doing these drives, it's stressful, it's difficult, you know, no doubt, if you want a quiet life, don't go work in Downing Street.

12:21But the one thing you think is that the man at the apex has a plan and you can rely upon him to stick, if not to the plan, at least his own pronouncements. Here he was saying, I don't believe what I myself said. So I think it exacted a very bit. It was a very politically damaging moment, but also in its own way was just so, so very Starmer-ish. But the other thing that was fascinating about it was just this notion that you wouldn't have kind of thought about that language. I mean, OK, he didn't read it, but his advisers would have read it a number of times. And even his advisers, you know, I'm sure we've all spoken to many of them about this particular moment, would say, no, genuinely, it was a mistake.

13:02You know, nobody thought that there was any echo of Enoch Powell there. You know, it was just a kind of a series of words. I think there are many people that would think that wasn't true because we know that they have tried to be in the past quite provocative. Do you remember when Starmer talked the sort of language of Margaret Thatcher at one point and that sent that I think it was the Mirror or one of the other left wing papers completely crazy. But I can say, I mean, I do wonder whether he decided to fall on his sword over that particular speech because I understand that David Lammy actually had words with Sir Keir Starmer about that particular speech.

13:38Not to say it was wrong, but just to say, look, Keir, didn't you actually think that it might have been worth consulting someone in the cabinet about this particular speech? If you were going to make these kind of proclamations, you know, you know, I'm in the cabinet. I'm one of the first very senior cabinet ministers of an ethnic minority. It might just have been worth running that one past me. and you didn't and perhaps suggesting that he might do that sometime in the future. Right let's move on to welfare. So this was one where it showed the limits of the Prime Minister's power in a really abrupt way.

14:13They had these really ambitious welfare reforms, they would have made significant savings. Starmer had made successive speeches on the importance of them as had Rachel Reeves. The problem was the PLP didn't agree and they came out in force and the whole thing collapsed with huge consequences for Starmer's project. Yeah it's got everything, it's got the The Treasury being obsessed with, sorry, this seems churlish to say the Treasury being obsessed with numbers. It's their job, but it's got Treasury coming out and saying we want to save a few billion quid. It's got Keir Starmer trying and failing to make a political argument you're not entirely sure whether he believes in.

14:45It's got a collection of people who feel hard done by, excluded and patronised by number 10. Chief among them Louise Haig, the SAC transport secretary, but also Angela Rayner, the often marginalised deputy PM who had to negotiate a peace deal with the rebels and a range of other backbenchers who weren't given ministerial jobs that they thought they were entitled to when Labour came into power it's got high drama in the Commons as you said earlier Steve things being written and rewritten as ministers were at the dispatch box and it's got an amazing punchline which is a package that was meant to save five billion quid ended up costing the government an extra one billion because of all the changes they'd made and all of that sort of thing.

15:32But as you say, I think it's a turning point for this year, actually, because for the first time, it's almost like the Parliamentary Labour Party. You know, we've been told in opposition, these are stormtroopers. We've handpicked them. You know, they're not going to rebel. They don't believe in any of that mushy left-wing nonsense. And all of a sudden, you know, 180 of them came out and said, no, we will not put. Yeah, no. yeah indeed we do that's that's what we are i want to nominate the income tax u-turn which for me was the most seismic u-turn because it also shed a light on rachel reeves in a way that we've not really seen before so she came out and did this amazing the cheerios the cornflakes downing street press conference on november the 4th in which she suggested very strongly they were going to raise income tax that went in as a major measure that wednesday so the office for budget responsibility so everyone was assuming they were going to raise income tax and then a week later the news leaked to the financial times prompting pandemonium in the markets and they had dropped the plan so they had all of the pain of threatening to increase income tax the basic rate which would have been a totemic dennis healy style moment it would have been a really big deal and then they backed down from it they claimed at the time that it was because everything was better the forecast had improved as the treasury briefed that day the facts had changed in fact the facts hadn't changed there had never been any need to increase income tax in the first place and that has to this day left lots of members of the cabinet pretty angry and left rachel reeves severely weakened in the process i mean that's about as big as it gets on new terms i mean it's actually quite funny if you think about having come from what had happened with the welfare rebellion as well where they hadn't really taken any heed of some of the heat that was coming on them.

17:18They then stumble into the budget, deciding that actually what they're going to do is to pitch roll the hell out of it. That's what makes it so delicious, is that they really thought that they were going to head off any sort of criticism of what they were going to do by telling us all well in advance and signalling that this was going to happen, which they did in spades, and then just dropped it. Right. Caroline, would you like to adjudicate on this category of U-turn of the year? The U-turn of the year, take your pick, goes to... For me, it's going to be income tax, I think. No coming back from that.

17:53Let's talk about the next category, which is also a very hotly contested category. This one is Civil War of the Year. Now, you could take your pick on this. It could be the Tories, it could be Labour, or it could be your party. I'm going to just kick off on the Tories who earlier this year would have been great contenders for this, we went to conference it was total carnage people briefing against Kemi Badenow left, right and centre, actually she's kind of turning it around a bit she has more momentum, she's had much better interventions, particularly after the budget and people are swaying in behind her, there's no change in the polls yet so she's still at significant risk but I'm not sure you can say the Tories are the party of civil war anymore No, unity is broken out.

18:38It's a rare thing. Unlike the Labour Party, of course. You know, as I was just saying, this isn't a united front of stormtroopers. They've broken into almost as many factions as the Tories had under Boris Johnson. So just off the top of my head, you've got the Labour Growth Group. You've got the Red Wall Caucus. You've got the Blue Labour Caucus. You've got the Tribune Group, which recently relaunched. relaunched you've got the socialist campaign group number 10 how many families is this how many families exactly exactly you say number 10 steve depends which factions inside number 10 you're talking about you've got you know you've most of them have left haven't they well yeah well yeah the remaining mcsweeneyites yeah you've got the remaining mcsweeneyites you've got tim allen you've got you've got a cabinet that's completely balkanized and divided against itself you've got Lucy Powell of course in Labour HQ with her office in Labour HQ against the party bureaucracy or divided from the party bureaucracy that's still loyal to Morgan McSweeney so look the Labour Party is it's like a sort of you mentioned Dennis Ely earlier Steve but this is giving the Labour Party of the late 70s and 80s a run for its money already I was going to say it's not like the battle of Assam it's not an attritional war where there's a line in the middle of a muddy field this is the world war you know you've got you know that you've got numerous different flanks and it is um yes it's it's Yugoslavia it's balkanized yeah it's like 28 days later Steve when you know you just got people infected with pure rage running senselessly at each other trying to bite each other's heads off I think the other we'll get to is your party I think Patrick used the phrase in relation to West Streetings breakfast round that he deployed the more in sorrow than anger and I'm going to say that you know it is more in sorrow than anger that I had to tell a lot of people on the left to eat their words when your party's conference took place last week because shortly after Zahra Sultana illicitly announced the launching of this party I revealed that Corbyn was incandescent that he had begged her not to launch the party and his own wife Laura Alvarez his Mexican wife was among the many Corbynistas telling Sultana please don't do this and at the time you know they were much opprobrium towards yours truly i'm obviously the great victim as well as the focus of this podcast lots of people on twitter making lots of people lots of people yeah comparing me to a boiled egg saying that i was a you know what a bold four-lettered word i probably numerous four-letter words and it is a tough life that i live but then the moments of solace come in those moments of total vindication and that is what played out before us at the Your Party conference, which Sultana at one point exiled herself from.

21:24Such was the extent of the embitterment between her and Corbyn. So I think that that is actually a classic civil war in terms of, you know, it is the Corbynites versus Sultana. It is, what was it, Alliance versus MOU, Operations Limited. And I think that in an era of, you know, much doom and gloom, that the levity and light relief provided by Corbyn has been one of the great unexpected plot lines of the latter half of 2024. And it's not just about the gaiety of the nation either, because every week that Corbyn, the independent alliance of MPs who were elected as Gaza independents, and Sultana, and their ragtag bunch of, you know, of aides and allies who are helping them set up this party, Every week they had an argument about something utterly impenetrable, like who is going to be liable if the information commissioner finds that the leadership launch Sultana wanted but Corbyn didn't want is a breach of data protection laws.

22:28Every week they spent arguing over that and Zora Sultana leaving the WhatsApp group and Adnan Hussein, the MP for Blackburn, saying this isn't a home for social conservatives, and so on and so on. Every week that happened, Zach Polanski, the leader of the Green Party, was just on telly on a podcast, adding another 5 ,000 members and several million quid to the Greens Bank account every time he came out and said something. So it has actually changed our politics as well, as well as being very, very amusing. We can't forget the other very entertaining moment. It was short-lived, but nevertheless, a moment of great drama in the Reform Party, which also encountered its own momentary civil war when we learned that Zia Yusuf was going to resign with immediate effect from being the chairman of reform.

23:14And there were lots and lots of briefings going on about why this had happened, suggestions that it was comments that had been made about... Was it Sarah Potchin that said it? I'm forgetting now. Yes, she came out and said it was banning the burka. She used her first PMQs to say we should ban the burka. And suggestions that this had sent Zia off the reservation and this wasn't the sort of party that he was prepared to be involved in. But then lots of briefings going on that this was just a kind of excuse for the reason why he was leaving the party, that, you know, once again, you know, Nigel Farage, who basically is Reform Party, the fact that he is a one-man party and was eclipsing all of the other MPs was to blame for this kind of fractured, or fracture in relations.

23:57And then, of course, was it less than 24 hours later? I remember that it was a Saturday because we had the interview, the comeback interview with Zia Youssef. I think he left on the Friday and the comeback interview we did in the Sunday Times on that Saturday. And the Civil War, which had lasted about 24 hours, which was bloody and brutal and bitter at the time, came to an abrupt end. So I would put in a late bid for the reformed Civil War. Honourable bid. Gabriel, would you like to adjudicate on this hotly contested category? Oh, OK. Well, I think because of the multifaceted nature of this modern war, it ultimately has to go to the Labour Party, even though selfishly I want to give myself the medal for my own nomination, the medal, your party for civil war.

24:43Could be selfless, that is. Yeah, I'm a pretty decent guy in the end, all things considered. But we'll move on to that. That helps us move on, doesn't it, Steve, to resignation of the year. So Zia Yusuf obviously was incredible. Was it 24 hours? Yeah. Less than 24 hours? No more than 48. He resigned on a Thursday night and by Saturday he was telling people, telling the Sunday Times that he was back and he didn't mean it. But look, it wasn't just Zia Yusuf who had a great resignation. There were other pretty spectacular resignations. Who wants to go? Look, I'm going to go for Chilip Sadiq over here, who resigned, I think tendered an enforced resignation as the Treasury Minister responsible for tackling financial crime.

25:23That was quickly condensed by the journalistic establishment into the anti-corruption minister, which was rather helpful because she was accused of benefiting from a corrupt kleptocratic regime. And I think that, you know, I went to Bangladesh, did a bit of investigative work on this. It was ridiculous that Starmer ever thought the beneficiary of Sheikh Hasina's kleptocracy could serve in that role. But I think we also have to give Tulip Sadiq some credit here because she also gave effect to a new genre of resignation within the arc of this government, which is resigning for doing the opposite of what your brief explicitly says you're there to do.

26:00And look, we should say that the Prime Minister's ethics advisor found no impropriety on Tulip Sadiq's part, although there were suggestions of a perception of a conflict of interest. And Tulip Sadiq denies all of the claims against her. Yeah, another minister, another Labour minister who fell of that was, of course, Rushnara Ali, the homelessness minister, among other things, who had to resign after it emerged that she had a rental property, which obviously goes down very badly among Labour activists who don't tend to like landlords. indeed those who've left for the Greens say we should now abolish landlordism and landlords themselves but anyway Rushnara Ali was a landlord and she did something that is literally being made illegal by this government which is evicting tenants and then hiking the rent and she did that they promptly went to the papers and the homelessness minister had to resign for in theory making people homeless and breaching the terms of this government's flagship piece of renters rights legislation which luckily had not come into force but it was again tulip invented that genre and rush nara i think weren't one better i mean right and reyna eclipses probably most of them one of those great fleet street stories that started with long lens photos of her vaping in a canoe off the sea and hove the next step was people started thinking why is she vaping in a canoe off the sea and hove and it turns out that that was because she lived in hove and had bought a place in Hove which then led to the questions of okay well where does she actually live where is her primary residence where is she paying council tax which ultimately ended in the revelation that she had failed to pay stamp duty and failed to pay the correct amount of stamp duty Starmer stood by her till the very moment at which she realized she had failed to pay the correct amount of stamp duty and then she was gone and that precipitated a huge reshuffle big changes Lucy Powell out of the government and had really significant long-term repercussions.

27:58And of course she was also the housing secretary which was a fitting brief for her to resign from over a scandal over property taxes. I think as well, Steve you've said this, it had a long-term effect as well. When you look at Reina's departure she still has her own significant power within the PLP. It sort of almost restored her to the role of agitator-in-chief which had been the pattern during the years of opposition it brought Powell in uh you know she is now a thorn in Starmer's side um it prompted a re-chuffle which put Siobhan Mahmood in the home office which is you know one of the biggest most significant political decisions of the year and it was um yeah the kind of galaxy brain starting with Judith resigning the anti-corruption minister ending with the housing secretary resigning uh for tax issues related to her housing you can't get much better than that and also we haven't seen the final act have we in terms of Angela Ray.

28:51Yes as soon as she's paid her fine. Yeah exactly she pays her fine you know there's already briefing about her return or potential return to the cabinet you know it sounds like the Prime Minister has made it clear that he would potentially welcome her back he certainly did in the letter that he wrote to her in response to her resignation letter and of course you know she will also be thinking about the future we know May is ringed on everybody's calendar as a moment of ultimate danger for Sir Keir Starmer and of course one of the issues that we return to time and time again to when we talk about potential replacements for Sakhir Starmer is who is the standard bearer for the left and of course there really isn't one that we've been talking about consistently other than the one that I always toss into the mix which is of course Mr Miliband but Angela Rayner is somebody that could certainly bring with her a particular group of people if of course Lou Hay doesn't get there first.

29:45Now of course that resignation happened the year before but had had it not that was in november 2024 that would definitely been on my top list of resignations which of course also bagged steven award so well done steve because i wasn't here that week to say congratulations this is our political journalist of the year our colleague here so congratulations again we were doing an award for political journalist of the year but steve steve's already got it i think on the resignation we're pretty unanimous but Patrick can I give you the honour of bestowing this award? It has to be the once and possibly future Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner.

30:19Okay we come to our final award which is the actual State of It award. What is the one moment or story that was most emblematic of the state of British politics today? I think it has to be surely the budget. So long trailed, so many leaks so many u-turns so much chaos culminating in the resignation of the chief executive of the office for budget responsibility and rachel reeves having to repeatedly deny claims that she is a liar who had lied to the british people about the scale of a black hole i mean and we are at the beginning of this loads of policies it doesn't get any more yeah i think as well it's sort of like a fully integrated state of it omni shambles because it was as you say before literally during and after.

31:05Reeves was notified that the whole budget had been leaked while she was in the chamber. It's still playing out as we record this podcast. It's quite difficult to dominate. I mean, we've been condemned to speaking about it every week since the podcast launched because of the pitch rolling. But you wonder whether the pitch could keep on rolling. It sort of probably will keep on rolling into into the new year and um it's not only the kind of political self-injury of it but just the kind of erosion of institutions the ridiculousness of the obr's gaffe that gave it just a multi-layered madness that i think i think pips any other event to the place yeah and what i love most about it is that the whole budget leaked and it wasn't the russians it wasn't It wasn't Chinese hackers.

31:54It wasn't a civil servant aligned with reform who was trying to blow up the government. It wasn't Sue Gray. It wasn't Sue Gray. It wasn't a journalist. It wasn't Morgan McSweeney. Yeah, it wasn't an enterprising journalist. It wasn't left by a photocopier. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Someone didn't have it in their... Bundle of papers. Yeah, bundle of papers they bought into number 10. It was photographed by a long lens. They literally just uploaded it to the internet and somebody guessed the URL. now that is the most 2025 British day thing imaginable I think and it's so hard to beat because of that what the multi shambles isn't that what we're calling this budget now it's gone from the omni shambles yeah no exactly well exactly it's sort of omni shambles and almost multi shambles don't do justice to the scale and multi-dimensional state of it that was the budget Right, round of applause for the state of it.

32:48Inaugural awards for the budget. Okay, on that note, we wish everyone a very Merry Christmas, but particularly two people, Gabriel. Who are wishing a Merry Christmas to? We're going to wish the most Merry Christmas to Molly Guinness and you and Daughtry. There's a sort of weird dynamic when we do these where we're immediately going to see them after. But yeah, for a moment of sincerity, we're beyond grateful for their brilliance, their creativity, their imagination and for making us look reasonably good and tune in and tune in again because there's going to be a bonus edition where Patrick Maguire is going to tell us the middle names of every single cabinet which I think we should record immediately after this one so that he doesn't have time to look at his phone I'll start with Rodney then I'll move on to oh what's Rachel Reeves' middle name we'll find out is it Jane it's Cliffhanger Rachel Jane Reeves anyway we'll find out we'll find out Merry Christmas everybody Merry Christmas we'll see you in 2026.