CALLED TO ORDURE
WHEN Treasury minister Lord (Spencer) Livermore faced House of Lords questions about his department’s pre-budget briefings, things all went a bit Samuel Beckett.
Livermore began with the claim that “stability remains at the heart of our approach”. Quite unaccountably, this met with laughter. He then mentioned chancellor Rachel Reeves’s “iron-clad rules”, which were apparently even tighter than his shrink-wrap shirt. The Tories’ Lady Neville-Rolfe said it was “all too obvious” that the government had leaked budget ideas to the newspapers.