2025-12-02
9 分钟This is The Guardian.
I think it's fair to say that the overall impression created by the government was misleading.
I needed to increase taxes and I was honest and frank about that in the speech that I gave at the beginning of November.
The Chancellor has been accused of telling fibs about the state of the economy and the run-up to her budget and now Keir Starmer has come out swinging to defend her.
I didn't want to reach the manifesto and that's why we came to the decisions that we did.
That has voters trust been permanently damaged.
From the Guardians Today in Focus, this is the latest with me, Lucy Hall.
Well, to help answer that, I'm joined by Archie Bland, head of National News.
Thanks for being with us, Archie,
and thanks for joining us for our first launch episode of Today in Focus.
Very excited to be here.
Thank you.
It's great to have you.
So...
Kissed on that this morning speaking in London.
This was supposed to be a kind of big bells and whistles celebration of all of the positive things that the government was able to do in its budget last week.
So reducing child poverty, freezing rail fares, bringing down people's energy bills.
But that is not quite what occurred, was it?
No, and probably part of the problem here is that Starman needed to make this speech at all.
It's kind of a signal that perhaps the budget hasn't landed exactly