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The country forced to endure their division and chaos. The longest episode of EastEnders ever put to film.

The country forced to endure their division and chaos. The longest episode of EastEnders ever put to film.

So Kirstarmer, they're mocking the Conservatives and their divisions during PMQ's at the beginning of this year? Have we switched from EastEnders to Coronation Streets? Hello, you're listening to Berg UK Politics. I'm Caroline Hepka and I'm James Wilcock. Look the reason I make that joke. I know it's a bit lame James to talk about Corey and soap operas, but it's because of this Bloomberg exclusive. Our Westminster Lobby team have discovered that in the last two weeks and the run up before the budget, senior ministers have written to Kers Starmer expressing alarm at the spending cards at their departments are facing. Two weeks ahead of the budget. It has made a huge splash. The story leads the Today program on the BBC, the Politico's Westminster newsletter and then The Times newspaper late last night wrote that they think that the ministers involved are Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner in her role as the Housing Secretary, and the Justice Secretary shabanam Mood and the Transport Secretary Louise Haig. So they name names and look.

So Kirstarmer, they're mocking the Conservatives and their divisions during PMQ's at the beginning of this year? Have we switched from EastEnders to Coronation Streets? Hello, you're listening to Berg UK Politics. I'm Caroline Hepka and I'm James Wilcock. Look the reason I make that joke. I know it's a bit lame James to talk about Corey and soap operas, but it's because of this Bloomberg exclusive. Our Westminster Lobby team have discovered that in the last two weeks and the run up before the budget, senior ministers have written to Kers Starmer expressing alarm at the spending cards at their departments are facing. Two weeks ahead of the budget. It has made a huge splash. The story leads the Today program on the BBC, the Politico's Westminster newsletter and then The Times newspaper late last night wrote that they think that the ministers involved are Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner in her role as the Housing Secretary, and the Justice Secretary shabanam Mood and the Transport Secretary Louise Haig. So they name names and look.

You often hear around the budget stories of unhappy ministers or unhappy aids, people who are gaining less money than they'd hoped, putting unhelpful lines into the press. But this story has made such an impact because a formal warning to the Prime Minister going over the head of the Chancellor two weeks ahead of the budget really does ring alarm bells and also picking up the story calling because it has gone everywhere on Westminster. Sky's political editor Sam Coates tweeted late last night that he reports that the departmental spending budgets for some departments haven't yet been agreed. So there are two agendas in conflicts here. One is the chance of determination for labor to be seen as fiscally prudent, and on the other hand you have ministers who are concerned that any cuts will need to growth and potentially even make the public's lives miserable.

You often hear around the budget stories of unhappy ministers or unhappy aids, people who are gaining less money than they'd hoped, putting unhelpful lines into the press. But this story has made such an impact because a formal warning to the Prime Minister going over the head of the Chancellor two weeks ahead of the budget really does ring alarm bells and also picking up the story calling because it has gone everywhere on Westminster. Sky's political editor Sam Coates tweeted late last night that he reports that the departmental spending budgets for some departments haven't yet been agreed. So there are two agendas in conflicts here. One is the chance of determination for labor to be seen as fiscally prudent, and on the other hand you have ministers who are concerned that any cuts will need to growth and potentially even make the public's lives miserable.

Yeah. It's extraordinary, really, isn't it. And so I'm delighted to say that we have joining us the lady behind the scoop Bloomberg's Alva Ray, one of our reporters who broke this news to give us some more details, insight, perspective. Alva, so, what do we know so far about these letters, what they've been you know, why they've been written to the Prime Minister and why these people are so concerned ahead of the budget.

Yeah. It's extraordinary, really, isn't it. And so I'm delighted to say that we have joining us the lady behind the scoop Bloomberg's Alva Ray, one of our reporters who broke this news to give us some more details, insight, perspective. Alva, so, what do we know so far about these letters, what they've been you know, why they've been written to the Prime Minister and why these people are so concerned ahead of the budget.

Yeah, thank you for having me, Caroline. Yeah. So what we have reported is that multiple members of the Cabinet have written directly to kir Starmer, as you say, expressing their alarm about cuts that they're being asked to make to their departments in the budget that's happening in just under two weeks time. We haven't named the ministers involved, although you mentioned some of the names that The Times has tried to identify. I'm not sure that it's limited to only those people actually, but we're not naming them. The concern of these ministers is that these cuts are essentially just politically untenable, that they will be quinterintuitive to Rachel Reeves's growth mission, that they will lead them to breaking manifesto commitments and failing to deliver on promises that they made to their new voters at the last very recent general election. There is really quite a lot of alarm among the ministers and even just stepping away from the letters themselves that have been written to Clere Starmer, which is a bit unusual, even though dining Street says that this is all normal. It is, as James was saying, actually a little bit unusual to be writing to the Prime Minister, going over Rachel Reeves's head in this way, but just stepping back from those lessons, it's actually just something that we reported even before this story that is quite widespread cabinet unease about the eventual look of the budget, and not just from the cabinet ministers that you would expect it from, but really quite widespread across the cabinet. You know. Rich Rasis said that she needs to plug a twenty two billion black hole, and Financial Times first reporters that she's looking at making savings about to fifty billion in the budget to give herself just basically enough headroom. So they've been quite clear that they think this is, you know, an issue with the Tory inheriting and that this budget will be tough. But definitely, even though I think there's an effort to pin this on the Conservative inheriting, there's still actually a lot of monies in cabinet about where these exact spending cuts will fall.

Yeah, thank you for having me, Caroline. Yeah. So what we have reported is that multiple members of the Cabinet have written directly to kir Starmer, as you say, expressing their alarm about cuts that they're being asked to make to their departments in the budget that's happening in just under two weeks time. We haven't named the ministers involved, although you mentioned some of the names that The Times has tried to identify. I'm not sure that it's limited to only those people actually, but we're not naming them. The concern of these ministers is that these cuts are essentially just politically untenable, that they will be quinterintuitive to Rachel Reeves's growth mission, that they will lead them to breaking manifesto commitments and failing to deliver on promises that they made to their new voters at the last very recent general election. There is really quite a lot of alarm among the ministers and even just stepping away from the letters themselves that have been written to Clere Starmer, which is a bit unusual, even though dining Street says that this is all normal. It is, as James was saying, actually a little bit unusual to be writing to the Prime Minister, going over Rachel Reeves's head in this way, but just stepping back from those lessons, it's actually just something that we reported even before this story that is quite widespread cabinet unease about the eventual look of the budget, and not just from the cabinet ministers that you would expect it from, but really quite widespread across the cabinet. You know. Rich Rasis said that she needs to plug a twenty two billion black hole, and Financial Times first reporters that she's looking at making savings about to fifty billion in the budget to give herself just basically enough headroom. So they've been quite clear that they think this is, you know, an issue with the Tory inheriting and that this budget will be tough. But definitely, even though I think there's an effort to pin this on the Conservative inheriting, there's still actually a lot of monies in cabinet about where these exact spending cuts will fall.

So what can you tell us, Alva about what was in these letters? What were these ministers so concerned about, What do they want Kirsty with the Prime Minister to do about it? And what did they say the consequences would be if action won't take it.

So what can you tell us, Alva about what was in these letters? What were these ministers so concerned about, What do they want Kirsty with the Prime Minister to do about it? And what did they say the consequences would be if action won't take it.

I can't go into too many specifics feeling exactly which letters we've seen and which departments are kind of affected. But in broad brush strokes, I mean, you can imagine that people are identifying particular areas of departments where they think that there is an acute issue and where they think that they cannot afford to make cups or make cups is as deeply. But I think the broad brush criticism is that these will these are just ridiculous, is the word that I've had from several people. People other people using the word alarming, that just these cuts are politically impossible to deliver, not just in terms of announcing them in the budget, but actually the real world impacts of them on communities, on infrastructure, on public services in a few years time, that members of the public will feel the impact of these cuts and just not deliverable for a labor government to do. I think that's the main criticism. I think also criticisms of actually, even though Richard Reeve says that she's going for growth, a certain cabinet minis to think that certain cuts would just be contraintuitive to that mission.

I can't go into too many specifics feeling exactly which letters we've seen and which departments are kind of affected. But in broad brush strokes, I mean, you can imagine that people are identifying particular areas of departments where they think that there is an acute issue and where they think that they cannot afford to make cups or make cups is as deeply. But I think the broad brush criticism is that these will these are just ridiculous, is the word that I've had from several people. People other people using the word alarming, that just these cuts are politically impossible to deliver, not just in terms of announcing them in the budget, but actually the real world impacts of them on communities, on infrastructure, on public services in a few years time, that members of the public will feel the impact of these cuts and just not deliverable for a labor government to do. I think that's the main criticism. I think also criticisms of actually, even though Richard Reeve says that she's going for growth, a certain cabinet minis to think that certain cuts would just be contraintuitive to that mission.

Yeah. I think that's really interesting, isn't it. I was chatting to Bloomberg's chief UK economist Dan Hanson this week. He says that he thinks that actually what you're going to see is spending and taxes going up at the same time in this budget. Who's talking about departmental spending will need to rise, you know when you think big picture overall, because you know, we know inflation in the past has gone up, and we know that there's so much pressure on you know, things like wages, you know for public sector workers and so on and so on. But that actually also taxes are going to go up at the same time, and that changes the fiscal rules are going to mean that you have higher capital spending as well. I mean, it's kind of weird, isn't it. It's it feels like this could be an austereity budget and yet everything's getting more expensive and so you know, the government's got to pay more.

Yeah. I think that's really interesting, isn't it. I was chatting to Bloomberg's chief UK economist Dan Hanson this week. He says that he thinks that actually what you're going to see is spending and taxes going up at the same time in this budget. Who's talking about departmental spending will need to rise, you know when you think big picture overall, because you know, we know inflation in the past has gone up, and we know that there's so much pressure on you know, things like wages, you know for public sector workers and so on and so on. But that actually also taxes are going to go up at the same time, and that changes the fiscal rules are going to mean that you have higher capital spending as well. I mean, it's kind of weird, isn't it. It's it feels like this could be an austereity budget and yet everything's getting more expensive and so you know, the government's got to pay more.

Yeah. I think that there's some concern in government about the way this changed. The fiscal rules has been trailed. As you say, We've been given a lot of hints by Rachel Reeves and other ministers that she will tweak the spending rules to allow her to invest more in capital spending, and that's been taken as a kind of good news story, quite quite broadway force government. But I think that the issue is that that has led to the impression maybe that the budget won't be quite as tough as it really will be. And this is I mean getting into the weeds a bit little bit. It's basically because there are several fiscal rules and so changing that one means that in the longer term there will be more money for capital spending and for investment, but in the short term, especially in the first year of the budget, that won't make so much of an impact on There are other fiscal rules which mean that for this year, which is the year that Cavent ministers are most worried about, actually things will be really tight. And actually for the first year it's just going to be cut rather than lots of investment. And I mean, one person described who's quite sympathetic to the Treasury perspective on this just described it as a first year in nightmare and then you know, things look a bit better in the third or fourth year of the budget.

Yeah. I think that there's some concern in government about the way this changed. The fiscal rules has been trailed. As you say, We've been given a lot of hints by Rachel Reeves and other ministers that she will tweak the spending rules to allow her to invest more in capital spending, and that's been taken as a kind of good news story, quite quite broadway force government. But I think that the issue is that that has led to the impression maybe that the budget won't be quite as tough as it really will be. And this is I mean getting into the weeds a bit little bit. It's basically because there are several fiscal rules and so changing that one means that in the longer term there will be more money for capital spending and for investment, but in the short term, especially in the first year of the budget, that won't make so much of an impact on There are other fiscal rules which mean that for this year, which is the year that Cavent ministers are most worried about, actually things will be really tight. And actually for the first year it's just going to be cut rather than lots of investment. And I mean, one person described who's quite sympathetic to the Treasury perspective on this just described it as a first year in nightmare and then you know, things look a bit better in the third or fourth year of the budget.

We use the word austerity there obviously that conjures up an image of George Osborne and what he tried to sell to the country is why it needed to do it. You've also got some reporting on how political aids are talking about this budget out. How are labor trying to frame the narrative around it. If this is as tough as your reporting suggests, how are they trying to talk about it to the public.

We use the word austerity there obviously that conjures up an image of George Osborne and what he tried to sell to the country is why it needed to do it. You've also got some reporting on how political aids are talking about this budget out. How are labor trying to frame the narrative around it. If this is as tough as your reporting suggests, how are they trying to talk about it to the public.

Yes, so listeners would be aware that there has very recently been a reset in Dining Street through the way the former chief of staff is Art and Morgan McSweeney, a longstanding aid to Keir Starmer and the campaign chief for the general election is the new chief of staff in Number ten is pretty politically savvy and he wants to bring the Number ten operation onto a sort of permanent campaign putting so to always be thinking about the next election and how they hold on to their new voter. As you mentioned in our in our reports and we mentioned that there's a sort of there's a weekly meeting with all the special advisors in government that happens on Tuesday evening. This week, Clear Starmer addressed it, which is also a bit unusual. Plus Morgan McSweeney and Darren Jones, who's the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and he's the person that the secretaries of this state have been negotiating with on their pay settlements. So he's been that kind of front line he's got He's had a pretty difficult job in government so far. They held the meeting on the theme of how to sort of frame the budget politically. They said that it would be tough, but that labor just needs to hammer home the message the budget is all is all about investment, and also that they've just really really need to pin the difficult decision on the last Conservative government. That even if individual secretary of state are concerned of what how tough it will be. But actually it's not to be blaming Rachel Reeves or Darren Jones, for it's all on the Conservative inheritance that they've been left and the.

Yes, so listeners would be aware that there has very recently been a reset in Dining Street through the way the former chief of staff is Art and Morgan McSweeney, a longstanding aid to Keir Starmer and the campaign chief for the general election is the new chief of staff in Number ten is pretty politically savvy and he wants to bring the Number ten operation onto a sort of permanent campaign putting so to always be thinking about the next election and how they hold on to their new voter. As you mentioned in our in our reports and we mentioned that there's a sort of there's a weekly meeting with all the special advisors in government that happens on Tuesday evening. This week, Clear Starmer addressed it, which is also a bit unusual. Plus Morgan McSweeney and Darren Jones, who's the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and he's the person that the secretaries of this state have been negotiating with on their pay settlements. So he's been that kind of front line he's got He's had a pretty difficult job in government so far. They held the meeting on the theme of how to sort of frame the budget politically. They said that it would be tough, but that labor just needs to hammer home the message the budget is all is all about investment, and also that they've just really really need to pin the difficult decision on the last Conservative government. That even if individual secretary of state are concerned of what how tough it will be. But actually it's not to be blaming Rachel Reeves or Darren Jones, for it's all on the Conservative inheritance that they've been left and the.

Great difficulties I mean, in terms of your sense of this new government, I mean we're only sort of three months in one hundred days in this is going to be one of the first big, I mean huge tests, isn't it? The budget? After we had the investment summit only a few days ago? Do you think we're going to see more division within labor? Everyone talks about one of the big pluses for labor being their stalking majority, But this hints at reveals maybe the fault lines the divisions within this ruling party.

Great difficulties I mean, in terms of your sense of this new government, I mean we're only sort of three months in one hundred days in this is going to be one of the first big, I mean huge tests, isn't it? The budget? After we had the investment summit only a few days ago? Do you think we're going to see more division within labor? Everyone talks about one of the big pluses for labor being their stalking majority, But this hints at reveals maybe the fault lines the divisions within this ruling party.

Yeah, I think so. I mean it's hard to know how visible those divisions will be. I mean we've already had a very big sense of it with this story, and on order to reporting around the budget. I'm not sure how much it will it will keep appearing in the papers, but those divisions are very very much there. Sort have become a running joke. People I've been speaking to sort of joking about how bad they are at government, and like from multiple people across the labor government in different ways, and yeah, lots of frustrations. I think people are just on slightly different pages. We saw that around the Investment summit a little bit, the worker's rights agenda, the call for more investment, pulling into different directions. Even you know, it's probably too much in the weeds to get into. But if you look carefully at the announcement coming out of the government every day, it was a so called grid where they plan. They're big announcement every day. Some of them are a little bit contradictory, and people in government are aware of that and that. You know, one day they might be anti regulation and the next day they're in favor of a new regulator for something. It's not super joined up. And before Sue Gray was forced to resign as chief of Staff, lots of people were complaining, but there was just a lack of overarching political narrative from Number ten and there's a lack of story about the big thing that this labor government was fighting for two grades gone. But that narrative isn't necessarily still there. I think that the different cabinet ministers who think with this government is four different things and they have different priorities, different values, and we're really starting to see that, I think.

Yeah, I think so. I mean it's hard to know how visible those divisions will be. I mean we've already had a very big sense of it with this story, and on order to reporting around the budget. I'm not sure how much it will it will keep appearing in the papers, but those divisions are very very much there. Sort have become a running joke. People I've been speaking to sort of joking about how bad they are at government, and like from multiple people across the labor government in different ways, and yeah, lots of frustrations. I think people are just on slightly different pages. We saw that around the Investment summit a little bit, the worker's rights agenda, the call for more investment, pulling into different directions. Even you know, it's probably too much in the weeds to get into. But if you look carefully at the announcement coming out of the government every day, it was a so called grid where they plan. They're big announcement every day. Some of them are a little bit contradictory, and people in government are aware of that and that. You know, one day they might be anti regulation and the next day they're in favor of a new regulator for something. It's not super joined up. And before Sue Gray was forced to resign as chief of Staff, lots of people were complaining, but there was just a lack of overarching political narrative from Number ten and there's a lack of story about the big thing that this labor government was fighting for two grades gone. But that narrative isn't necessarily still there. I think that the different cabinet ministers who think with this government is four different things and they have different priorities, different values, and we're really starting to see that, I think.

Ah UK Associate editor Alba Ray, thank you for coming on to tell us about your big, big story.

Ah UK Associate editor Alba Ray, thank you for coming on to tell us about your big, big story.

Yeah, of course, and we'll have full coverage of what does emerge in the budget and all the days running up to it as the pressure on the Chancellor Rachel Reeves and the Prime Minister Kiirs Starmer remains firmly in place. Thank you so much to Alva for spending some time with us. That's it from US four today. If you like the program, don't forget to subscribe and give it five stars so that other people can find it on Apple, podcast, Spotify or whatever you listen.

Yeah, of course, and we'll have full coverage of what does emerge in the budget and all the days running up to it as the pressure on the Chancellor Rachel Reeves and the Prime Minister Kiirs Starmer remains firmly in place. Thank you so much to Alva for spending some time with us. That's it from US four today. If you like the program, don't forget to subscribe and give it five stars so that other people can find it on Apple, podcast, Spotify or whatever you listen.

This episode was produced by tiwa Adebayo and an Auder engineer, with Sean Rasta Makia.

This episode was produced by tiwa Adebayo and an Auder engineer, with Sean Rasta Makia.

I'm James Walcock and I'm Caroline Hepget and we'll be back with more tomorrow. This is Bloomberg and I'm Caroline Hepget and we'll be back with more on Monday. This is Bloomberg.

I'm James Walcock and I'm Caroline Hepget and we'll be back with more tomorrow. This is Bloomberg and I'm Caroline Hepget and we'll be back with more on Monday. This is Bloomberg.

Bloomberg UK Politics. Listen weekdays at noon on DAB Digital Radio in London

Bloomberg UK Politics. Listen weekdays at noon on DAB Digital Radio in London