[Joe Robertson: Too many of my constituents know 26 November 2025 already. Usually, Budgets come and go without making a huge impact on the public consciousness of people living their daily lives, but this year is different. It is different because businesses and families are terrified about what the Chancellor is cooking up for them. 

What the Chancellor and the Prime Minister could have done a couple of weeks ago – indeed, a couple of months ago – is to put their fears at rest, confirm the Labour manifesto and confirm the promise not to increase tax on income, national insurance or VAT. The Prime Minister was prepared to do so in the summer; he did not revert to this absolute nonsense that he is not going to write the Budget. No one is asking him to write the Budget, and no one is asking the Minister to write the Budget from the Dispatch Box today. What we are asking for is confirmation of a manifesto promise that he and others got elected on less than 18 months ago. The Prime Minister committed to that promise in July, but failed to do so two weeks ago. Either he and his Government are indifferent to the worries of my constituents and the British people, or they are cooking up plans to tear up their manifesto and increase taxes they said they would not. I suspect that it can only be the latter.]

Sir Julian Lewis: There is, of course, a third possibility, which some people with twisted minds have been suggesting: that the Government plan to do some pretty terrible things in the Budget but are setting up a strawman that they are going to break their manifesto promises. Then, when they do not do so, everybody will swallow those other terrible things. Is that too Machiavellian?

[Joe Robertson: My right hon. Friend, whose constituency is just across the water from mine, is far more experienced in this place than I am. I admit to a certain naivety in not imagining that Machiavellian intention within the Government to set up such a strawman, but the point remains the same. If they are doing so, they are indifferent to the economic worries of my constituents and others, particularly hard-working families and businesses. …]