I get why an early Budget might have helped in theory - departments know what money they have so they can actually get on with things. But in practice, how would an early Budget have worked when Labour is even now still trying to make its existing tax plans work?
There’s no way Labour could have rushed a budget and SR before recess. Nor should it have. In any case the promises made on transparency with the OBR made the timetable impossible .
The devolved administrations all have to keep spending within their budgets and are trying to announce spending plans, but don't know what money they are getting
When would that early budget have been?
I mean, not to be too synical, but I do think quite a lot of the problems faced by our new government in their first 100 days could have been solved/dealt with better if the govt had "an ideology" or even "some core uniting beliefs/visions which underpinned its plan for two terms (!?) of government"
timing of election meant Parlt then in recess...
I think this is the slight conceit where the comms guy conflates strategy and strategic comms. Sometimes you cannot narate the work as the work is being done, because actually, the sums need to be done and those can't/shouldn't be rushed.
And look how fabulous those budgets were in 1979 and 2010 (not). The one in 2010 which delivered austerity is probably the reason why we are where we are today in terms of crumbling infrastructure.
You do the budget early, the freebie stuff happens after it and then you don't have a big event to move on from that.
This is an unwinnable one for them. If they'd gone early then the Campbell line would have been "Too rushed, they haven't got a thought-through answer to x,y,z difficult questions, they should have worked those out (in some magical way in two days flat)".
In theory they 💯 should have had an early Budget. In practice, given their cartoonish unpreparedness for a whole range of issues that obviously needed tackling, some of which they'd talked about pre-election, they absolutely shouldn't have.