Wonder if George Galloway will remember to pack his P45 and passport? Having been elected to parliament seven times now, the new MP for Rochdale probably knows the drill for entering the House of Commons better than some of the officials who run the place.
Still, he has been away from the old palace of varieties for nine years, so perhaps it is worth reacquainting himself with the procedure, as set out in the official New Members’ Guide.
“Congratulations on your election as a Member of Parliament and welcome to the House of Commons,” it begins, which is certainly a warmer greeting than the one Rishi Sunak delivered on Friday night from his lectern in Downing Street.
The guide contains mostly housekeeping stuff, the kind of thing any new start needs to know: where to pick up your security pass, how to get wages and expenses, collecting your tablet and laptop, finding a locker, all that HR jazz.
Being a party of one, the Workers Party of Britain, Mr Galloway will not have a friendly whip to assign him an office. He may have to flit around for a while, which should be no bother for a man with his experience of travelling for work.
He can rest assured, though, that the Rolls Royce operation that is the House of Commons already has him “on the system”. The parliament website has been updated to provide a full rundown of his parliamentary career to date. It’s all there for any of his constituents to see: Rochdale, Bradford West, Bethnal Green and Bow, Glasgow, Kelvin (elected two times), Glasgow Hillhead (elected two times) for the Workers Party of Britain, Respect Party, Independent Labour, and Labour respectively.
What do we reckon? Think he’ll slip into the Commons quietly, keep a low profile for a while, stay off the radar while he susses out the lie of the land? Probably not.
He has already promised to “enter the chamber of the House of Commons like a tornado and shake the walls for Gaza”. All sorts of intriguing details remain to be sorted out, including who he will ask to introduce him in the Chamber and where he will sit. I can’t see Lib Dem or SNP MPs willingly budging along to accommodate him. How soon will he pop up at Prime Minister’s Questions? What will the younger MPs make of the 69-year-old “new kid” on the block?
However Galloway plays it his arrival will be an event, which is just as well since what was supposed to be the week’s other dear diary moment, the Budget on Wednesday, was yesterday shaping up to be a damp squib. The final Budget in what is widely expected to be an election year was not supposed to be like this. When the Prime Minister and his Chancellor replaced the disastrous Truss-Kwarteng combo last October, the two men made a virtue of how boring politics was going to be from now on.
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But come the new year, Jeremy Hunt began presenting himself as a Chancellor from the same mould as the tax-slashing Nigel Lawson. Hunt’s stock with the Tory right increased, as did expectations of a pre-election giveaway.
Adding to Tory MPs’ excitement was a forecast from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility in November telling the Chancellor he would have £30 billion to spend. It was no longer a question of whether income tax and national insurance would be cut but how far would the Chancellor and Prime Minister, another Lawsonite, dare to go?
Talk about tempting fate. Hunt learned from the OBR on Friday night that the forecast had been revised and his room for manoeuvre was more like £12.5 billion.
That would explain the downbeat coverage of the Spring Budget in yesterday’s papers and the Chancellor’s demeanour as he toured the Sunday politics programmes. Gone was the talk of a tax-cutting Budget to be replaced by “a prudent and responsible Budget for long-term growth”.
Either Mr Hunt should be in the running for a best actor Oscar, or he is talking down expectations of his Budget. But is he doing so because he has nothing to pull out of his hat, or is he planning a surprise raid on one of the few revenue-raising measures Labour has left - abolishing the non-dom tax status?
Mr Hunt has not been in favour of this in the past, arguing that it will encourage the rich to relocate and pay their taxes elsewhere, but he would not be the first Chancellor to change his mind and cite changing circumstances in his defence. Then again, he told BBC1’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that the public sees through “gimmicks” and there would be none in his Budget.
Labour could initially crow about the theft of its non-dom policy, but it would leave an incoming Starmer government with a huge black hole in its finances. Labour has been counting on the measure to raise in the region of £2 billion. Rachel Reeves, the Shadow Chancellor, said the party would ”revisit our plans” if the Tories pinch the policy, but it is hard to see where else the money could come from, so determined have Starmer and Reeves been to cut spending commitments to the bone.
Any way the Chancellor slices and dices it on Wednesday, his Budget will leave Labour with a problem. There are no pots of gold left. Remember that infamously “jokey” note a Labour minister left for his Tory successor, “Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid there is no money”? Hunt might want to start working on a variation of that.
Hunt left himself wriggle room yesterday in saying that whatever else the Budget did it would “show a path” towards a lower tax economy. Hardly the most inspiring promise ever set before voters, but at least it hints at a country that is moving forward. Labour, in contrast, is giving the impression that the best it can do in what will be a tough few years ahead is just hold the line.
That, in turn, will have an impact on Scottish Labour’s showing at the next Scottish Parliament elections. The first years of a Starmer government were meant to be a showcase for Scottish voters, a chance to see what they too could have if they upended the status quo. Promising more of the same, or worse, is not going to inspire anyone, voter or MSP.
The Chancellor’s downplaying of expectations, should that turn out to be the case, fits with the times. Suddenly, the long slog to the election seems even longer.
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