I am obliged to report that when the No 10 spokesman gave this part of the statement there was a brief but heartfelt outbreak of laughter from journalists, one of whom later asked if the PM might thus be interested in a bridge he had to sell.

It would have been fundamentally dishonest, but politically defensible to do it at the 2024 Budget. Waiting until now means Labour takes all the political blame

Trying to trace it back, think a lot of this wave comes from this Daily Mail article: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article... (a... spin... on C4s Mirror On The Industry report cdn-2.4sales.com/staging/2025...)

It just straightforwardly *insane* how much political chatter in the United Kingdom is about the next general election, an event that is a long way in the future, and how basically none of it is about 'uh, this policy agenda doesn't look adequate to the scale of the inherited problem'.

I think VPAG has been unhelpful here. HMT loves the budget certainty, but it hides the trade offs from ministers. I don't think anyone can argue it's sustainable in the long run to have NICE approved prices discounted by 20%+ through rebates

I do wonder if government by whatsapp group contributes to this. Always another line to debate etc, very little thinking space on policy for anyone close to a minister (on political or civil service side)

Symptomatic of the state of government thinking on life sciences that adding a *third* Departmental reporting line to the OLS was seen as a positive. Like having it split between DHSC and DSIT has always worked well

Anecdotally, there does seem an increase in young men and boys supporting / identifying with Reform. It's picked up in the Youth Poll too: "There is growing momentum among the youthful right: 26% of young men, for instance, report feeling warm toward the upstart rightwing Reform UK party"