There is something profoundly troubling about the spectacle now unfolding in Westminster. Richard Hughes, the Chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility, has resigned for what he openly calls a “technical but serious error” after a document was released prematurely.
It was an embarrassing moment for the institution, and Hughes has accepted responsibility with a dignity we see all too rarely in public life.
But his resignation has thrown a far more uncomfortable question into the centre of political debate, namely, why has Rachel Reeves not resigned, and why does Keir Starmer appear to believe that the departure of a civil servant somehow absolves his Government of its own economic misjudgments.
Hughes was definitely a cog in this mistake, he owned it, he left. However, Reeves and Starmer were also cogs in this and preside over economic narratives that change by the day. Their pre Budget communications omitted key information, and let’s not forget the repeated claims about a supposed twenty two billion pound “black hole” that their own colleagues are now openly contradicting, yet they remain entirely unmoved by the concept of accountability.
This is not simply a matter of political presentation. It goes to the integrity of Government itself.
The Chancellor called an unprecedented pre Budget news conference, an event crafted to prepare the public for hard measures and harsh numbers. We now know that Reeves withheld a crucial fact, namely, that tax receipts were significantly stronger than expected, more than offsetting the productivity revisions she cited as justification for the alarm she projected. The Office for Budget Responsibility has confirmed the timeline. Reeves, the Prime Minister and the Treasury had this information. They chose not to mention it.
Only later, when the markets began to ask how her sums could possibly add up, did officials finally brief journalists that tax receipts were unexpectedly buoyant. In other words, the information was not shared when the public deserved to hear it, it was shared when the Government found it politically advantageous to do so.
Even the BBC’s Chris Mason has concluded that the impression Reeves created was “not at one with the facts she already knew”. When the BBC’s political editor feels compelled to state formally that the Chancellor misled by omission, you know something has gone seriously wrong.
The deeper issue is that Reeves and Starmer have spent the last year and a half insisting they inherited a catastrophic fiscal hole. The figure they repeated most aggressively, twenty two billion pounds, was never properly evidenced. And now, live on national television, their own Chief Secretary to the Treasury has admitted that in fact Labour inherited positive headroom, not a black hole, to the tune of ten billion pounds.
In any serious Government, such a discrepancy would trigger resignations. In this Labour Government, it triggers spin.
The narrative shifts, the explanations morph, the responsibility is quietly transferred to the nearest available technocrat. The Chair of the OBR becomes a convenient firewall, a symbol of contrition that allows the Chancellor to avoid offering any of her own.
Yet the public can see the difference between a civil servant accepting responsibility for a procedural failure, and a Government refusing to accept responsibility for the stories it constructed, the impressions it cultivated, and the numbers it chose to emphasise or conceal.
What we are witnessing from Starmer and Reeves is not merely political defensiveness. It is a pattern. They blame predecessors, institutions, circumstances, world events, anyone, in fact, other than themselves. When cornered, they do not answer directly, they redirect. When challenged, they do not clarify, they dilute. It is always someone else’s fault.
This pattern now sits alongside the uncomfortable fact that the Chancellor’s flagship claim about a fiscal calamity appears increasingly flimsy. It may not have been fabricated, but it was certainly presented with a certainty that events have not supported, and with an insistence that now looks alarmingly convenient for a Government that needed an excuse for the taxes it was already planning.
Hughes has done the honourable thing. He has stepped down so the institution he led can move on. Reeves and Starmer, by contrast, continue to behave as though accountability is an outdated concept, a relic of a political culture they do not intend to revive.
If the Government wishes to rebuild trust, it will require more than technical apologies from departing officials. It will require honesty from those who lead it, and a willingness to accept responsibility not only when things go wrong, but when they have contributed to the creation of a misleading narrative.
The public is not unreasonable. It understands complexity. What it will not tolerate forever is the sense that those in charge believe the rules apply only to others.
The question now is simple. Richard Hughes has taken responsibility for his mistake. When will Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer take responsibility for theirs?
They must resign.
