Oh. My. Goooooooooood!!! I’ve just looked at the nation’s finances and I’ve found… a massive black hole!!! Billions missing!!! Didn’t see that before because the outgoing government must have hidden it. Or covered it with… things. Or…

Well, its an interesting question how you ‘hide’ figures in accounts which are 100% fully on public view and accessible to anybody. Even to clever-cloggs incoming Chancellors-in-waiting who’ve been doing nothing but scrutinise the national accounts for the preceding 3 years. Upon which all promises about taxation and services have been based for the entire election manifesto. Cos you can’t shout ‘we won’t raise taxes!!’ unless you’ve worked out the numbers and showed that your expenditure plans can be funded by your tax income. Unless you’re a total tosser, a subnormal innumerate or Diane Abbot. We got Joey to work out the problem, which he did easily, as you can see.

Its very cynical to ‘suddenly’ find a ‘massive black hole in the accounts’ which would then negate all your pre-election promises about raising tax because they were made ‘BBH’. Before the Black Hole. Therefore we couldn’t have known and will indeed have to raise taxes, NOT just because we’re a Labour government and that’s what will ALWAYS happen, but because of the hole. The black one.

So let’s talk about metaphors. Does our very clever (apparently) Chancellor know what a black hole is? Because the thing about black holes is that they aren’t really black and they aren’t really holes. They are single points of infinite mass which hence have gravitational pull so many times greater than that of our sun. The point being that you simply cannot miss a black hole. You can predict them from light years away because of the incredible effect they have on nearby (like Jupiter is ‘nearby’ to us) planets. Black holes may be conceptually challenging but you really can’t miss them.

Unlike ‘black holes’ in the economy, which you can miss. Though I have no idea how, if your job (and probably a few hundred economists helping out) is ‘The Nation’s Economy’ and nothing else, you miss 20 billion quid. And you know what, she can call it a ‘black hole’ if she wishes, she can call it ‘the legacy of the last government’ if she chooses, she can even call it Doris, for all I care. But it is HER mistake, her error, her negligence, oversight or tragic miscalculation. And, if I’m being harsh, an admission of incompetence.

Happy Monday, Rachel Reeves

A xxxx