No. 10 denies Truss was appointed SPAD in the Treasury Dept.

With the many vacillations regarding recent backpedalling involving previously leaked Treasury Department policies and plans, No.10 has been forced into making a strong rebuttal Liz Truss was brought in as a SPAD with a specific brief to advise on the upcoming Budget.

A Labour Party spokesperson said, 'Look, we understand these rumours, albeit Ms. Truss's methods were perhaps considerably better conceived than Rachel's, nevertheless, the Chancellor wishes to state categorically she takes full responsibility for this current, utter shambles herself.'

Journalists “still have no idea” what will be in budget

In a fresh wave of frenzied speculation, journalists announced today that they still have no idea what will be in Rachel Reeves’ budget next week.  

'It’s actually quite annoying,' said Quentin Hack of the Daily Heil. 'The government, as always, haven’t said in advance what they’re going to do. But somehow my editor expects frequent ‘updates’ on something that was a complete non-story in the first place.

'So let’s see… obviously public services need more money… but is an already unpopular government really going to raise taxes? Probably not… so, yeah, no idea what’s going to happen. Pretty much like Rachel Reeves herself, I suspect.'

Hack then asked if he could be moved off political news to showbiz, at which point he was immediately asked to speculate, without any information at all, about who’ll be the next actor to play Bond.

Andy Burnham's cunning plan

Andy Burnham is undecided whether to become leader of the New Labour Party, the Alternative Labour Party, the Official Labour Party, the Special Labour Party, the Original Labour Party, the National Labour Party, Your Labour Party, the Reformed Labour Party, the Restructured Labour Party, the Re-Configured Labour Party, the Resurrected Labour Party, Not-The-Conservative Labour Party, the Liberal-Labour-Democrat Party or the Real Labour Party.

In response, Sir Keir Starmer issued a statement 'My position on the question of my leadership - and let me be absolutely clear about this - is that there is no question or uncertainty about any doubts there may or may not be about any possibility, now or at any time in the future, that waffle drone something-or-other mumble mumble it's-all-the-fault-of-the-Tories more waffle clear-way-forward mumble mumble path to a brighter future waffle drone.'

(Our correspondent is not entirely confident of the accuracy of his report of the latter part of Sir Keir's statement since he thinks he may have fallen asleep, but he can't really remember whether he actually did or not.)