As imagined by Brian Beacom

WHAT a week. The best time I’ve had in politics since Boris’s political gravity-defying superpower vanished and he crashed to the ground on his large majority.

And haven’t I been a clever boy?

I’ve managed to keep the top one per cent happy with my lifetime pension cap removal – and sell ‘A budget for growth’ – even though it won’t produce any.

In fact, the economy will still shrink, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility.

But if I’m taken to task on that all I have to do is quote Nicola Sturgeon. When your First Minister spoke this week of dwindling party numbers, she actually said that shrinkage can be put down to growing pains.

So, by that reckoning, if your sister’s cashmere jumper goes in the hot dryer by mistake and comes out the size of a small Krankie, that can well be attributed to ‘growing pains.’

I love it.

And I certainly love being able to make life even more difficult for the SNP by throwing money at Scotland. Having launched our childcare provision, if the Scottish Government doesn’t use its £350m share for childcare strategy, this will make Nicola look as popular as the Child Catcher. Am I brilliant or what?

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Can I just add, I’ve loved watching the SNP leadership contest. I haven’t seen such carnage on television since Hurricane Katrina.

Ash Regan seemed actually unaware of the Gary Lineker-BBC impartiality argument. ‘I don’t know anything about football’, Kate Forbes struggles to leave the mid-19th century, and now Humza Yousaf seems unaware most Ukrainian men above the age of ten are out fighting the Russians.

But enough of the SNP. Let’s get back to my super spread sheets and clever budget.

Thanks to the Conservative Party managing to appropriate many of Sir Starmer’s Labour ideas, we’re demolishing his election platform faster than Kent developers destroyed a Banksy. And who needs all that lefty satirical stencil stuff anyway?

Yet, here’s where I’ve been really clever. Despite making no change to basic income tax at all, with thresholds frozen and inflation still at 10 per cent it’s argued workers will have no disposable income, which denies growth.

I said to Rishi last night that this sort of cleverness in creating certain failure alone qualifies me for a nice bonus, but the PM said last night “Who do you think you are, a Ferguson Marine manager?”

I think he was joking, even though he said he wasn’t.

Yet, we can claim collective credit. Even though we’ve produced a budget that does next to nothing for working people that’s not the issue the media are focusing on. It’s our timely TikTok ban on politicians that’s capturing headlines.

But what I’m most happy about is that Rishi now seems to like me.

“Listen,” he said, “you’re still staring at the camera like a 1950s schoolboy ogling at a dentist’s copy of the National Geographic. Lose the rictus grin. But at least you’ve not giving us a Kwasi.”

And I thought that was lovely.