If Reeves were a CEO, she'd have been sacked by now

Kemi Badenoch is right to say that the chancellor would not get away with this in the corporate world. People I've talked to in regulated roles are spitting tacks

- James Moore

Amid the continuing furore over Rachel Reeves’s brutal Budget, shadow chancellor Mel Stride has pulled no punches. He has called for the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to launch a probe into “possible market abuse” by people working in the Treasury and Downing Street in the colander-like run-up to the fiscal event. Presumably up to, and including, the chancellor.

His boss Kemi Badenoch put it more bluntly at a press conference held in the City yesterday. “If a chief executive had done this, they’d have been sacked,” she said.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve sat opposite a CEO or finance director at this time of year and watched them gnash their teeth in frustration as a chancellor gets away with behaviour they could never. They know full well that if they were to indulge in the same sort of conduct, they’d be hauled over the coals.

“I know I'd be in prison if I did what they did,” growled a frustrated finance director one year, after a particularly leaky Budget. The “confidential” pre-Budget information in the public domain was having a direct and negative impact on their business, and they were spending half their time handling the fallout.