The rapid report is out. Not great for the OBR:
“It is the worst failure in the 15-year history of the OBR. It was seriously disruptive to the Chancellor, who had every right to expect that the EFO would not be publicly available until she sat down at the end of her Budget speech, when it should, as is usual, have been published alongside the Treasury’s explanatory Red Book. The Chair of the OBR, Richard Hughes, has rightly expressed his profound apologies.”
Essentially the report lays out that an unlisted download link went live too early. It concludes:
“This event is an object lesson in the challenges faced by small organisations to keep pace with online developments, options and threats. Although it is not our business to advise others, at the urging of our expert adviser we would encourage other agencies of government handling sensitive material to use this event as a prompt to review their own arrangements.”
The Treasury says James Murray will “respond in due course.“ He’s in the Commons shortly…
Tom Baldwin, author of Starmer’s hagiography, spoke to Times Radio:
Tom Baldwin: “I think he’d like to do something. He’s very dutiful and driven by service. That’s why he came into politics. I think that’s characterised his time as prime minister. He hasn’t always sought popularity or been good at being popular. But I think he has some of the necessary qualities that we actually do want in a prime minister. That resilience, that relentlessness, that ability to carry the weight and the job really does weigh very heavily on people and he carries that weight very, very well.”
Jo Coburn: “NATO Secretary-General?”
Tom Baldwin: “I think that’s something that he would be interested in. I think it probably requires Andy Burnham’s government to support him in that and these are some of the questions which Andy Burnham has to resolve quite quickly.”