Robert Peston

speaker

5,177 appearances 40 recordings 5 series first heard Nov 2025 last heard 9 Sep

Robert Peston’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 40 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 9.

Appearances

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The Rest Is Money · 312. What's missing from Healey's growth plan? · 9 Sep 2026 podcast

And the impact of that is that the interest that the government has to pay on its debt has been rising very significantly. matched

Uh we talked on the previous podcast uh about that enormous interest bill for the government. matched

And actually we just did a we just did uh fa a a a great event actually matched

On the South Bank uh Restaurant's Money Live, in which we showed this chart, which showed that actually that if if you're just not talking about projects, but if you're just talking about departments, you know, if the interest bill was a department, it would actually be the second most expensive department. matched

But I mean, you know, obviously in terms of projects, DWP and health are bigger than interest. matched

But not matched

But, you know, the i the interest bill is well over £100 billion and rising, twice what we spend on on defence. matched

And at the root of all of this is that the UK is what economists or traders call a high beta economy. matched

And what that means is matched

When America catches a cold matched

We get well, not quite life-threatening flu, but we get a much w we get a much worse bout than they do. matched

Uh because investors do not have confidence in the public finances of the UK. matched

And other than trotting out the normal thing that we heard from his predecessor uh Rachel Reeves, which is he will honour the fiscal rules. matched

And indeed, also said that he would make sure the headroom, that's the sort of Ray Day money, would be rebuilt to sensible levels. matched

He said absolutely nothing about the thing that matters more than anything else, which is how do you persuade lenders to the UK not to punish Britain when America is making terrible mistakes? matched

There was, I mean, literally almost nothing in this speech of relevance to that. matched

And that's why I'm afraid to say it just felt like a totally wasted opportunity. matched

didn't even didn't even say there would be cuts. matched

He just said they would c he just said they would control public spending, which is completely different. matched

assume so on the basis that if the headroom has collapsed from Rachel Reeves's twenty-four billion last year to let's say five billion you know, if he's not you know, and if he's not yet in the psi in in in in a position to cut public spending, cut the welfare bill, or do the you know, or do the thing that you and I matched

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