'I can't trust the experts!': James O'Brien struggles to find reliable source following Spring Budget

16 March 2023, 15:05

By Phoebe Dampare Osei

James O'Brien explains how the media response to Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng's mini-budget has impacted his feelings towards the media response to Jeremy Hunt's Spring Budget, delivered yesterday.

James O'Brien said it hadn't been "that long ago" after Liz Truss' mini-budget when "every paper you opened at the time was telling you that this was the future".

He referred to the "True Tory Budget" headline in the Daily Mail and said: "The people that told you that Kwasi Kwarteng and Liz Truss were fiscal geniuses who were finally delivering upon the ideological goals that have been pursued in this country by secretly funded think thanks and weirdoes in newspapers for the best part of 30 years - they're still doing it now.

"They're writing the analysis of yesterday's Budget."

"There's a bloke in The Telegraph called Allister Heath...he was practically writing love letters to Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng after their so-called mini-budget!" he exclaimed.

James added that "it fell apart after bringing the entire national economy to the brink...faster than you can say Liz Truss lost to a lettuce", but had previously been upheld by commentators with more Conservative leanings as "their mothership... their Millennium Falcon...their absolute Shangri-La".

James exclaimed about how he now didn't know who to trust since "Brexit idiots" had been "treated like experts" and created an "ecosystem" which caused him to not trust certain corners of the media.

"I can't trust the experts because they told me Liz Truss was a genius, I can't trust the analysis in the newspapers because they told me Kwasi Kwarteng was the future", he said.

"I always come out of Tory budgets better off than I went in", James added, saying he had done some calculations after the mini-budget. "I think I was 20 or 30 grand a year better off!" he said.

"I sat here thinking, 'That's just outrageous - how can you be looking after me Kwasi, Lizzy....when we've got warm banks springing up in this country, and food banks?'" he continued.