Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair. Not too shabby a crowd for Rachel Reeves to align herself with on the eve of her first, historic Budget.

The UK’s first woman Chancellor cited the trio in an interview to signal the start of a new era, and the size of the task ahead, when she gets to her feet in the Commons on Wednesday.

She told The Observer: “In 1945, we rebuilt after the war; in 1964, we rebuilt with the ‘white heat of technology’; and in 1997, we rebuilt our public services. We need to do all of that now.”

The interview was one of several that have taken place recently in the run-up to the Budget. Long gone are the days when a Chancellor had to resign for telling a reporter about a hike in the price of beer, as Hugh Dalton did in 1947.

No such thing would happen today, however. Dear me, no. Why risk a leak just before a Budget when you can spend weeks and months beforehand flying kites?

Flying a kite, suggesting something in a briefing or interview to gauge the political weather, is not leaking. Flying kites is what Reeves and Keir Starmer have been doing since Labour won the election in July. Not even New Labour, which began the trend for pre-Budget briefings, flew as many kites as Starmer and his Chancellor have. You can understand why. Haunted by the spectre of Liz Truss and her Chancellor, the government wants to avoid anything that could spook the markets.

We will see on Wednesday if the strategy has worked. In the meantime, the news cycle waits for no woman or man. Some unfortunate minister had to go on the Sunday politics shows and avoid saying anything more about a subject that everyone has been talking about. That unlucky minister was Bridget Phillipson, the Secretary of State for Education.

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Seeing her in action she resembled not so much a kite flyer as the last woman standing in a paintball competition. From tree to tree she sprinted, taking cover from interviewers’ questions under a blanket refusal to speculate about the Budget.

She tried it first on Sky News’ Sunday with Trevor Phillips. “This is going to be a very short interview,” said Phillips, with zero intention of bringing it to a close. He kept plugging and eventually something landed. Philiips wanted to know if Labour’s manifesto commitment - “we will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT” - was good for a whole parliament or just the first year?

“I can’t speculate on either this Budget or on successive budgets to come, said Phillipson. Fair enough, but that ensures the question stays on the table, and will no doubt come up when Reeves appears on BBC1’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg next week.

Phillips was not done yet with his near-namesake Phillipson. It had been a sticky week for Labour in the US, with Donald Trump accusing party members of interfering in the presidential election by campaigning for Kamala Harris. Asked for her opinion on the former president, Phillipson said the election was a matter for the American people and that Labour would work with whoever becomes the next commander-in-chief.

Armando Iannucci, not being a government minister, was under no such obligation to be impartial. The Scottish satirist and the Steve Coogan were being interviewed by Kuenssberg about their production of Dr Strangelove, the first stage adaptation of Stanley Kubrick’s classic film (Noel Coward Theatre, London, till 25 January 2025).

Kuenssberg said Iannucci, creator-writer of the TV show Veep, In the Loop, and The Thick of It, had been prescient about American politics and spent time “inhabiting the American political brain”. What did he make of what was happening a week out from the election?

“It frightens me, it really does,” replied Iannucci. “Veep was made at a time when every story [in the show] was about Selina Meyer, the vice-president, thinking she has done something wrong and then trying to row back from it.

“Those rules don’t apply any more. We’ve seen Trump say he likes Hitler’s generals. We’re now hearing threats of people standing there with guns at the polling booths, almost intimidating people into not voting for Kamala Harris.”

Coogan joined in. “It’s beyond satire at the moment, and it would be funny if it wasn’t real.”

Kuenssberg could not resist asking Coogan, the Dr Frankenstein to Alan Partridge, how the broadcasting great might do the job of a Sunday politics show presenter.

“As a white, older-than-middle-aged man he would be desperate to be relevant in any way, shape or form, so a bit like Keir Starmer he would see the way the media wind was blowing and go that way. It’s all about the career with Alan.”

One stateside story not touched upon in the interview was the Washington Post’s refusal to endorse Kamala Harris. Will Lewis, the British publisher and CEO of the paper that led on Watergate and which has investigated Donald Trump in and out of office, said the Post was returning to its pre-Jimmy Carter tradition of neutrality.

The news prompted a furious reaction on social media, with critics saying the Post’s owner, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, did not want to antagonize a victorious Donald Trump.

The newspaper’s move follows a decision by the LA Times last week not to endorse a candidate.

A statement on Twitter/X from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Post reporters who started the dig into a burglary in the Watergate building, said: “Under Jeff Bezos’s ownership, the Washington Post’s news operation has used its abundant resources to rigorously investigate the danger and damage a second Trump presidency could cause to the future of American democracy and that makes this decision even more surprising and disappointing.”

Reporting legends square up to one of the world’s richest men in defiance of billionaire second-term wannabe. If it was not so bizarre it would be perfect material for another Iannucci play.