The Spectator magazine is home to wonderful writing, insightful analysis, and unrivaled books and arts reviews.

Subscribe today for just £12 and receive a 12 week subscription in print and online, along with a free £20, John Lewis or Waitrose Voucher.

Go to spectator.com.com.com.com.com. Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Kate Andrews, our economics editor, and I'm joined by Michael Simmons, our data editor.

Michael, the biggest story of the week has got to be the borrowing costs for the UK government. Whilst it does seem like they peaked midweek and are back to where they were at the start of the month. We're still looking

at incredibly painful figures for the government, long-term borrowing costs at a 30-year high.

They have surpassed where they were at the peak of Liz Truss's mini budget. What do you make of it?

It's a tiny bit of good news in that it started to go back down. But, you know, as you say,

these are still, you know, near 30 year high prices for the cost of borrowing, which is not

surprising when we have a chancellor that's delivered a budget that the markets don't seem to

have faith in. But also, borrowing costs being this high is kind of not

surprising when you look at the fact that the country's debt is basically worth 100% of the

country's GDP. So when you're in a state like that as an economy, investors, lenders are not

going to have faith in your country, you know, to lend to. So yes, it's a tiny

bit of good news, but I mean, Rachel Reeves, I would say, is by no means out of any sort of

woods. How do you think she's handled it this week? She's had a surprisingly good week,

given the situation is rather dire, as you say, even though it seems like

borrowing costs for now have peak. They're still substantially higher than what the office or budget

responsibility predicted around the budget. That is billions and billions of pounds that she has to

find that she can't spend on what she might like to spend it on, but that she will need to service

the debt.

It's not a fun thing to pay off. It's money you've already spent. So I think it's a very tricky situation for her, but I was actually quite surprised how confident she was when she went

into the House of Commons to answer questions about her trip to China, but what the opposition

...