Everything in the garden is rosy. The economy is growing, the sun is shining, and the Tories are doing a grand job. Or so Jeremy Hunt would have us believe.
(Strangely, it reminded me of those “Chemical/Comical Ali” media announcements during the Iraq War, where he claimed the Americans were in retreat when, in fact, their tanks could actually be seen in the background as combat sounds were ringing out).
The metaphorical guns are out too for Hunt and the Tories, because if the content of this Budget was meant to save his party from an electoral whipping later this year, their hopes have been well and truly torpedoed.
It was a chance missed. Or as Sir Keir Starmer summed up: “it was the last desperate act of a party that has failed”.
There had been frenzied speculation ahead of the Budget that, so dynamic was the Chancellor’s speech going to be, and such would then be the feel-good factor, that the Tories might even opt for - and win - a May General Election.
Talk about believing your own hype . . .
In a nutshell, the already well flagged announcement that national insurance would be cut from 10% by 8% to save the average worker £450 a year, making a £900 saving for 27 million UK employees following a cut last autumn, was just about the highlight.
Raising the earnings threshold for child benefit from £50,000 to £60,000, introducing new taxes on vapes, and bumping up taxes for business class flights hadn’t been leaked in advance, but they couldn’t even loosely be described as pulling a rabbit from the hat.
One Tory MP inside the Commons texted a journalist friend to say: “This is worst delivery of a Budget I can remember. He’s lost the room.”
And esteemed economist Richard Ramsey - whose not so rave review you can read elsewhere in today’s paper - wasn’t wrong when he tweeted: “Definitely one of the most boring budgets I have ever covered . . . and it was as noisy as Funky Monkeys on a Saturday afternoon”.
Foyle MP Colum Eastwood said Hunt’s “brass-necked budget” defied all belief, adding that successive Tory governments “have crashed the economy, gutted public services, targeted the poor, yet now expect a clap on the back. An election can’t come soon enough.”
Just don’t bank on in happening in May . . .
