Credit where credit is due. At least Boris Johnson made the effort to write two entirely contradictory speeches, even if he didn’t particularly agree with either. Philip Hammond couldn’t even manage that as he delivered what is likely to be his last budget. He has the unique distinction of being the chancellor that neither his own party nor the opposition really wants. And true to form, Hammond couldn’t but help bowing out with the merest whimper. The dog that didn’t bark in the night.
In her leader’s speech at the Tory party conference in Birmingham, Theresa May had confidently declared that the years of austerity were well and truly over. We had never had it so good. Hammond visibly blanched and was quick to distance himself from his prime minister’s hostage to fortune by opening his statement with a mumbled statement that austerity was merely coming to an end. Though he couldn’t say exactly when. All he could do was acknowledge things were still fairly rubbish but he would do his best to make things appear slightly less bad than they already were by spending money he couldn’t say for certain that he definitely had.
Then Hammond got to the tricky, Brexity bit that he tried to gloss over as quickly as possible. If we happened to get lucky and the prime minister could get her bad deal past the EU and parliament, then things were going to be so great he was going to put aside another £4bn to prepare for the damage Brexit would do to the economy. And if the UK crashed out with no deal, then all bets were off. Things would be so catastrophic that an emergency budget would be needed; a budget that he hadn’t yet got round to writing as the mere thought of it gave him nightmares. The no-deal contingency planning was to have no contingency plans.
With Brexit dismissed in a few sotto voce sentences, Hammond could press on with his fantasy budget which he wasn’t yet sure he was in any position to deliver. “Fiscal Phil says Fiscal Rules OK,” he said, in the first of several attempted gags that fell stone dead. So often cast as the Undertaker, Hammond was now reinvented as the Clown. The chancellor’s self-regard is astonishing. It’s bad enough that he imagines himself to be an economic wunderkind, but he’s borderline delusional in believing himself to be a raconteur with comic timing. His only public speaking gift is to make 75 minutes feel like 150.
Continuing to fall to the occasion by announcing a small spending commitment purely to allow himself the pleasure of making a few schoolboy toilet jokes – taking the piss was a running theme throughout this budget – Hammond went on to reveal many of the announcements that had either already been announced by May some months previously or had been leaked to the media last weekend. So we got the money for the NHS, a few pencils for schools, the odd pothole mended, and a partial reversal of the cuts to Universal Credit that George Osborne had brought in three years earlier.
As the chancellor neared the hour mark, heads began to go down even among those Tory MPs who had been force-fed amphetamines by the whips to act as cheerleaders for a budget in which no one was much interested. After all, if Hammond didn’t really believe in it, why should anyone else? At one point the chancellor paused for some knowing guffaws after what he had imagined to be exceptionally bons mots. None came – least of all from the prime minister, who hates her chancellor almost as much as she hates herself and sat stony-faced throughout – and he appeared genuinely surprised and upset.
“Next year...” Hammond said, trying to tough it out while dying on his feet. “You won’t be here,” yelled a Labour MP. This brought the first genuine laugh of the day and even seemed to lighten the chancellor’s mood. There was a light at the end of the tunnel. If not for the country then at least for him. Never again would he have to pretend that growth rates of 1.5% were cause for optimism. Never again would he have to deliver a budget whose only function was to make the government appear slightly less vulnerable than it already was. Most of all, never again would he have to deal with a Brexit that made fools of fools.
As his batteries began to give out, Hammond faded to silent with a half-hearted appeal for everyone to believe in his magic numbers, even though he didn’t believe in them himself. The Tory benches gave him the briefest of cheers before heading for the exits. Up in the public galleries, a group of WASPI women (Women Against State Pension Inequality) protested against the attack on their pensions. Labour MPs rose to give them a prolonged round of applause; the reception Hammond had so much craved but would never get. He would go as he had come – unloved by everyone but himself.
