Was that it? Was that really it? Everything pre-briefed. No surprises whatsoever. Two percentage points off national insurance. Is that what you think my vote is worth? Because it worked so well when you knocked two percentage points off NI in last year’s autumn statement. That really shifted the polls. But hey, they say insanity is doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result.
So let me bask in the giveaway you think will make up for all the damage the government has done over the last 14 years. Feeling good? Thought not.
Everything about this budget was always going to be a total fiction. And it didn’t disappoint. Here we have a budget that was going to cut the overall tax burden, said the chancellor. Except it isn’t. Check through the small print and you will find that the Office for Budget Responsibility reckons the overall tax rate is at its highest since 1948. Every fiscal assumption that Jeremy Hunt has made is based on taxes going up.
But let’s just run with the alternative reality. Take the same drugs that Jezza injects to get through the day. Just for the hell of it. After all, we aren’t going to have too much more of the Tories, so we might as well enjoy them while we can.
Here’s how it works. You’re just going to love the tax cut that means your taxes won’t be going up by quite so much as they otherwise might. I mean, it’s not as if the NHS and the transport system aren’t on their knees. Far better you get that extra 2p than someone bothers to care for your mother with Alzheimer’s. Old people are such a waste of space.
That’s just the start. Because the government also doesn’t want you to know that your council tax will be going up by a minimum of 5%, to go a small way to providing the services that the Treasury aren’t interested in. Funny that that bit of the tax burden never got a mention.
Which leaves growth. Hunt somehow failed to mention he can only get to a positive outcome by allowing more people into the country. At the same time as the Tories are trying to break international law by offloading planeloads of refugees to Rwanda. Go figure. Because Rishi Sunak can’t.
It’s just a shame that for such an elaborate fiction, we have in Jezza such a piss-poor storyteller. Remember that he was only ever drafted in as chancellor out of desperation. When Hunt was the last man standing. The only Tory who looked as if he could vaguely reassure the country after the deranged 49 days of Liz Truss. He sort of looked safe. Someone unthreatening, if a bit useless. The sort of person you wouldn’t mind marrying your best friend’s daughter. Though preferably not your own. You would hope for more for your own child.
Then Sunak took over and found himself lumbered with Jezza. Partly because there was a yawning lack of talent in his party, but also because further change would look like even greater chaos.
So Hunt got off to a slow start and has now almost ground to a halt. There is literally nothing to him. He has less grasp of economics than my dog. The country’s finances are being run by a halfwit. Sajid Javid sat through the budget speech with his face distorted into Munch’s The Scream. He looked as if he had taken an overdose of fentanyl.
For what would certainly be his last ever budget, Jezza had invited one of his sons to watch from the gallery. This could be construed as child abuse. It would be one of the longest, most painful 80 minutes in all our lives. There was no form, no order, no real conviction. It was as though someone had rustled up a bundle of papers and reassembled them in a random order. At least, that’s the only reasonable explanation for why Jezza sounded so confused He simply had no idea what was going on.
“This is a budget for long-term growth,” Hunt began. He seemed to forget that was how he had started his last budget statement, and that we are now in recession. So he was immediately setting the bar low.
He rambled his way unconvincingly through a screed of numbers that turned out to be entirely imaginary. It was like being given access to a remedial reading class. He then committed a more obvious blunder: he froze fuel duty again, having said six months ago that the only way he could meet his fantasy fiscal rules was by raising fuel duty. He must think we are as stupid as he is.
Initially there was some sympathetic encouragement from the Tory MPs. He may be a total loser, but he was their total loser. The best they had. But gradually, a deathly silence prevailed as they realised they had just run out of luck in the Last Chance Saloon.
Sunak appeared to be in agony. His face a vision of despair. Michelle Donelan looked around, searching for someone to libel. Only Victoria Atkins roared her full-throated approval. But then, it’s not entirely clear if the health secretary ever really knows what is happening. Most of the noise came from the Labour benches. They hadn’t had so much fun in years. “Can you shout more quietly?” said the deputy speaker, Eleanor Laing.
The final humiliation came when Jezza tried to pretend that doing away with non-dom status was entirely his own idea and not a deliberate attempt to steal Labour’s flagship policy. To make it harder for an incoming Starmer government. Not that Hunt really knew what he would do with the money he raised. Waste it, probably. Rish! nodded this one through. Hopefully he made sure that his wife had all her tax affairs in order before signing that one off.
At last Jezza reached the final page and could sit down. It was over. For ever. He could at least console himself that his budget was unlikely to fall apart within a matter of hours. Mainly because there was so little to unravel.
Every underwhelming detail had already been priced in. Everyone knew it was bollocks. The country that Hunt had described, in which everything had never been better, was one that was unrecognisable to everyone else. Jezza was no saviour rising from the street. If this was an election budget, then the election is lost.
