This Budget was a masterclass in dishonesty and manipulation
So what was it?
A cautious Budget? An astute Budget? A get-me-through-the-day Budget? Did you feel the earth move – or the need to change your financial affairs, for better or worse?
Was there more than a zzzzz from the markets?
It certainly was not the tax reform Budget that our economy desperately needs to put things right while we have an opportunity. Nor was it a Budget for the mother-of-all economic shocks or opportunities that Brexit could be.
The words I would associate with it are “lamentable”, “uninspiring”, and “tired”. If this is a chancellor at the top of his game, I would hate to meet him at a Requiem Mass for our dearly departed EU membership. Man-size Kleenex would not be large enough.
Just like his boss – who could not mention “Chequers” by its name at the Conservative conference earlier in the month – our dear chancellor only managed to say “Brexit” once in the whole hour and 10 minutes of his stand-up routine.
And just as Philip Hammond’s jokes were cheesily lame (as he himself knew, as he waited for the forced laughter), so his excuses for not doing anything substantial became more obvious.
There is a game being played here, just like with the whole farrago of the Brexit negotiations – or rather, those gaming our politics are playing us.
We are now in an absurd situation where, because Theresa May does not believe in Brexit, we are being led by the nose to accept either a really bad deal (some form of Chequers) or WTO rules.
The latter is presented as being so bad – despite most sovereign countries managing to trade this way – that we have to instead accept a position that will in many ways be worse than our existing membership.
Hence we may “crash out” unprepared – but only because those responsible for the flitting have not metaphorically booked the removal company or checked that the water will be running and the electrics connected in our new abode.
A no-deal should have been mapped out before negotiating, but “Treason May” and “Spreadscare Phil”, to use some of the kinder epithets I hear bandied about, have not done their due diligence.
We in the private sector all know that this would get us our jotters – but not in politics. They can expect peerages with pensions and sinecures at the end of this.
What we required this week was a Brexit Budget – and the chancellor himself admitted this.
First, he reminded us how he had given himself “headroom” of some £15bn to deal with what might happen if Brexit was not smooth – in other words, was not the deal he is still assuming will happen.
But wait. Under his current assumptions, UK growth is now put at 1.6 per cent, 1.4 per cent, 1.4 per cent, 1.5 per cent, and 1.6 per cent over the next five years.
Is that the best we can expect under his management? Is that really acceptable when he has £15bn available now to help encourage the UK economy to better things? Do we have to wait until Brexit goes “wrong” (in his interpretation) before he cuts business taxes?
Second, from the projections he is offering of jobs growth of 800,000 over that same period, and the increase in revenues which we can clearly see is happening now, do we really believe that economic growth will not be uprated in the Spring Statement due in April?
Are we not seeing here a chancellor who is playing us, so that he can either come to our rescue, or be magisterially benevolent with that £15bn when there is no longer a problem?
We all know that by April 2019 (if not before), Hammond will introduce a Brexit Budget – be it a good or bad Brexit, he shall have funds available which he can use to make us love the Conservative government. All with our taxes (or, more likely, the borrowings against the taxes of our grandchildren).
It is at times like this that I despair. Too many people have a bad view of capitalism – the most liberating, prospering force for good in the world – because politicians like Hammond masquerade as capitalists while subverting it.
If the chancellor were not behaving so manipulatively, at least some of the £15bn “headroom” could be used now. It could cut taxes and drive our economic growth to rise further in advance of Brexit – creating more revenues and reserves in the process.
Why wait? The chancellor does not say. He is obviously not a believer in Brexit, but I fear that neither is he a true believer in capitalism. And that sums up the managerialism of May’s Conservatives.