The Budget is without doubt one of the most overrated days in British politics. Now that we are entirely at the mercy of foreign lenders, Saudi and Chinese investors, frightened Labour backbenchers and our own suicidal accumulation of debt, the idea that the British state’s economic conception of itself is anything more than a tragicomic fiction is laughable. Yet Budget day remains part of the elaborate amateur dramatics that constitute domestic politics. It is also, crucially, a key mechanism by which the government can make the lives of savers, taxpayers and those still brave enough to run a business significantly worse.
Today began with the usual theatrics – John Healey, who is privately considered to be a remedial chancellor, posed with the red box on Downing Street. This drama echoes the days when the Budget mattered, but today in the Commons proved much like everything else that this government does, that we are now in the grip of national triviality.
The integrity of the event was instantly undermined by Healey choosing to open proceedings with a joke. At least that’s the most generous interpretation of his lavishing praise on his predecessor Rachel Reeves. We heard once again about glass-ceilings – ‘Britain’s first ever female chancellor after 800 years’, who, Healey added, ‘brought fiscal discipline to this country’. This latter claim proved too much for the opposition benches. The idea that Reeves enhanced the dignity of the chancellor’s role is a bit like saying that Jack the Ripper enriched the life of Whitechapel. The House’s jeering prompted an intervention from the Deputy Speaker, leaving Healey to deliver his last, cloying bit of praise while himself trying not to laugh. ‘She took the decisions required!’ he smirked. In a further irony, the best parts of the Budget came when he reversed some of Reeves’s stupider and more vindictive policies, such as the tax raid on ISAs.
Healey is not exactly an automatic entertainer – more Burke and Hare than Ant and Dec. He spoke of ‘uncertainties… swirling’, like a blocked lavatory. Of all people, former speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi was a guest in the Commons Gallery for Prime Minister’s Questions. Having made it through PMQs, she managed only a few minutes of Healey’s repeated exultations about the Budget supplying ‘breathing space’, before scurrying away. Given that Congress is the place which invented the 24-hour filibuster, this tells us something about the Chancellor’s rhetorical style.
The Budget’s trifling nature was most epitomised by a person who wasn’t there at all; Martin Lewis, the ‘money saving expert’ who preaches a gospel of ‘easy savings’ on daytime TV. Forget the days when the chancellor’s pronouncements would affect the Argentine bond market or the Jakarta stock exchange, this was a Budget for sofa-bound Britain. Lewis evidently knew more about the Budget than parliament itself. On the Today programme, he’d anticipated a Pollyannaish Budget, majoring on ‘small things that make people happy’ – and even announced a policy ‘win’ on social media, hours before the Chancellor presented it to the House. I wouldn’t want to be there when the speaker learns about this latest breach of constitutional protocol. Perhaps Martin Lewis will in time become a recognised one-man quango, or better yet, a standalone government department.
The headline policy was probably a surcharge on banks – supposedly ‘time-limited’, but there is nothing so permanent as a temporary government measure. Lest we forget; income tax was once a short-term levy to fund the Napoleonic Wars. If only our very permanent tax increases had anything to do with military preparation. The surcharge will supposedly pay for a £100 energy bung to households this winter. In all probability the banks will simply pass this levy onto consumers: but this being Martin Lewis Britain, people will hear ‘free money’ and instead thank the government for doing them a good turn. It’s a very clever form of blame-shifting; a ‘small wins’ mentality, appropriate to our beggarly state.
This will all be lauded by brain-dead backbenchers on local radio as a ‘Budget for working Britain’
In her response, Mrs Badenoch delivered an effective demolition of the Budget’s lack of vision. ‘The Prime Minister came in promising to reverse 40 years of neoliberalism. Instead we got 4p off gherkins.’ Cue much squawking from the Labour frontbenches, especially Lucy Powell, whom Badenoch accused of not being able to count. ‘Has the Education Secretary got something more to add?’ snapped Badenoch. ‘Can she add?’ Treasury Minister Torsten Bell flounced off midway through the response, clutching his red briefcase. The Leader of the Opposition has got better at swatting away hecklers and today seemed genuinely to enjoy herself.
When Badenoch criticised the government’s defence record, Wes Streeting did his standard yapping Shih Tzu response. Mr Streeting is taking himself increasingly seriously now that he’s defence secretary. We’re probably only a few weeks away from him stapling chocolate coins to his breast, in lieu of military decoration.
This will all be lauded by brain-dead backbenchers on local radio as a ‘Budget for working Britain’. In fact, Healey’s measures appeal more to what we might term ‘economically little England’; a place where progress hinges on the idea that HP Sauce might be made cheaper for a six-month period before some further price hike which can be blamed on the Russians, the banks or other ‘swirling uncertainties’ over which the government insists it has no power.
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