Best Of

This budget reminds me of the Lamont budget in the early 1990s. It was a complicators budget, introducing lots of little ways to try and increase tax take without anyone noticing too much.

Chancellors are either complicators or simplifiers. The simplifiers - like Howe or Lawson or Clarke - are much better than the complicators.

Much easier to be a simplifier when you have spare cash to play with.

(I'd be totally up for simplifications. Getting rid of all those damnfool spikes by reducing thresholds or increasing rates would be a good thing. But politically toxic. Which is why Darling and Osborne did what they did in the first place.

And whilst I would have voted for a Doctor's Mandate in 2024, I totally get why it wasn't on offer. Given how late Nigel (F not L) upended the whole game by joining it, Labour's cowardice was understandable, if cowardly.)

That's not really true: it doesn't get much attention these days, but the early Howe budgets were tax raising budgets. Now, I grant you, the tax raising was mostly in the form of VAT (which had the impact of suppressing consumption, which fell on the lower middle classes in particular) but nevertheless, Howe concentrated on reducing the budget deficit, while also simplifying the tax system.

A couple of thoughts.

I found Reeves's speech odd, in that good budget speeches traditionally combine dignity and seriousness with clever low politics. This felt like pantomime. She didn't rise to the occasion. Good polemic needs to be better hidden as serious comment.

The old customs of not announcing and leaking in advance, taking up about five weeks of political energy, were good and should have been kept.

The custom of listening to the budget in near silence was excellent. The Deputy speaker should keep much better control.

The opportunity (the last for this government I think) for a deep reforming budget was missed. This was about survival, the soft left, the benefits and pensioner class.

Nothing in it for the middling family types.

No central theme or core coherence. Clarke, Howe and Gladstone's reputations are safe.

it was a stark reminder of the anti-intellectualism of public life.

I got what I wanted from the budget: the removal of the iniquitous two child cap. The government eventually did the right thing in the face of considerable opposition. That's what governments should be in power for.

For the rest, I have no idea, and never do at the time of budgets. Chancellors whose job it is to take revenue from here and there, stand up and tell us how they are taking revenue from here and there, and it's supposed to be some kind of theatre.

The received wisdom on this budget seems to be that Reeves has ducked the difficult decisions that none of predecessors took either, while implementing tax increases which are highly unpopular. We'll see. I don't rule out that paradoxical take transpiring.

Why was it the right thing to do?

Because children in poverty is a blight on society when effective and not massively expensive measures exist to reduce it. The two child cap was designed to punish families with more than two children, which meant it was punishing the children particularly. Because the cap was so targeted removing it will take the most children out of poverty for the least cost.

A couple of thoughts.

I found Reeves's speech odd, in that good budget speeches traditionally combine dignity and seriousness with clever low politics. This felt like pantomime. She didn't rise to the occasion. Good polemic needs to be better hidden as serious comment.

The old customs of not announcing and leaking in advance, taking up about five weeks of political energy, were good and should have been kept.

The custom of listening to the budget in near silence was excellent. The Deputy speaker should keep much better control.

The opportunity (the last for this government I think) for a deep reforming budget was missed. This was about survival, the soft left, the benefits and pensioner class.

Nothing in it for the middling family types.

No central theme or core coherence. Clarke, Howe and Gladstone's reputations are safe.

it was a stark reminder of the anti-intellectualism of public life.