The Budget

“It’s a trap!”

cries the reptilian alien life form in Star Wars when it suddenly realises what we knew all along, namely that the powerful never give up without a fight and that things are not what they seem. So it is with Jeremy Hunt’s first budget proper. Actually there is a hint of the reptilian about him too; the pursed lips, the lack of expression in his eyes, the hint of menace that suggests no insect life form is safe from the tongue that comes from nowhere and disappears again magically. The trap in this case is that after the four horseman of the apocalypse – Brexit, Covid, Johnson and Truss – Sunak and Hunt are presenting themselves as strong and stable saviours of the country who are peddling a return to small c conservative normality. They are of course just doing what tories have always done, which is to portray themselves as a safe pair of hands when compared to the nasty socialists and their dimly concealed plans to stage a leftie takeover. Never mind that the most dangerous extremists of the last twenty years have all come from the right wing of British politics. Never mind that the worst excesses of economic experimentation that have screwed the lives of ordinary working people have been Tory. Never mind that the two most successful, stable and forward looking governments since World War Two have both been Labour. The spectre of rampant socialism is still used as the biggest bogeyman at the ballot box.

But actually my biggest issue with budget day, irrespective of the politics of the chancellor presenting it, is that it really just a fiscal version of the Eurovision Song Contest. The expectations are high, and the atmosphere is sometimes exciting. But the outcome is always an anticlimax. No one is happy, the maths is opaque, and most people have forgotten about it a week later (with the one exception of the Kwaesi Kwarteng budget which is rather like the final nuptials in Four Weddings and a Funeral – everyone remembers it for the wrong reasons). I’ve been watching on budget day for over fifty years. Petrol and beer always seem to the only tangible things you can identify as clear personal uppers or downers. Everything else is wildly open to interpretation. National insurance goes up, taxation appears to go down but there so many exemptions and oddities that it is hard not to draw the conclusion that the thing is just a scam designed to give employment opportunities to journalists and accountants who are part of the conspiracy of opacity. 

Then there is the bloody briefcase. Every chancellor stands there holding the damn thing up for a sheepish photo opportunity but in an age of super fast computers, artificial intelligence and global connectivity you know it is a pointless bit of history. There isn’t something magical in there that glows when you lift the lid and induces a mystical trance. Nicholas Cage is never going to make National Treasure III: secrets of the chancellors briefcase. It’s an old and pointless bit of baggage, rather like the whole idea of budget day itself. I actually have a sneaking suspicion that each chancellor has a private joke with it and puts something mildly offensive or surreal in it and is inwardly smirking as they lift it up for the photographers. Hunt probably put a pair of Boris Johnson’s carelessly  discarded pants in it. Kwarteng probably had a 1967 copy of Teach Yourself Accountancy. And Sunak doubtless had a brochure for swimming pools as a private joke to snub the masses. 

Fact is that budget day is like the rest of the British political system. Like prime ministers question time, black rod, the king’s speech, and the crumbling corridors of the Palace of Westminster, the whole thing is just a shambolic edifice designed to distract our attention away from the reality that everything about Britain is overdue for reform. We shouldn’t have the theatre of budget day, we should have quiet, efficient and well managed financial systems that distribute the nation’s wealth where it needs to go. But it won’t happen. There are as many oligarchs in Britain as there are in Russia and doing things in a modern way doesn’t suit their agenda. They would rather have a few headlines, a lot of speculation, some arcane math, and a bit of howling in the house to distract you from one simple reality: budgets never bother the rich. They were rich the day before and they will be rich the day after. Only ordinary people try and work out if that change in tax allowances means they can afford the kids school uniform without resorting to credit cards, or worry that the price of a packet of fags is going to eat into grandads pension. The rich just bobble past in their yachts without a care in the world. Budgets change nothing in the short term, although they can bring down a career or two if badly handled. But that really is no solace when you genuinely have to worry about the price of a Greggs bacon butty.