Being boring

Philip Hammond began his first Budget, in March, by playing down its importance — for his big ideas on fiscal policy, he suggested we would have to wait until the autumn. It was a wait which was very nearly extended to eternity as he narrowly avoided losing his job in a post–election reshuffle. We found out this week that it was a bluff: he doesn’t have many big ideas, just a selection of small ones. Which, under the circumstances, is something of a relief.

The Chancellor is getting better at telling Britain’s story, boasting about record employment and how the best-paid 1 per cent pay 27 per cent of all income tax. He didn’t say why (that tax rates for the best-paid were reduced), nor did he double down on more tax cuts that could have stimulated growth. The gloomy growth forecasts underline the case for radical pro-growth Conservative policies, but we settled for some small ones. There was tax relief for entrepreneurs, business rates indexed to the lower CPI index ahead of schedule. All welcome.

The centrepiece of his budget was a target to build 300,000 new homes a year by the mid-2020s. But this is hard to take seriously without a thorough rethink of the planning system and building regulations (which he promised to ‘focus on’), and in any case, housing is a hostage to economic conditions. Ten years ago, Gordon Brown in his last Budget similarly set himself a house–building target — albeit of only 200,000 homes a year between then and 2020 — only to see the credit crunch and subsequent banking collapse render it a pipe dream.