Even Sunak didn't think Hunt's Budget was worth listening to

Jeremy Hunt is the spotty, speccy geek who doesn’t wear specs and doesn’t have spots. But ‘geek’ is very much Hunt’s brand. He’s a gangly, uncool type who, for no reason whatever, is as tall as a basketball player.

In his Budget he set out to promote Continuity Conservatism, and spoke as if this were a mid-term financial plan from a steady-eddie Tory administration. He kept saying ‘since 2010’ as he boasted of Tory achievements that go back 14 years. He claimed that ‘800 jobs’ had been added ‘every day’ since the Conservatives took power and he said that they’d hired ‘250 more doctors and 400 more nurses for every month we’ve been in office.’ He fired off easy shots at the rowdy Labour benches. When he mentioned Universal Credit he fell silent for a moment and waited for them to yell at him. Which they did. Then he slapped them down sanctimoniously: ‘I thought they cared about people on the lowest incomes.’