A few years ago George Osborne would have bristled at the idea that one of his budgets wouldn’t be the biggest event of the political week. His ability to conjure rabbits out of hats had already prevented electoral defeat for the Tories once (his 2007 inheritance tax pledge, now consigned to history, scared Gordon Brown out of calling an election he would have won).
But this week a low-key Budget was just what Osborne wanted — and delivered. One imagines, though, that he can’t be happy with the careless way that Downing Street managed to alienate almost the entire press just 72 hours before he got up to deliver it.
I understand that an inquest is now under way at No. 10 into who allowed Oliver Letwin to wander off by himself and negotiate press regulation in Ed Miliband’s office in the wee hours of Monday morning.
The Chancellor wanted to avoid a repeat of last year’s Budget troubles: this year’s statement was free of the pernickety measures littered throughout last year’s. His tone was sombre.
This was a more distinctly Tory Budget than Osborne’s previous ones. As those close to him delighted in saying, it cut spending to cut taxes. The reduction in the corporation tax rate to 20p emphasised the government’s efforts to make Britain competitive in ‘the global race’. The employment allowance, allowing employers to hire four staff on the minimum wage without paying employer’s national insurance, is a move to cheer those Tories who rightly fear the impact of our tax and regulatory system on small businesses.
Overall, though, Osborne’s message was that we need to keep on keeping on. This was leavened by various measures designed to ease the squeeze on family budgets.
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