Hammond’s Halloween Budget fails to excite

Philip Hammond held the Budget today to avoid a bunch of Halloween jokes about a zombie economy and so on. To compensate, the Chancellor brought a bunch of random sentences in fancy dress as ‘jokes’. There were inexplicable quips about poaching rabbits, a medley of toilet puns accompanying funding for keeping public conveniences open, and the strangest of all: ‘fiscal Phil says fiscal rules, OK.’

What the Chancellor hadn’t dressed up, though, were the series of announcements in this Budget. They weren’t fancy. Or radical. There was some political appropriation, with Hammond trying to deal with a few Labour threats by stealing their policies. He announced that he will not be signing any further PFI contracts, something announced by Jeremy Corbyn’s party long ago. He claimed the Tories were the party who would actually crack down on tax avoidance, announcing a UK digital services tax.