It’s the last Treasury questions before the Budget today, and MPs will have a final chance to push the Chancellor on what it is that they want from the Budget.
There are those who are instinctively loyal to the Tory leadership and want a Budget that comes and goes without fireworks or failures. ‘Just steady as she goes, please,’ one loyalist says. Within that group are MPs who are desperate for a cost of living Budget. Then there are those MPs who are not loyal, and who, even if they don’t admit it, would quite like a messy Budget that shows George Osborne up.
A wider group of backbenchers includes those who are nervous that Osborne isn’t quite the strategic genius he’s often sold as. They are the ones who are happy to have open discussions about their fears for the Budget in the tearooms and corridors, sometimes in hearing distance of Labour and Lib Dem MPs.
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