What’s in next week’s budget? Not much, apparently. ‘Cabinet sources’ have been quoted saying that ‘George has been told not to rock the boat’ ahead of the Brexit referendum, and that’s why he backed away from a grab on pension relief for higher earners; likewise he may yield to pressure from his backbenchers not to treat cheap petrol as an opportunity to raise extra fuel duty from motorists. He’ll probably have to talk his way out of a downgrading of growth forecasts by the Office for Budget Responsibility (‘global headwinds’, naturally) and a modest overshoot against his own borrowing targets — but those are the most entertaining parts of Osborne’s speeches.
Expect tax-threshold tinkering to please aspiring middle-earners, and not much more in the way of cuts: as my reader survey last month indicated, the core Tory voters whom Osborne wants to secure for the ‘remain’ side see little or no gain from further public-sector shrinkage.
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