The shape of the Budget battleground

There are still two days and a couple of hours to go until George Osborne’s Pre-Budget Report — but, already, we have a good idea of what will be said. The emphasis, beyond just plain ol’ jobs and growth, will be on combatting youth unemployment; helping smaller businesses; and relaxing the squeeze on middle-income folk. Most of the measures either announced or suggested so far — from the Youth Contract to the credit easing scheme to the suspension of January’s fuel duty rise — fall into one of those compartments. Whether they’ll work or not is a different matter entirely.     

As for Labour’s response, they’re already making it — and I doubt anything in the actual Budget document, or the growth review, will change it much. It, too, appears to have three main components.

Most popular

Douglas Murray

What Europe gets wrong about the far right

First up, there’s the female factor.