What the papers say: Philip Hammond’s broken promise

Philip Hammond is feeling the heat this morning. This was supposed to be the ‘boring’ budget, with no headline-grabbing announcements or spending splurges. Instead, the Chancellor’s face is splashed across the front pages this morning for all the wrong reasons. And the reception for Hammond doesn’t get any warmer inside the newspapers.

The Daily Mail starts its commentary with some praise for the Chancellor. It says that his Budget ‘was a million miles from the panic-stricken emergency Budget’ put forward in the run-up to the referendum by his predecessor. Gone was the ‘anxiety’ about the future of Britain’s economy; and in came the jokes – gags the Chancellor could afford with a ‘flailing opposition’, ‘unemployment..at an 11-year low’, under control inflation and rosy-looking forecasts, says the Mail. But that doesn’t stop this from being a ‘deeply uninspiring’ Budget, argues the Mail, which says it is hard to forgive Hammond’s bid to hide his tax hikes.