Today is, of course, budget day. Rumour has it that it was moved from Wednesday to stop ghoulish jokes about Philip Hammond. And of course, if he had not abolished the Spring budget we would not have needed a budget now at all, which might have been the greatest favour Hammond could have done himself.
The reality is that the day is thoroughly inconvenient for me. I will be in Copenhagen at Copenhagen Business School and will have no chance to pay much attention this afternoon. There will be other demands on my time, mainly to do with students and assessments. These things do not stop for Philip Hammond. But it does mean I will not be on Radio 2 or LBC, both of whom invited me (for which I say thank you).
But let me be honest, and offer in advance what I suspect I would have said on air. And that is that all budgets are, of course, games of charades, but this one more than most. Hammond says he is basing his budget on the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast and that they are assuming that we will have a favourable Brexit deal by 29 March. Bluntly, they have no clue at all if that is right or wrong. And nor has he.
We do not even know if May will be Prime Minister next year, when much of what will be announced would have to come into effect.
Or if Hammond will be around either.
Or if the Tories will be in power.
And then there is the minor problem with Brexit, which could change everything.
Candidly what is forecast today could be, and may will be, wildly more inaccurate than the budget of 2008, which takes some beating.
In that case, what is said should be seen as a bit of window dressing that might prove wholly inconsequential and which might be forgotten even more quickly than the average budget - unless Hammond manages the usual Tory budget blunders despite the inconsequence of what he proposes.
Maybe I am better off not spending too long in studios, after all.
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Doesn’t Hammond need to put half-a-billion or so into the Northern Irish wood-chip burning industry to secure the Union’s future? The sight of Theresa dancing to the slightly amended Dexy’s Midnight Runners hit ‘come on Arlene’ will be too much. I’ll be taking a trip to the pub before he takes me bus pass away.
“…..Hammond says he is basing his budget on the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast…”
Another chicken sacrificed needlessly in order expose its entrails to the scrutiny of an idiot.
Hey Ho.
Indeed after 28 long months who can trust anything either the Conservative or Labour parties tell us about the need for Austerity cuts or Brexit! Both parties lack leaders with much in the way of reasoning capacity!
All the questions can be answered by assuming the Tories will hang on to power as long as they can and the main stream media will do all they can to support that. Short of a catastrophic financial crash, tomorrow will be much like today and so on. It will take a crisis to dislodge them and the EU will oblige by stitching some sort of deal together.
These days it is what is NOT said in the budget that you have to pay attention to.