George Osborne has today done some massive juggling. It wasn’t a Budget for jobs after
all, but a Budget to help people cope with the soaring cost of living. North Sea oil companies and banks were stung for various income, fuel and corporation tax cuts. The Chancellor spotted —
immediately — that cost of living was the No.1 issue and turned on a sixpence. His skills as a politician were again demonstrated. But let’s not fool ourselves. Fiscally, today’s is not a big
Budget. What movement there has been is to make the cuts programme even milder than it already was.
The “total cuts” figure is, oddly, not printed in the Budget. Perhaps because it’s so embarrassingly small. After the Autumn Statement, it was 5 per cent over four years. Now it’s back to 3.7 per cent over four years: that is to say, total cuts of just 0.9
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