Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The road to recovery | 23 June 2010

This is a slow-burning budget. Not because Osborne has concealed, like Gordon Brown did, but because the reverse is true. The budget is, as Osborne says, a third of the size but with three times the amount of information. It has layers: some policies and language are there just to assuage the LibDems. Some are pure Tory. James has a brilliant cover piece in tomorrow’s magazine which spells out the political, rather than economic, forces at work in this budget. Osborne, that great player of three-dimensional chess, sees in this budget plans to restore a Tory majority government. The Red Book itself is, for wonks like myself, a joy to read: straight figures, with nothing concealed. The IFS can take credit for this: Osborne’s greater transparency comes because he knows that it’s futile to hide anything. Robert Chote or Gemma Tetlow will sniff it out. But for now, the following questions are mulling in my mind…

1)   This budget marks the end, not the beginning, of ideologically-driven fiscal policy.  The Spectator says in its leader tomorrow that the last decade – where state spending increased more than any other country in any other postwar decade – was the era of ideology. The last decade tested to destruction the notion that society would somehow become fairer and more prosperous if the state massively expanded. This Osborne budget is a return to rationalism. More about this in the mag tomorrow.

2)   It’s easy to pencil in welfare savings, as Osborne has done, but IDS’ welfare reform is more likely to cost money than save it. As Wisconsin shows, this is about saving lives more than money: IDS bills the DWP as the no1 poverty fighting department. In my view, the billions “spent on child poverty” (ie, manipulating a spreadsheet that purports to show child poverty) should be spent on the DWP so it can combat real poverty and through work, not handouts.

3)   Osborne will come to regret his NHS pledge.

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