The art of delivering a good Budget – in a political sense at least – is to give everyone the impression that while you’ve had to do some really difficult things, you’ve miraculously managed to find some nice things to do too that will distract people for at least one round of newspaper front pages. George Osborne did manage that for his summer Budget after the election – only for the row about cuts to tax credits to blow up later.
So we might expect a range of measures that generally make for good headlines, such as:
- Raising the threshold for higher-rate tax payers to help the 1.6 million people who have been pulled into the 40p rate since 2010.
- Extending the school day – which will upset teaching unions and the like but please parents who want their children to attend state schools that compete with the private sector.
- Housebuilding – more measures to increase the supply of housing, including opening up public sector land, which is fast becoming the planning equivalent of saying you’ll fund a new spending commitment through cracking down on tax avoidance.
- Road and railway building, which was trailed yesterday, with the Chancellor giving the ‘green light’ to major rail, housing and infrastructure projects in the North and London.
- Cracking down on personal service companies, which was trailed over the weekend. Unpopular with the very small number of people, including top BBC stars and public sector workers, who use these arrangements to avoid paying income tax, but a crowd-pleaser for everyone else.
- A £300 rise in the personal tax allowance.
- A freeze in beer duty, according to the Sun.
But then he will have to announce some difficult things too, such as:
- A further £4bn of cuts.
- Raising fuel duty, something that was the subject of a huge political campaign in the last Parliament from both backbenchers and The Sun.
- An increase in insurance premium tax, which campaigners estimate would add £37 to car premiums.
Tory MPs are already chattering about the potential for a rebellion on something they believe will be buried in the Budget book. Watch this space…
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