Yogi Berra, the revered baseball player and coach, would have called it deja vu all over again. A Tory chancellor telling the country it has “turned a corner”, while scattering around a few tax cuts when a general election is looming was not the only reason Jeremy Hunt’s bag of tricks felt so familiar. The sense of having been here before was heightened because of another aspect of his financial statement, a budget in all but name. The chancellor also flourished a “plan for growth”.
He spoke as if getting more out of the economy was a novel idea that had never occurred to anyone before, but his is the 12th growth plan the Tories have fanfared since 2010, which makes it one for almost every year they have been in power. If the Tories had been as prolific at generating growth as they have at producing plans, we’d have no need for another one because the world would be beating a path to our door to discover how the genius UK had become a land overflowing with milk and honey.
