On Wednesday, I watched Jeremy Hunt unveil the budget live on TV, though a carefully coordinated campaign of leaks to client media outlets meant it held little of the excitement it did in the 1970s. Where’s the fun in that? If Hunt’s 2024 budget was a 19th-century Parisienne burlesque artist, she would have walked on stage already naked and then gradually put her clothes back on, to the increasing uninterestedness of the disappointed perverts in attendance.
What an event budget day was when I was a boy! The annual release of the budget was as thrilling to me as waiting for each week’s new No 1 in the Radio 1 chart rundown. To this day still, I have a battered C60 audio cassette on which I used to tape both direct from the radio. Side one is my favourite No 1 singles from the period 1974 to 1977 – the Rubettes’ Sugar Baby Love, Windsor Davies and Don Estelle’s Whispering Grass, the Wurzels’ The Combine Harvester and the Sex Pistols’ gamechanging God Save the Queen. Side two is highlights of the then chancellor Denis Healey’s budgetary announcements from the same years. Who can forget 1974’s 10% on crisps, 1975’s ½p on a loaf of bread, 1976’s beer up one penny and 1977’s unprecedented withdrawal of the 2% national insurance surcharge on charities, a decision so radical it was essentially Healey’s own punk rock moment.
