Confused? You soon will be … At a rough count we were on to our fifth budget statement of the year when Jeremy Hunt rose to speak from the dispatch box. All of them described as essential – gamechanging, even – at the time. All of them trying to undo the damage of the previous one. And all of them laying claim to be the real Conservative deal.
First we had Rishi Sunak’s budget proper in the spring. So far, so mediocre. Then Rish! rushed back to the Commons to say there were a few things he had forgotten and he wanted to offer a bit more help to people trying to pay their energy bills.
Next up was Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget. He had it in for the Anti-Growth Coalition of Sunakered Economics. Unfunded tax cuts and public spending were the order of the day. That was enough to crash the markets and tank the economy. Though in a very Tory way.
Once Kamikwasi and Liz Truss had been ushered out the door, Sunak and Hunt quickly won plaudits merely for undoing nearly everything their predecessors had done. That wasn’t so hard. You or I could have done that. Now it was left to Jezza to try to fix the more long-term fallout from the Truss weeks and the Tory years in general. That would prove to be a little harder.
The Commons wasn’t exactly full for this budget statement. Probably because it’s hard to maintain a sense of occasion at the fifth time of asking: familiarity breeds contempt and all that. It also promised few surprises: almost all of it had already been leaked. And familiarity breeds contempt and all that.
Halfway back, Theresa May and Boris Johnson sat across the aisle from one another. Trying not to catch each other’s eye. The Convict looked more than usually pleased with himself. Well he might. He’s just trousered £250k for a single off-the-cuff speech to some Americans who don’t know better. The former Tory party chair Andrew Stephenson appointed himself as peacekeeper and sat on the carpet between them. Trying to facilitate some kind of rapprochement. He soon gave up.
No one does taking himself seriously better than Hunt. When he catches sight of himself in a mirror, he can’t help falling in love with himself all over again. It can happen any number of times in a day. But this was grave Jezza. No jokes, no frills. No more kindergarten politics. Hunt sees himself as the grownup for grownup times. Not quite how the rest of us see him, but never mind. He also acts as if he’s running the show. That Rish! is little more than his puppet.
Hunt began by talking about unprecedented global headwinds. It was the pandemic and the war in Ukraine that were to blame. Otherwise we would be doing brilliantly. He somehow forgot to mention the £30bn hole that Kamikwasi had blown in the country’s bank balance.
Regrets, too few to mention. He also didn’t think to wonder if Brexit hadn’t been such a great idea after all. Most economists reckon it’s caused a 4% hit to GDP. Which could explain why the UK is the worst-performing economy in the G7. The only time the word Brexit passed his lips in the 53 minutes he was on his feet was when he said we might be in a position to discover some Brexit benefits in a year’s time. Better late than never.
“It’s British to be compassionate,” Hunt insisted. Mmm. It also seems to be British to have a prime minister whom only a tiny percentage of the country gets to elect. British to live in a country where living standards will fall by 7% in the next couple of years. British to have the highest tax burden since the second world war. British to expect the country to pick up the tab for the mistakes of its government. British to enter a two-year recession. But we should be proud. Because it would be a very Tory recession. A red, white and blue recession. With great TV.
There were times when there was an almost fever-dream-like quality to Hunt’s speech. Where there was an unbridgeable gap between fantasy and reality. A Tory government that had crashed the economy insisting that it held the credibility high ground. A Tory chancellor saying that the recession would be shallower due to his measures than the one we would have had if the last Tory government had been allowed to have its way. We should be grateful to be just Sunakered and not completely Trussterfucked. It was just bonkers. The sort of thing you might try on if you wanted to take the piss.
The essential message was that we were screwed for the foreseeable future. Only try not to think of the people who had actively done the screwing up. Or that the UK was predicted to have the worst growth. Try instead to imagine that Hunt and Sunak had just been parachuted in to deal with a once-in-a-lifetime crisis in an unknown country. Then it wouldn’t seem so bad. Hunt was so polished, so smooth. It made you proud to be a Bankrupt Brit.
Yes, there would be real-terms cuts to schools and the NHS. But less than there otherwise might have been. And everyone would be much broker than they had been before. But on the whole, the budget was broadly progressive. The sort of thing that Labour might have come up with in a similar situation. And for which the Tories would have hammered them. But hey, try to look on the bright side. Some of the cuts were scheduled for two years or more ahead. So they might never happen.
The Tory benches looked unimpressed. They feel the game is up. After 12 years of austerity, scrabbling to stay in power, they’ve run out of road. Most of us are now worse off than we were 10 years ago. You can fool some of the people some of the time … There were only a few tired cheers when Hunt sat down. Then a mass dash to the exits. Time to make other plans.
In reply, Rachel Reeves was in her element. Then, she has had a lot of practice. And one of the advantages of a leaked budget is that it allows the opposition to craft a coherent response. And the shadow chancellor was more than coherent. She was mocking and devastating. Never once allowing Hunt to forget which party was the architect of the current crisis. Nor that he had not once apologised for his party’s mistakes.
We were in a doom loop. No other country was cutting spending and raising taxes as it went into a two-year recession. Reeves said the government was acting as it was in the Dallas shower scene. More like A Nightmare on Downing Street. And she landed her punches. When she attacked the government for not closing down non-doms’ tax status, Rish! and Hunt flinched.
“More,” cried Labour MPs, sensing the government might just have eased itself out of the last-chance saloon. So soon. Too, too sad. Alone on the Tory benches, Johnson allowed himself a smile. Sunak was toast. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Ha! The comeback starts now. Though first to make a few more mill giving crap speeches. Those kids don’t feed themselves.
A year in Westminster with John Crace, Marina Hyde and Armando Iannucci: Join John Crace, Marina Hyde and Armando Iannucci for a look back at another chaotic year in Westminster, live at Kings Place in London, or via the livestream.
Wednesday 7 December 2022, 7pm-8.15pm GMT. Book tickets here.
