May’s Budget war with Hammond
No10 demands last-minute announcement on schools after ‘uninspiring’ show from the Chancellor
THERESA MAY’S relationship with Philip Hammond was at breaking point last night as Downing Street took control of a last-minute Budget briefing amid fears that today’s financial statement will fall flat. No10 ordered the Treasury to rush out an announcement on schools after alarm bells started ringing over the lacklustre build-up to the Chancellor’s speech.
It came after a series of botched Budget announcements and a gaffe-strewn television interview by Mr Hammond at the weekend. One Cabinet source described it as “the worst Budget build-up in history”. Mr Hammond’s prospects of staying on as Chancellor now depend on him delivering a Budget that is far beyond what most of his Conservative colleagues dare to expect. One minister told The Daily Telegraph that Mr Hammond would have “no excuses” if the Budget flopped, while a former minister said his statement would have to be “spectacular” for him to have any chance of saving his job.
Mrs May finally appeared to have lost patience with her Chancellor last night after he fluffed his last chance to sell his Budget vision to the public. A preview of his Budget statement, released to the media yesterday in time for 10pm news bulletins and national newspapers, was described by Tory MPS as “uninspiring” and contained no mention of Brexit.
The Treasury insisted no policy announcements would be made, but just over two hours later it performed an about-turn and announced extra money for teacher training and maths teaching following an intervention by No 10. Mr Hammond will announce today that £177 million will be made available to promote maths skills, with schools and colleges receiving £600 for every extra student who studies maths at A-level. A further £42million will be spent on a pilot scheme to give teachers in underperforming schools £1,000 for training. In addition, £84million will be spent trebling the number of computer science teachers.
Although the announcement was welcomed, Conservative sources suggested the move smacked of panic in Downing Street, which had until then allowed the Treasury to retain control of Budget announcements. One source said: “The Treasury is just not very good at getting its message across and the past week has been no exception. They never seem to have any idea of what to announce, and when.”
A serving minister said: “They’ve cleared the decks for him, he can have no excuses. It is his Budget, he will stand or fall by it. There will be a regeneration reshuffle, and nobody sees him featuring in it.” A former minister said: “He is not a bloke who has a huge number of allies. He will have to have a fairly spectacular Budget to save himself. If he flops again he is done.”
Mr Hammond’s last Budget, in
March, backfired badly when he was forced to scrap a plan to increase National Insurance contributions following a huge public outcry.
The title of the Budget will be “Building a Britain Fit for the Future”. Mr Hammond, who has announced £80billion of extra investment in research and development over the next decade, will say that “for the first time in decades, Britain is genuinely at the forefront of a technological revolution, not just in our universities and research institutes, but this time in the commercial development labs of our great companies and on the factory floors and business parks across the land”.
He will also commit to making Britain “an outward looking, free-trading nation, a force for good in the world”, but the preview of his statement contained no mention of Brexit.
Leave campaigners said today’s Budget would be his last chance to prove he is a “Brexit chancellor” if he is to survive more than a few weeks longer. Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader, said: “Britain is leaving the EU and that’s what this Budget needs to be about. No more doom and gloom.”
The Chancellor’s build-up to the Budget was dominated splits with Cabinet colleagues and gaffes. Sajid Javid, the Local Government Secretary, suggested last month that the Government could borrow £50billion to invest in building new homes. The policy was subsequently rejected by Mr Hammond, who said there was no “silver bullet” to solve the housing crisis.
On Sunday Mr Hammond used his only pre-budget newspaper interview to announce plans to build 300,000 new homes a year – a target that had already been announced.
He also suggested on The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday that there were no unemployed people in the UK, a comment which he was subsequently forced to clarify.