Boxed in by Brexit, Chancellor has had to make a little sound like a lot

Bill Jamieson

0 Chancellor Philip Hammond holds up the famous red case as he and the Treasury team pose for photographers at 11 Downing Street before he delivered his Budget speech

Seizing opportunities; rising to challenges; Britain as a hub of enterprise and haven of creativity. Launching his Budget statement yesterday, Chancellor Philip Hammond pulled out every cliché to sound positive and upbeat despite the constraints of deficit reduction targets – and his own misgivings over Brexit.

He succeeded up to a point. Beneath the headline-grabbing announcement of stamp duty relief for first-time buyers south of the Border, this Budget bristled with measures to lift our poor productivity performance, boost our digital economy and spur business innovation and new investment. The further £2.3 billion for investment in research and development was a stand-out.

All this is designed to lift productivity and economic growth.

Only our growth rate, instead of rising, is set to fall well short of our long-term average (2 per cent expansion) for as far ahead as we can see. In what must rank as the gloomiest set of forecasts yet from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), growth this year will be 1.5 per cent, falling to 1.4 per cent next year, and to 1.3 per cent in the following two years. It only starts to recover to 1.5 per cent in 2021 and to