Hammond’s Budget: will it save him?

“A successful Budget nowadays is one that doesn’t fall apart after a week,” said Fraser Nelson in The Daily Telegraph. By those standards, Chancellor Philip Hammond’s second Budget last week was just the job. Unlike the general election, the Tory conference or the March Budget, it did not end “in disaster”. Hammond delivered a series of careful compromises. There was more money for house-building, but Theresa May “was granted her wish on protecting the green belt”. By cutting stamp duty for first-time buyers, he offered “a much-needed overture to the young”. Yet there was also money to prop up the NHS and the universal credit benefit reforms. Hammond seemed to have saved the Government’s credibility and “his own career”, which was teetering on the brink, said Tim Shipman in The Sunday Times. As one minister put it: “It was the first week since the election debacle that we have looked like a government.”

But the Chancellor could only really offer “sticking plasters”, said Martin Kettle in The Guardian. His “modest handouts” were dwarfed by the big story: “the historic slowing of growth, and the falling real wages and living standards over which Hammond presides”. He didn’t even mention some of the biggest “political hot potatoes”, said Henry Mance in the FT. There was not a word on the vexed subject of social care, seriously overstretched in much of the country, or on public sector pay, which, since 2010, has been first frozen and then capped at 1%.

Hammond gave “just enough to all of his critics” to buy himself some time, said Allister Heath in The Daily Telegraph. His Tory Eurosceptic foes, for example, got £3bn over two years to prepare us for leaving the EU, “allowing Mr Hammond to claim he is taking Brexit seriously”, despite his scepticism on the issue. What his Budget lacked, in the face of the worst growth forecasts in recent history, was any kind of vision. We seem to be facing “an economic emergency”. So why didn’t the Chancellor announce “an urgent dash for growth”, by offering “dramatic” tax reforms? Hammond’s critics seemed to want a Budget that would see Britain come “steaming out of the EU” with all its problems fixed, said Janan Ganesh in the FT. Given his limited room for manoeuvre, that was never going to happen. He has done enough to survive, for now. “The best guess is that Mr Hammond’s enemies will lay off him for the rest of the year and regroup at his next crisis.”