EVERY FRIDAY

FAIR PLAY to “Spreadsheet Phil” for a Budget that was far from spectacular, but which did the job of steadying the ship and shoring up Theresa May’s under-fire premiership.

Philip Hammond’s second Budget was never going to be a groundbreaking one, and his room for manoeuvre was limited, but the Chancellor needed a solid, gaffe-free performance to restore some confidence to Conservative MPs after a torrid few weeks in which the Government looked at times on its last legs.

Hammond will never be a natural performer in the House of Commons – and I do wish he would leave the jokes to Jimmy Tarbuck – but he delivered a confident and occasionally optimistic Budget that was strong enough to reduce Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to ranting incoherence.

It must have taken considerable courage for Hammond to do this, particularly as many had written him off after his disastrous first Budget speech earlier this year. You may recall that back in the spring Hammond’s big plan was to hammer the self-employed – overwhelmingly natural Conservative supporters – with big increases in National Insurance contributions.

Unfortunately, neither Hammond or anyone else at the Treasury had apparently read the Conservative’s 2015 manifesto which specifically promised there would be no such increases. Hammond was forced to junk the idea before the ink was dry.

Was it a chastened and slightly less cocksure Chancellor we saw at the dispatch box this week? I think so, but he was all the better for that.

And he managed to come up with a few eye-catching ideas – help for first-time buyers with major changes to stamp duty, an extra £2.8bn for the NHS, changes to Universal Credit to help people on benefits, and £3bn set aside in case of a no-deal Brexit, which looks increasingly likely given the mulish obstinacy of the EU side backed by a Fifth Column of Remoaners in the UK.

That should be enough to restore the swagger to Conservative MPs whose morale has been battered in recent weeks by two Cabinet resignations and Theresa May’s coughing fit of a speech to the party conference. Given the Government’s small working majority, and the way Brexit is dominating all political discussion, that is no mean feat – so I am prepared to say a cautious “well done”.

That’s the good news – but there were some very black marks in this Budget too, most notably the continuing inability to get a grip on public spending.

You may recall that back in 2010, shortly after the new coalition Government had come to power – inheriting a record deficit from Gordon Brown’s Labour administration – the then-Chancellor, George Osborne, pledged to balance the books by 2015.

That target was pushed back to 2020, and then 2025, and now we are told that we are unlikely to break even as a country until 2031 at the earliest.

The deficit – the difference between what the government spends and what it collects in taxes – is vitally important, and the Conservative record in this area has been one of miserable failure.

It matters because the more we borrow as a country, the more we have to pay in interest payments. As Hammond pointed out in Wednesday’s speech, debt charges are expected to rise to more than £44bn a year – more than we spend on the police or defence.

We need urgently to repair the public finances to withstand the future shocks that will inevitably come. If we can’t do this when the economy is growing healthily, as it has done in recent years, when will we? Far from “fixing the roof while the sun is shining” as Osborne promised seven years ago, the Government has been tearing out the roof timbers to throw on the fire.

But besides the practicalities, there is a huge moral problem here. By refusing to live within our means, and continuing to borrow to fund unsustainable spending, we are in effect stealing from our own children and grandchildren.

As Hammond said this week, we are passing “the burden unfairly to the next generation”. This is quite simply wrong and any decent government would address this with a lot more urgency than we see currently.

Still, if you want to see the deficit reduced, the Conservatives are the only game in town, because Labour’s answer to the debt crisis to spend and borrow billions more.