(And what on earth did they find so amusing?)
The House of fun, or the day they just couldn’t stop laughing
PHILIP Hammond can be unexpectedly cocky. His Budget speech was dotted with drolleries which he, for one, greatly enjoyed. A jest about Norman Lamont. A couple of snide swipes at Labour over its current difficulties. He wryly acknowledged his own nickname, ‘Spreadsheet Phil’, testament to his supposed brilliance with figures. He relished being at the despatch box. George Osborne could sometimes seem awkward during Budgets but his successor, with a stronger voice and less of that youthful gaucheness, was full of himself.
After all those years waiting for the Treasury, all those years when, in his dreams, he had envisaged lifting the Budget box outside 11 Downing Street, he had made it.
With a self-congratulating curl of his lips it was now he, Flatfeet Phil, who was able to ‘commend this Budget to the House’!
He began by noting that 24 years ago Norman Lamont had given a Budget which the then prime minister, John Major, had described as ‘the right Budget at the right time from the right chancellor’. Mr Hammond noted: ‘Ten weeks later he was sacked. So wish me luck!’
His neighbour, Theresa May, was generally on skittish form yesterday – at PMQs she had done some Ted Heath-style chortling at a backbencher’s sycophancy.
Yet I did not see her laugh at Mr Hammond’s ‘Lamont sacked’ remark. It is possible that she prefers others not to make light of Cabinet discipline. That is her turf. ‘Under the last Labour Government, corporation tax was 28 per cent,’ said Mr Hammond.
In a seemingly extempore remark he added: ‘By the way, they don’t call it the last Labour government for nothing.’
This amused his own side but struck me a prattish thing to have said.
It reeked of hubris and was likely only to irritate decent Labour voters who might
have been thinking of changing their habits and supporting the Tories.
Gloating is unattractive, particularly in a nasal-voiced Surrey multi-millionaire who is breaking a manifesto promise and increasing taxes on small business owners.
Mr Osborne was in the Chamber, not far behind Mr Hammond. The former chancellor did quite a lot of loyal nodding but his eyebrows almost knotted themselves when Mr Hammond started raising National Insurance rates for the self-employed.
The Tory benches fell silent during this passage, too – finally giving Labour MPs something to cheer. The Opposition benches were pretty quiet for most of Mr Hammond’s speech.
ANdy Burnham (Lab, Leigh) and a few of his mates shouted things like ‘wrong!’ and ridiculous!’ when Mr Hammond said he would extend free bus transport to poor pupils at selective schools.
Once or twice he stumbled over words, including the name of Jean-Claude Juncker. I wondered if Mr Hammond perhaps needed glasses. But would he ever wear them? He is a vain man – with little to be vain about. The most inventive of his gags came when he spoke about driverless vehicles, ‘a technology I believe the party opposite knows something about’. The truth of that remark would become apparent a few minutes later when Jeremy Corbyn offered his response to the Budget. Mr Corbyn read his speech off a prepared text which he had not bothered to alter during Mr Hammond’s speech.
It thus did not react to what had just been announced. He barely noticed the National Insurance whack and it was left to Labour backbenchers who spoke later in the debate to chastise the Conservatives for disowning their manifesto. On Budget day a proper Opposition has runners bringing in constant information from outside researchers, which the Leader of the Opposition and his Shadow Chancellor can quickly scan and consider including in their instant response. That was not happening yesterday.
during Mr Corbyn’s lacklustre speech I counted 30 Labour MPs who were playing with their mobile telephones or laptops. If even they will not listen to this Labour leader, what hope is there that the wider electorate will do so?
No wonder pink-tinged, tax-raising Mr Hammond is so presumptuous.