At long last, the Tories have unveiled the final Budget of their 2010-2024 government – and what a sad example of political opportunism it was!

Chancellor (for the moment) Jeremy Hunt was widely expected to use it to sabotage a future Labour government by imposing tax cuts for no good reason and then challenging Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves to explain which taxes she would restore to pay for Labour’s planned economic programme.

And what vital public services does Hunt propose to end? It was unlikely we would ever be told because nobody cares; he won’t have to think about it if there’s an election soon.

Fair play to Labour neoliberal Angela Eagle for using Prime Minister’s Questions to ask which Tory achievement prime minister Rishi Sunak views with the most pride – the highest taxes since World War II, or the longest period of wage depression since the Napoleonic War.

Sunak responded by citing his damp squib furlough scheme that he contends kept jobs safe during the Covid crisis. He didn’t respond on the issues Eagle mentioned because he didn’t have to; they will be for someone else to tackle.

Hunt was wheeled on at 12.30 and promised permanent tax cuts – so our expectations were proved correct.

He started by referring to people on Universal Credit who have to take out loans – falling into debt by so doing – while waiting for their claims to be approved. He’s increasing the repayment period to four months. Big deal! They shouldn’t have to take out a loan in the first place and only have to do so because the Tories impose a five-week delay on payments.

He’s extending an alcohol duty freeze – it was due to rise by three per cent this year. But will prices stay the same or will manufacturers and pubs simply raise their prices and take higher profits.

He’s extending the fuel duty freeze as expected, maintaining the 5p cut. He reckons it will save the average driver £50 next year – but will it? Fossil fuel giants and supermarkets are also expected to raise prices anyway and take the cash as profit.

The Household Support Fund to support people on low incomes is being extended for six months. One must take it that this is in the absence of any plan to improve household incomes on a permanent basis.

He referred to the National Debt, saying it will fall to “just” 92.9 per cent of GDP in 2028-9. It’s meaningless; the debt was 250 per cent of GDP at the end of World War II and Clement Attlee’s – socialist – Labour government of 1945-51 ushered in a period of expansion that had not been seen before or since.

He said the economy is set to grow faster than similar countries; nobody cares. Where is the money going? It isn’t going to the people who will use the money but to the Tories’ rich friends – who hide it in banks.

Hunt claims his government is providing more investment, more jobs and better public services.

On investment, he says businesses are investing £30 billion more than during the last Labour government. Gosh. What’s that after inflation?

He cutting investment taxes for businesses by more than £10 billion – money that will go to shareholders and CEOs and won’t do the rest of us any good at all.

He’s providing £200 million to extend the Recovery Growth scheme for small businesses. And he said he’d increase the VAT registration threshold to £90,000, taking thousands of businesses out of paying VAT – another loss to the Treasury, although possible a benefit to the economy, depending on how those small businesses spend the extra cash.

He announced new devolved powers to local areas to support projects there, despite claims of corruption in at least one project that is already running.

He says the government is on track to deliver the building of a million new houses during the current government. Strange – the news has been full of stories about developers delaying building work.

He’s giving £100 million of Levelling-Up funding to support “cultural projects” in communities. What will be the knock-on effect for the economy?

He says the UK has a huge innovative technology economy. If that’s true, why have wages stagnated over the last 14 years? Why has the economy as a whole stagnated too? If these industries are doing so well, why has the government not intervened to ensure the benefits are spread as widely as possible?

He says the government will explore how people can take their pension pots with them when they change jobs. This would be good – but This Writer won’t hold his breath waiting for it.

Turning to other growth industries, Hunt refers to nuclear energy – which is a contradiction in terms as nuclear energy is highly-polluting.

In the creative industry, he’s increasing tax relief for visual effects in movies, and 40 per cent relief on film studios’ business rates. These are expanding industries – soon to be second only to Hollywood in the world, Hunt says. Why is he cutting their taxes when they are clearly doing fine and well able to pay? This is economic sabotage.

He announces new tax reliefs for theatres, saying this should be of particular interest to the Shadow Chancellor who specialises in acting like a Tory. This is a jibe that should strike home – but it renders all his talk of higher taxes by Labour hollow; Labour is a Substitute Tory Party.

Oh, there’s investment in AstraZeneca, the drugs firm that developed one of the controversial Covid-19 vaccines. With questions unanswered about the effect of the vaccines, is this wise?

Public services: He refers to investment in 20,000 police officers halving burglaries and violent crime – which is a lie. The Tories cut police by more than 20,000 and numbers haven’t recovered.

He says spending on public services has increased – by one-third, in real terms, in the NHS. Where has the money gone, then? We’re not seeing it in provision.

Oh – he says the money needs to be used wisely. He’s keeping a planned one per cent growth in real terms, but wants to “reform” public spending.

In the NHS, he’ll spend £3.4 billion to modernise IT systems in order to unlock £35 billion by slashing the time lost in form-filling, carrying out operations and reducing missed appointments. In fairness, that seems good. How much of it will be lost in private-sector profits?

Apparently the NHS will have nearly £6 billion in additional funding. Why, then, is there no more money for junior doctors who earn only slightly more money per hour than the bouncer at This Writer’s local pub?

The Chancellor has been mentioning lobbying by fellow Tory MPs; this is election-year campaigning – he’s trying to flag them up as useful for their communities. But are they? Who lobbied those MPs for the measures he has announced and how will they improve living standards among the rest of us?

Taxes: Hunt says the money we earn doesn’t belong to the government but to the people. This is nonsense; money is the oil that lubricates the economy and governments always control the amount we have because they control the amount we are taxed.

To prove this: Hunt went on to announce taxation of smoking and vaping, in order to discourage it by forcing smokers to lose more of their cash. See how it works? The money you keep is always dependant on a government’s priorities and that is why the richest people in the UK have increased their wealth massively over the last 14 years.

Non-dom taxation has been a political football in the run-up to the Budget. Hunt is abolishing the current system – as expected, to derision from the Opposition benches. He’ll replace it with a “residency-based” system. New arrivals from April 2025 will not have to pay tax for four years, but from that point onward, they’ll pay the same taxes as the rest of us.

Finally – the biggest announcement was a cut of two per cent in National Insurance – from 10 per cent to eight per cent for employees, and from eight per cent to six per cent for the self-employed.

It’s a £900 cut for employees and £450 for the self-employed (showing how those of us who work for ourselves are struggling?) – but what will be lost as a result?

He didn’t say. This is a Budget that is heavy on the tiny details of individual funding announcements and light on the details of public services that will be cut.

Oh, and I’m hearing that the overall tax burden is still rising because tax thresholds – the amount of earning that people can do before paying tax – are still frozen. So much for the “tax-cutting budget”!

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