It is now clear that the focus of this government is on managing national decline, not reversing it. The Budget’s big headline – if it can be called that – of £100 off our ludicrously and unnecessarily high energy bills is all the evidence we need that this government’s approach is to create problems with one hand and then offer to compensate us for them with the other – all the while expecting our gratitude.

But for all the Budget’s uneventfulness, there was buried in the small print something more pernicious and revealing of this government’s priorities.

Is this the real reason Christine Lagarde is leaving the ECB?

Will we always have Paris?

The price consultants should pay for higher wages

Tucked away on page 118 of the Budget document, the Treasury announced that, from next spring, employers will be allowed to recruit certain foreign workers on lower salaries than the current rules permit. That is to say, the government is making it easier for businesses to rely on immigration rather than recruiting and training Brits.

Let us not forget we have a million Neets. While Alan Milburn beavers away on his long-awaited report into the youth employment crisis and the government pays lip service to its commitment to tackling it, Burnham and Healey have decided........

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