The Budget is without doubt one of the most overrated days in British politics. Now that we are entirely at the mercy of foreign lenders, Saudi and Chinese investors, frightened Labour backbenchers and our own suicidal accumulation of debt, the idea that the British state’s economic conception of itself is anything more than a tragicomic fiction is laughable. Yet Budget day remains part of the elaborate amateur dramatics that constitute domestic politics. It is also, crucially, a key mechanism by which the government can make the lives of savers, taxpayers and those still brave enough to run a business significantly worse.

Kemi Badenoch had an annoyingly good PMQs

John Healey’s ‘Nero’ Budget was a missed opportunity

John Healey’s Budget in nine graphs

Today began with the usual theatrics – John Healey, who is privately considered to be a remedial chancellor, posed with the red box on Downing Street. This drama echoes the days when the Budget mattered, but today in the Commons proved much like everything else that this government does, that we are now in the grip of national triviality. 

The integrity of the event was instantly undermined by Healey choosing to open proceedings with a joke. At least that’s the most generous interpretation of his lavishing praise on his predecessor Rachel Reeves. We heard once again about glass-ceilings – ‘Britain’s first ever female chancellor after 800 years’, who, Healey added, ‘brought fiscal........

© The Spectator