It's a steady as you go, do nothing budget

I was tempted to call it a joke budget by a joke chancellor.

It is based on highly optimistic assumptions. It forecasts incredible increases in public borrowing. The only measures that could help to stem the massive public debt are small and insignificant - efficiency savings they told the Tories a year or two back to be unrealisable, a tax hike on highest earners that will produce little extra revenue because of legitimate ways of avoidance, plus the annual small attack on fuel and drink prices. (In March government income suffered the largest reduction ever recorded, - things are getting rapidly worse, and may explain why recently the Treasury has had to sell much more government stock than had been expected.)


It's almost as if the Chancellor is ignoring his projection of public debt. (These forecasts, of cumulative annual debts of nearly £700 billion over the next 5 years which will take the UK National Debt from 40% of GDP to may be as much as 100% in this time, seem to have mesmerised the Chancellor, because he seems to have done little to change all this.)

We may be relieved that he seems to have faced down G.Brown, because his spending parcels are small or have been already announced. Unfortunately, while he has accepted the 1970's dictum of James Callaghan that "we cannot spend our way out of recession" he seems to have subscribed to another, which says "We can borrow our way out of recession".

It is clear what he is doing - avoiding pain and passing the burden on to future generations. Our children, already facing the lack of power generation because of government dithering, the time bomb of pensions for an ageing population, a swollen public sector with over-generous pensions and PFI redemption, will be called on to face Brown's legacy as well.

But at least Tories will not have to face the false claim of "do nothing" in the future, as this will rebound on Brown and Darling.