Had Jeremy Hunt been Chancellor in 1947 he would be out on his ear by now. That year’s Treasury moneybags, Hugh Dalton, made the now infamous schoolboy error of chatting to a journalist while on his way through Parliament to deliver the Budget.
Had the pair of them kept the conversation to the weather or football or the news British silver coins would no longer contain any silver, a career catastrophe might have been avoided.
Or if Dalton’s minder hadn’t run ahead to check there was a glass of water for his boss on the Dispatch Box he might have shooed the newsman away.
But the journalist being a journalist asked instead what was in the Budget. And he must have been gobsmacked when Dalton told him.
The Chancellor replied: “No more on tobacco, a penny on beer; something on dogs and pools but not horses, increase in purchase tax, and profits tax doubled.”
Both men might reasonably have expected this to be a private conversation. But the journalist being a journalist rushed to the nearest phone to dictate the story to his evening paper newsdesk.
Jeremy Hunt delivered the Budget this afternoonPAThe market sensitive information hit the streets 20 minutes before the Chancellor got to his feet and Dalton was done for. There was no alternative but resignation.
Labour PM Clem Attlee described him as a “perfect ass”, which, as character readings go, cannot be faulted for its accuracy.
Dalton’s disgrace led to Chancellors and Treasury ministers going into “Budget purdah” weeks before the financial announcement was due. No interviews, no drinkies in Commons bars, and invitations to swanky cocktail parties politely refused in case they let something slip and suffered Dalton’s fate.
A far cry from the way Hunt approaches these things. He couldn’t keep off the airwaves to speak about his Budget beforehand, and in case journalists missed those appearances the Treasury dropped daily nuggets from his budget box into our emails.
Not only that, but the Treasury trails contained naked political content, something supposedly neutral civil servants have studiously avoided in the past. A case of the tail wagging the Blob.
And when the Budget was delivered it was a bit of a head scratcher. More help for childcare providers but not what, 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence spending but not when, a vape tax of some sort but not now, and, of course, the much-heralded 2p off National Insurance rather than income tax.
With inflation still double the Bank of England's two per cent target, this was no time for tax cuts. Only if it falls over the next couple of months, as the Office of Budget Responsibility predicts, should they be considered.
But we’re in election year and political advantage comes before economic responsibility. So much for Hunt’s talk of prudence.
Nothing wrong with ensuring non-doms pay their tax in the country in which they live, but the £2.7billion raised should have gone towards the public good not on private goodies.
Labour would have spent that money on 2 million more hospital ops by paying doctors and nurses to work evenings and weekends, twice as many scanners as the NHS has now, breakfast clubs in schools and 700,000 more dental appointments.
Hunt and Rishi Sunak may be slapping each other on the back for having shot Labour’s fox, but it is a scorched earth policy, denying the next government the wherewithal to do things that would have really improved people’s lives. “A short term, cynical political gimmick,” Keir Starmer rightly called it.
And while Hunt did not cut funding for public services he did not increase it either at a time when they most need it. Instead he plans to make the NHS paperless - just as he promised 10 years ago without achieving it then either.
If you are languishing on a hospital waiting list and can’t go to work because of it, an extra £450 a year in NI cuts is of little use to you. And pensioners will not benefit either, a key Tory demographic who might now feel they have been abandoned by the party to which they were so loyal.
Hunt boasted about Britain’s growth being better than other European countries but he failed to mention the more important figure of GDP per head - the share of national wealth each of us get - which is lower than Italy, France and Germany.
And because the Chancellor will still not address the freeze in thresholds the tax burden remains higher than at any time since 1948 thanks to hikes in council tax.
So much of this Budget was briefed out beforehand that unlike Dalton, Hunt really didn’t have many secrets to leak - even while he delivered it.
Which should make us wonder whether Budget statements are required at all. They simply serve as an opportunity for a Chancellor to grandstand at a big, set piece event.
There will always be the need for fiscal changes before the beginning of a new tax year in April. But as for the rest of it, adjustments could be made on the basis of economic imperatives and job creation.
Hunt got little political credit for last year’s NI cut. So the electorate is unlikely to fall over itself to be grateful for this one.
Which means that when the nation eventually gets to go to the polls Hunt is likely to find more time to spend on the ballroom dancing of which he is so fond.
