Matthew d’Ancona: Everything was overshadowed by Brexit and bleak growth forecasts
The single most remarkable detail of this budget related to employment retention: namely that Philip Hammond has held on to his job. Had the election delivered Theresa May the authority she sought, another chancellor would have been standing at the dispatch box. But it didn’t.
This was an unusually comic turn from Hammond, speckled with jokes at the expense of Michael Gove, Jeremy Clarkson, the Labour party and himself. Renewed confidence?
Possibly. A psychologist might say that it was the counterintuitive levity of the doomed. This chancellor is far from flawless, but he has a clearer sense of the government’s true predicament than many of his more ideologically zealous colleagues.
The practical core of the speech was housing policy. In this strategic choice, Hammond sought to recognise the scale of the Grenfell tragedy and the issues of basic decency that it has posed; and to acknowledge the sense of intergenerational unfairness that was one of the engines of Jeremy Corbyn’s electoral success in June.
The measures to reduce, or waive altogether, stamp duty for first-time buyers are the first serious counter-offensive mounted by the Tories in search of the votes of the young. Note, however, that Hammond has obviously been nobbled by backbenchers worried about construction in their leafy constituencies: the proposed “revolution” in house-building will be launched in urban areas.
Extra cash for the NHS, for infrastructure, for schools, for universal credit: this was not a substance-free budget. But it was still completely overshadowed by the grim growth forecasts and the approaching economic meteor of Brexit. Hammond’s performance illustrated perfectly the difference between funny and happy
• Matthew d’Ancona is a Guardian columnist
Faiza Shaheen: He packaged cuts as a gift
Is something better than nothing?
Given the uncertainty of Brexit negotiations, this could have been the perfect opportunity to cast off the self-imposed austerity straitjacket and make some bold announcements to tackle low levels of investment and stop the demise of our public services. Yet we heard the same old commitments to debt reduction targets. On the flipside, the chancellor did commit more money to the NHS, although not as much as the £4bn requested by the head of the NHS. Should we be happy?
On housing, the issue that was the highlight of the budget – the commitment of funding and moves to ensure local authorities can build more homes – is welcome. However, the chancellor also recommitted to the help-to-buy scheme, which only inflates prices further. It also remains to be seen if this new housing will be really “affordable” or fall within the government’s warped definitions of what is affordable.
And how about young people? With the average young person now coming out of university with £50k of debt, the scrapping of stamp duty for first-time buyers doesn’t look like much of a giveaway. I suppose young people should count themselves lucky. After all, public sector workers heard nothing on whether they will finally get a real-terms pay rise.
The Conservatives have presided over seven years of cuts that have severely wounded our society and damaged our immediate and long-term economic prosperity. Hammond’s announcements were packaged as a gift, but felt more like a kick in the teeth.
• Faiza Shaheen is the director of the Centre of Labour and Social Studies
Jonathan Freedland: Hammond passed the political test, but this could unravel quickly
His first task, like a doctor having taken the oath, was to do no harm. After last year’s botched effort to extract more tax from the self-employed, Philip Hammond was on a final warning. Encircled by Brexiteers itching to remove the leading remainer in the cabinet, he could not afford even one more unforced error.
When he sat down, he appeared to have passed at least that meagre test – though he’ll know from the recent experience of Tory chancellors that even those budgets greeted warmly on the day can unravel once the small print comes into view. Hammond will only know if he’s survived this budget a week from now.
He read his lines well, with a higher jokes-to-substance ratio than managed by his predecessors. He gave away more than he took. And, of course, the big reveal was his scrapping of stamp duty on properties up to £300,000 for first-time buyers, which had his own benches cheering.
But these were silver linings in a clouded sky. His housing proposals, in particular, may look thinner the more time passes. He promised that Britain would be building 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s. That’s a long time to wait – it won’t come in time for the next election. And even then, it hardly represents a massive increase on the 217,000 homes Hammond claimed are already being added to the housing stock each year. The sum of money he allocated - £44bn – also fell short of the £50bn communities secretary Sajid Javid was said to be seeking, and much of it consists of loans and guarantees rather than the cold, hard, immediate cash that’s needed.
The biggest worry for Hammond is the wider economic picture. The growth and productivity figures were anaemic. The deficit – which George Osborne promised he would eradicate by 2015 – will still be there by 2023 at least. For a party that claims to be the custodian of fiscal rectitude and economic competence, that is an epic failure.
Hammond may have avoided tripping on any obvious landmines. But thanks to a weakened economy, and the prospect of Brexit, the battlefield ahead still looks grim.
• Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
Frances Ryan: This just means more cruel austerity
Philip Hammond’s earlier slip-up that there were “no unemployed people in Britain” foreshadowed a budget in which the Tories strained miserably to appear less wildly out of touch with a country facing its worst crisis in living standards in recent memory.
The chancellor repeatedly claimed that his policies would help struggling families but despite some positive moves – the construction of 300,000 new homes a year for example – much of this was simply undoing damage created by the government itself: a commitment to eliminate rough sleeping by 2027 is only necessary because it has more than doubled since the Tories came to power. Other moves were simply austerity continued. The seven-day wait on the catastrophic universal credit has been removed and advances made quicker and easier, among a £1.5bn package of concessions. But there is to be no pause to the rollout or it appears any softening of the brutal in-built cuts.
Ignoring calls from poverty charities, Hammond refused to lift the cruel benefit freeze, contributing to what will be another gruelling £12bn cut to the social security budget by 2020-21.
Nor was there any relief for disabled people and their families who are set to lose up to £5,500 a year by 2022 thanks to existing tax and benefit changes, or the 5.2 million children set to endure poverty over the next five years.
Hammond’s words can’t distract from the truth: as millions struggle to make ends meet, Theresa May’s government is about to further gut this country’s safety net.
• Frances Ryan is a journalist and political commentator
Polly Toynbee: Forget the details, only the big figures matter
On the tumbril goes, rumbling over the same old fiscal cobblestones. A welter of camouflaging little fillips fails to distract from the 2.5% loss of growth over the next five years.
Hammond’s “balanced budget” shows how little the Tories learned from the downward plunge that began with Osborne’s first butchering budget. Never in modern times has growth fallen under 2% for as far as forecasts can see.
In this perfect Keynesian experiment, here’s final proof that cutting into a recession worsens it. As UK growth and productivity fall towards the G7 bottom, everything is pinched and shrivelled by these state-shrinking ideologues. And Brexit hasn’t begun.
Even within their economy-strangling straitjacket, this government had plentiful choices. Why cut taxes for the rich and companies, or raise tax thresholds when most money goes to the better-off, if Theresa May meant a word of her “burning injustices” speech?
The universal credit improvement is a tiny shift, when recipients still lose 63p in every extra pound they earn. Why cut benefits yet deeper, to reach a record-breaking 37% of children made poor? Stupid question: that’s what Tories do.
The NHS got less than half it needs to stay afloat, billions less than even the Office for Budget Responsibility says it needs. Will pay rises for its staff match inflation, let alone stem the exodus of nurses and GPs?
Zero for social care: watch this winter.
More housing? Ten years to reach 300,000 is modest, with the first-timers’ stamp duty cut a small sop, dwarfed by the £10bn wasted on the help-to-buy scheme that pours cash straight into big builders’ pockets. Ignore Tory front page good news splashes: just remember how many announcements never actually materialise.
Rarely has any government side of the House of Commons looked so like a rabble unfit to rule, the party of economic safety, no longer. Yet Hammond preserved his dignity while walking the Brexit tightrope. His “global Britain” “full of new opportunities” might just assuage his foaming-mouth Brexiteer enemies, while he never quite abased himself to pretend that leaving Europe is anything but the greatest storm-cloud darkening every page of his red book.
• Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
