A boring day in parliament… because all the budget measures mentioned this afternoon were well trailed for days. That is before the spectacular leak of the full budget by the OBR at least 30 minutes before the Chancellor spoke. More radical ideas floated over previous weeks which had the impact of damaging investment plans were in the end funked by the government. It is in a mess.

A mess of short-term revenue grabbing measures…

I wanted this government to succeed because it is all we have currently got to protect the UK from a populist surge. Patience is now wearing thin.

Ministers don’t understand business and had no idea of the impact of raising employers’ National Insurance in the last budget which has hit growth and employment. Dividend income taxes have now risen in this budget further damaging entrepreneurship. The tax advantages of pension salary sacrifices have also been cut when there is an overwhelming consensus people are not saving enough for their pensions.

A sly dig at people living in large, valuable houses by essentially doubling council tax will probably backfire as asset rich, income poor house owners’ revolt. Councils will probably see little or any extra revenue. Meanwhile, council debt has soared to £7 billion due to rising special needs education and social care costs. This figure needs watching very carefully. A disaster is about to unfold as the government avoids any long term policy solutions.

Only the increase in minimum wage rates and gambling taxes are remotely good news.

Under this Labour government, longer-term growth forecasts are down, and inflation forecasts are up. A lack of productivity growth remains unchallenged. Oh dear, indeed.

It is a good budget for those on benefits, precisely the opposite of policies needed for encouraging growth. The cap limiting households on universal or child tax credit from receiving payments for a third or subsequent child is to be scrapped from April whilst there is no indication of new initiatives to get any of the 9 million inactive people of working age back to work. Neither Starmer or Reeves wanted this reversal, but they are now in hock to their revolting backbenchers.

Labour governments mostly tax and spend more, they have no idea of how to encourage aspiration and unemployment normally rises. No change there then. If only there was a credible Opposition called the Conservative Party, focused on building back a reputation for economic competence rather than Reform-lite rhetoric…

This blog has on several occasions covered the need for the government to do well to head off the threat of populism. Whatever your politics, unless you are a Reform UK supporter (this is not your type of blog, I suspect…), a bit of Labour success would be good for the UK from a number of perspectives.

That is why the lack of competence exhibited by ministers is so frustrating. Botched announcements on spending cuts, a failure to grip house building, the small boats crisis, any social care reform proposals kicked into the long grass. The list goes on with the addition this week that some dangerous prisoners have been mistakenly released from incarceration early.

The headline of this old political advertisement still seems relevant today…

And we are in the run up to the Budget which will surely make or break this government once and for all. There is a £30 billion deficit to fill and that means there will be no good news for anybody. As a small business founder, if I hear from politicians that small businesses are the backbone of the economy, I shall scream. Both Conservative and Labour governments have raised taxes on small firms, taken away incentives for entrepreneurs to take risks and smothered them in red tape. If Reeves doesn’t understand the ingredients for growth now, she never will. I am not optimistic.

Public spending must be reined in but Labour backbenchers don’t seem to have the appetite to make even minor cuts. There is a review of benefits being undertaken but it is not due to report for some while so not much expectation that cost savings will be found in this area soon. It is incredible to hear that one in five people of working age are not in employment and receiving benefits for one reason or another. This is not sustainable. Truckloads of cash are thrown at the NHS whilst doctors keep striking, but it has already been announced health spending will be ring-fenced. Local authorities are going bankrupt across the country as they struggle to recover from austerity whilst spending ever more sums on the private provision of social care.

So, more taxes on the rich, and short-term spending cuts which will probably be chaotic as there isn’t the time, before the next election, for thought to be given to strategic, meaningful targeted reductions. This should have been done long before now.

Farage has no solutions, the Tories are irrelevant, LibDems have nothing to say on economics, the Greens under their new leader come across as anarchists. Oh dear. We need Labour to succeed but expectations of them doing so are very, very low. If only ‘Abstain’ was a political party…