In one sense, budgets are all the same. A wheezing, limping race to the finishing bottom line. Exhausting but essential. Because behind the impenetrable mass of facts, figures and fulmination they are a defining pointer to what any government is doing. Or at least trying to. As our Political Correspondent Peter Spencer reports, this latest foray can be chalked up as a victory – but only on one front.
No question, Wednesday’s statement was decisive. By lifting tax levels to an historic high, Chancellor Rachel Reeves has aligned UK notably closer to the European model.
A sort of suck-it-up-then response to the widespread grumbles that our public services are rubbish compared to those across The Channel. You want something better? You gotta pay for it. Simple.
Little surprise then that bruised and cowering Labour MPs are suddenly feeling big and strong. Dead chuffed that they’ve prodded their leaders round to their way of thinking.
That’s the victory thing. Given that the party’s ascendancy at last year’s election has vanished without trace, they were readying for regicide.
But now, clearly, they aren’t. Or not for a fair few months, anyway. So both for Chancellor and Prime Minister, joined as they are unusually, at the hip, that is a result. End of.
As to how the Treasury plans to scoop up twenty-eight-billion extra pounds, nearly half of it will come from extending the freeze on income tax thresholds for three more years.
This sort of more or less sticks by the pre-election promise not to raise, er, income tax. Ish. So long as you squint a bit.
The bulk of the rest of it will come from a squeeze on pension pots, a new electric vehicle charge, upping duty on online gambling firms, a surcharge on properties worth more than a couple of million, and higher taxes for landlords.
Let’s get real here, the U-turn on disability reforms didn’t come for free, any more than the scrapping of the benefits cap for parents who’ve got more than two kids.
Other nicer bits came in the form of freezes on rail fares and prescription charges, an increase in the National Living Wage and a green levy waiver on energy bills.
Not like Ms Reeves was splashing it around, mind, bearing in mind cutbacks lined up for the Home Office, town halls and the Justice Department.
As to how this played outside the commons chamber, there’ll have been sighs of relief in Number Eleven that the city was pretty chilled about it all.
And though the Tory leader had a great day being frightfully rude – she does love a good barney – her attack had to be slightly dampened by the fact that it was her side that froze income tax thresholds in the first place.
Nonetheless, a largely hostile press will carry on being nasty, with the Telegraph leading the charge, bellowing: ‘It was a budget built on broken Labour promises, and mired in conspiratorial briefings and farcical leaks.’
They have a point about the briefings, and the leaks. Chancellors used to go quiet in the buildup to the big day. This time the nudges, nods and winks were sprinkled around like confetti.
Upshot? The whole operation looked cackhanded, especially as they let it be known that a full-frontal income tax rise was a cert. Only to scramble back to the bunker when the circular firing squad started cocking rifles.
Then there was the staggering home goal scored by none other than the ref, aka the Office For Budget Responsibility.
Instead of putting out the statement and background stats after the speech they accidentally did it in advance.
A brilliant heads-up for all those gagging to rip Reeves to shreds, and depressingly of a piece with all the other cockups in the runup.
The aftermath, meanwhile, is only really now getting going now. The rule of thumb is that there’s so much to take in at the start that the niggly stuff takes time to work out. Which is when the action really starts.
Who knows what bits of the package might get scrunched up and binned? The electric vehicle bit, for example, is looking tricky to turn into reality.
Plus there’s the as yet unquantifiable level of help, or heft more like, from noisy Labour MPs. They’re already having a hissy fit over Starmer’s biggie of a U-turn over workers’ rights.
Having promised faithfully before the election that employees would be able to sue for unfair dismissal from day one in the job, he’s now slipped that back to six months.
An awful lot better than the current two years, but still a definite cave-in to pressure from bosses. And the Business Secretary’s claim that ‘compromise is strength’ really isn’t going to cut it with the angry brigade.
As to how the budget itself is playing with the punters, that’s not looking too pretty either. The pollster YouGov’s been getting its skates on, and figured out that nearly half of us think it was unfair.
The only one that’s come out worse it recent years is the one that Lettuce Leaf Liz sprouted during her lightning in-out stop at Number Ten. The Truss try-on that nearly tanked the economy.
You can’t please all the people all the time, as someone once said.
It does nonetheless reinforce the point that the smiley-face red box ritual outside Number Eleven is the moment when chancellors, and by association governments, don’t have alibis. And outcomes stick in the public mind.
Ms Truss’s whoops-a-daisy is only one among many. Tory Chancellor George Osborne’s never quite lived down his so-called ‘omnishambles’ budget back in 2012.
And the last time basic income tax was upped, by Labour’s Denis Healey, has never been quite forgotten either. Even though that was half a century ago.
But for all the snapping, snarling, reasoned analysis and just plain nonsense we can look forward to in coming days, the vital factor will be something that Starmer and Reeves are praying for and promising. Growth.
Problem there being that that’s the one thing they aren’t in a position to actually deliver.
Not to say it won’t happen, simply that instead of pulling the levers that they can get their hands on they’re prodding buttons on a remote control panel. Brilliant when it works, infuriating when it doesn’t.
And a quick squiz over the boffins’ and nerds’ early take doesn’t make for wildly jolly reading in Downing Street. Notably what the widely respected Institute for Fiscal Studies has to say.
Stagnating living standards, it mutters bleakly, are ‘truly dismal’ next to the growth we enjoyed in the 1980s and 2000s.
Ok, you can hardly blame this government for that, but the sting in the tail is that these guys reckon that the budget has done little to put matters right.
Then there’s the Resolution Foundation think tank, which maintains that the freeze on income tax levels will dig a one-and-a-half grand hole in the average worker’s pocket by 2030. A broken promise there, surely?
To which Starmer arguably rather limply responds: ‘I accept the challenge that we’ve asked everyone to contribute.’
Rather calls to mind the payoff line in the wonderful old Marilyn Monroe movie Some Like It Hot.
When a male character’s a bit cross that the lady he was supposed to be paired off with turns out to be also a male, the bloke responds with the unforgettable words: ‘Well, no one’s perfect.’
Watch Peter’s report at peterspencer.org
Peter Spencer has 40 years experience as a Political Correspondent in Westminster, working with London Broadcasting and Sky News. For more of his fascinating musings on the turbulent political landscape, follow him on Facebook & Twitter.