By Andy Silvester
Cost, cost, cost: that will be the word of the day today. A tax cut will “cost” £5bn; a freeze will “cost” another £15bn. “Can Jeremy Hunt make the sums add up?” commentators will squeal.
All of it is absurd, and not just because a tax cut doesn’t “cost” a thing: it simply means less money available for the Treasury to tip into an unproductive public sector, and more left in Brits’ pockets to spend boosting the economy.
The sums involved in today’s budget, up or down a few billion, are rounding errors.
The annual furore over the budget is as unserious as the theatricality of the act itself.
Only fundamental reform of the economy, and more importantly of the private sector, will make the sort of impact so desperately required.
We’ll not be churlish: a tax cut is better for growth than a tax hike, after all.
But in the context of a public spending budget that continues to balloon, the sturm und drang over the Chancellor’s fiscal rules looks absurd.
Demographics are against Britain, but only if we allow them to become our destiny.
Increasing demands on the NHS don’t need to be more costly if the service is reformed to become more efficient.
Housing costs don’t need to go up because net immigration is positive if we build more houses in the right places.
Our future is in our control and yet politicians continually flub their lines, tinkering when they should be tearing the whole thing down and starting again.
Politics will always dictate economic policy and it’s naive to expect much more than a political budget later.
Perhaps with an election in the rear-view moreover will see the surgery required to get Britain’s economy match-fit, rather than muddling on.
