The Budget

 The Budget

The Budget used to be one of those eagerly anticipated events in the British calendar, a springtime ritual that would normally coincide with the first sound of the cuckoo, the magical manifestation of the tulip and the daisy and general optimism. We always knew it would make for unpleasant reading, watching and digesting the following day but we loved that moment when the Chancellor of the Exchequer would open the door of 11 Downing Street, battered black suitcase in their hands, smiling almost triumphantly at the details inside that suitcase.

For those of us completely unaffected by matters that we considered irrelevant to us, it was a moment frozen in time, completely bewildering and not of paramount importance at all. Both my late and wonderful mum and dad were smokers but never drinkers. But their two doting and loving sons and always respectful brothers, didn't seem to care that much although we did look at the family's living room curtains with a good deal of horror at times. The brownish-black cigarette stains were something of an eye sore but of course we loved mum and dad because they were the best and finest. 

But come Budget Day during the 1970s we all knew that Denis Healey, the Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, would emerge from 11 Downing Street with a hearty chuckle under his breath and all kinds of seductive goodies. Britain would not be destined to follow the road to ruination and the country's finances would be in safe and capable hands. Some of us, though, hated the smell of cigarettes because that was just repulsive, none of us would ever smoke, while booze and alcohol were strictly off limits. 

Yesterday though, you could almost hear the tumultuous and thunderous applause echoing around the streets of Westminster. It was an almost historic moment, a moment to hold the breath, to gasp in wonder and then the realisation dawned rather like some epic revelation that none had ever seen. Rachel Reeves had become the first woman Chancellor of the Exchequer and it was as if some Biblical figure had walked on water.

She looked happy, thrilled, honoured and privileged. She held up the red box and she could hardly believe what was happening to her. It must have felt like the weightiest responsibility that anybody had ever been entrusted with. The pressure would be both onerous and perhaps unbearable. It had been bad enough that men had been in charge of the country's finances for so many centuries but a woman-  what a daunting prospect and the reactions would be frighteningly stereotypical. Surely you couldn't trust a woman to hold onto the purse strings of Britain with any kind of fiscal prudence, efficiency and skill. 

But yesterday Rachel Reeves, although polarising opinion as everybody half expected anyway, announced the first bombshell. The central issue of the Budget would be the hike of overall taxes soaring by £40 billion. To the uninitiated and in the dark, £40 billion sounds so ridiculously astronomical that you imagined that the accountants and economists of the UK must have been shaking in their boots, trembling with shock and wondering whether the world would come to an end immediately.

We will only find out the more widespread repercussions of these financial punches to the ribs in forthcoming weeks and months, but it does sound painful and unnecessarily punitive. Besides, who knew we had £40 billion in the kitty anyway. The Tories of course played so many games of Monopoly with our monetary resources that at times none of us knew whether we were completely broke, destitute or not.

 Liz Truss briefly threatened complete bankruptcy and Boris was so caught up with a global virus that it was hard to imagine how any investment in the essential infrastructure of the country would ever be usefully felt at any time in our lives. So we just rolled with the punches, hoping that by the end of the week, the working man or woman would still be able to look at their bank balances and puff out their cheeks with blissful relief.

In the old days it used to be the case that only cigarettes and beer would be our only foremost consideration. Of course they'd slap an extortionate 20 or 30p on booze and smokes but then they always did. My late and delightful mother in law once memorably gave up the fags or cigarettes because they had become criminally expensive and her brothers followed suit. But they must have known that the rest of the country were probably making the same decisions.

The tobacco industry though got off fairly lightly yesterday with only a two per cent rising to 10 per cent hike while VAT on school fees and private school fees were hit equally as severely. The recent introduction of the Inheritance Tax meant different things to different demographics. But the hard truth was that the basic rate of this new tax would continue to rise quite significantly. A huge £325,0000 tax free plan would remain in action but then we were informed of a £500,000 rise to those whose estate is passed to direct descendants.

National Insurance contributions would be going up 15 per cent next April while Capital Gains Tax would be increased by 10 per cent to 18 percent. Five billion pounds would be coughed up for housing  and more luxurious apartments on every council estate that had been so obviously neglected for the last 60 years or so. So that was alright, wasn't it?

But then you thought of the essential services, our eminent and highly respected doctors and surgeons, our invaluable teachers, the policemen and women on our local high streets pounding the beat every day with little in the way of recognition and respect. You thought of the decaying Victorian schools with alarming cracks in the brickwork, science laboratories that had last seen a lick of paint when Alexander Fleming was a lad in shorts and then you thought of those classrooms. Of course they had been modernised and updated with the latest technological advances but then there were the books, the stationary, the pens and pencils, the maintenance of these noble buildings. What would become of them?

It is easy to be judgmental and full of knee jerk responses to the yearly Budget. We all know where we think our taxpayers money should be allotted, what exactly our politicians should do for a living rather than mess with our taxes, our wages, our vital income, our livelihoods. They were playing with fire. Of course they were and they must have been privately aware of the damaging effect they were all having on the country. 

And so today Britain takes stock of its finances once again and not for the first time, it must be added. Most of the ladies and gentlemen who take up their positions on railway Tube stations in London with those familiar pink pages of the Financial Times have seen this all before. They run their eyes over their stocks and shares in oil, steel, uranium, property and some on the gold bullion market. These are the people with the serious money, millions and billions to spend and country estates in Gloucestershire.

But today looks different. The first female Chancellor of the Exchequer has just spoken for the first time and for this reason alone, she must be acclaimed and congratulated. Budgets, of course, come and go rather like the passing of the seasons and, dare we say it, England football managers. But then the likes of Roy Hodgson, Terry Venables and Sir Bobby Robson were all excellent managers and never should be a derogatory word ever be uttered in their direction.

Still, Britain wakes up to a financial landscape that some will either heavily criticise and condemn or praise to the skies and wax lyrical about depending on where you happen to be. Rishi Sunak, the former Prime Minister, almost exploded with fury and righteous indignation.  Once again, Sunak insisted, the Labour party had led us all to hell in a handcart. Their taxes would just destroy the country overnight and how Britain missed the wonderfully patrician figure of Sir Harold Mcmillan because, as we knew, that under the Tories during the 1950s, Britain had never had it so good. Besides Britain, you'll always have enough in your pocket for a bag of chips and a soft drink when you come out of the cinema. Rejoice, rejoice.