This was a great “levelling down”, with two-thirds of Rishi Sunak’s giveaways in his spring statement going to the top half of earners. At least the chancellor had the good grace to abandon the words “levelling up” and “net zero”, and he barely even mentioned “pensioners” as he impoverished the already poor while giving a little bonus to gas-guzzling SUV drivers.
Why be shocked? God knows how many Tory budgets and mini-budgets I have covered in a lifetime mostly ruled by Tory governments, yet still, somehow, I can be taken by surprise. The sheer naked venality still takes my breath away. Surely a chancellor wouldn’t choose to do the wrong things, knowingly, when he has the power to set the country in a better direction?
How pathetically naive to think that Sunak would choose to ensure the blow didn’t again fall hardest on the weakest, as we face the worst hit to our living standards in our lifetimes after the triple blows of financial crash, pandemic and war. I did expect at least a token gesture. After all the years of George Osborne budgets, the effects of which I chronicled with David Walker in our book, The Lost Decade, what idiocy on my part to hold on to a scintilla of belief that the Tories wouldn’t keep doing the same thing over and over again.
“We can’t do everything” is the chancellor’s mantra, to go alongside blaming Putin for all the cumulative damage done since 2010. It sounds grownup and responsible, and it’s how Tory chancellors have deceived the public ever since Margaret Thatcher compared the national economy to a household budget and Osborne cleverly said the country has “maxed out its credit card”. Of course a chancellor can’t do everything! Let’s leave aside the macro-economic questions of how he could, of course, borrow more with a Bank of England quantitative easing programme that invests in everything that would deliver green growth. But within his self-imposed limits, the choices he made are obscene, as were Osborne’s. Food banks are flooded with families in need for the first time; court proceedings to evict tenants in England due to rent default are up by 43%; and the managing director of Iceland says food bank users are turning down raw food since they have no money to pay for the energy to cook it.
The chancellor’s own Office for Budget Responsibility spelled out to him with brutal honesty how much worse things will get this year. But still the poorest fifth of households are set to receive just £120, with the richest pocketing £480.
His disreputable priority is to stash most cash in a pre-election war chest – sweeteners and bribes to win another term that would again reward the haves and knock back the have-nots. However, maybe that’s not going too well this time judging by the response from the usually sycophantic Tory press. Even the Express front page on Thursday splashed, “The forgotten millions say: what about us?”, protesting at less than nothing for the old, whose state pensions will increase by only 3.1% despite inflation predicted to reach 8%, all while facing soaring energy and food bills. That’s odd, because the Tories rely absolutely on the pensioner vote. No doubt they’ll get their bung in election year – but will they be too disgruntled by then?
The Telegraph blasts, “The biggest fall in living standards on record” and even the Mail struggles to find positives, its front page demanding, “Now slash taxes even further” – angry that Sunak disrespected its campaign to “spike the hike” in national insurance. It does find a nurse who says the income tax reduction, which doesn’t kick in until 2024, is “brilliant”. She says, “It’s a good sign and should improve things.” She may be working too hard keeping the NHS going to spend much time on the small print, or she’d see her pay falling well behind prices, with any rise she gets taken from her local NHS funding, whose value, as with all public services, will also decline in this inflationary year.
The perpetual puzzle is why so many vote for this party that consistently does them down and rewards the wealthier? I could lay out the usual list of reasons found in polling and focus groups: it’s not only the economy, stupid. The Tories keep tugging on the Brexit rope, a patriotism meme, with Johnson disgustingly comparing Britain’s “freedom” from the EU with Ukrainians fighting for their country – Sunak tugged at the war in a dishonest ploy in his speech yesterday.
However, this shameful, shameless mini-budget may mark another stepping stone along the way to turning out these rogues, who these days barely pretend to do more for the country than try to cling to office, vying for future leadership even as they sink in the polls. Labour is shipshape, electable and ahead. The Tories will have divided and shipwrecked the country for long enough by 2024, when the money Sunak disgracefully withholds from universal credit and public services may not buy enough votes.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
