Can the Conservatives can deliver a Budget which works for Crawley today?

Once upon a time, there was an expectation that Governments did not leak budget announcements. Indeed, this expectation was so serious that even the suspicion that a Chancellor had leaked the contents of a budget it was grounds for resignation.

While the expectation is still there that pre-announcing a budget before it is delivered to the House of Commons is grounds for a reprimand from the Speaker, it’s hard to imagine anyone resigning over leaking its contents.

Indeed, since 2010, Conservative ministers have been increasingly unwilling to do the honourable thing even when found to have committed actual treason, with the notable exception of Lord Bates whose resignation for the mere ‘discourtesy’ of having arrived late to ministerial questions restored the belief that at least some of those governing us recognise the importance of acting honourably.

This time, the approach hasn’t even been subtle, the date of the Budget has been brought forward two weeks in order to enable the Government to cancel the Fuel Duty increase which is due to commence at the end of the month.

We know that the Government has been desperately looking for more headroom in order to announce tax cuts–which given the state of the economy, public finances, and overspending in giveaways last Autumn essentially isn’t there–with a cut in the basic rate of income tax being the most likely policy change, followed by cuts in inheritance tax, stamp duty and income tax thresholds.

If the headroom isn’t there, that still leaves them with a few options. They can follow Liz Truss’s example and make the announcements without showing how they will be paid, the outcome of that is likely to be a repeat of the market losing faith in the Government’s ability to repay its debt, consequently pushing up the cost of borrowing (a potentially vicious cycle) and undermining the bond market on which many people’s pensions depent. Alternatively they could structure it in such a way as the tough decisions around how to pay back the debt are pushed back beyond the General Election and leave it to whoever wins to either cancel the cut or have to find the money. Lastly, they could make cuts or increase other taxes to cover the difference.

It’s sounding as though this last option is the one they have gone with. Further cuts are something our now skeletal public services cannot afford, so any loss of funding is likely to be limited to inflation for those services. Instead, it would appear that they will be ending non-dom status, something the Labour Party has spent many years campaigning for and which the Conservatives have repeatedly claimed would be a disaster.

Of course, in adopting this policy, the Conservatives will be underlining Labour’s point that it is possible to fund public service improvements if you ensure that those who have the broadest shoulders pay their fair share of the tax burden, but as that Labour has shown how the money could be used to rescue our NHS, it would certainly be a missed opportunity to use it to pay for a pre-election tax giveaway.

Given that recent polling has repeatedly shown that the public would rather see funding used to secure functional public services instead of tax cuts (something which the lack of any bounce in polls following the tax giveaways in the Autumn Statement serves to further demonstrate), this is an odd priority to fixate upon and frankly after 25 tax rises since the last election, it’s hard to see why people who are being taxed £1,200 more under this Government would change their view of it just because they get a tiny portion of it back before an election.

Yes, we need the end of non-dom status, but we also need an end to tax breaks on private schools, and a real windfall tax on the energy companies, and we need that money to go towards building the UK’s public services back up to a level we can be proud of again.

More than anything, we need a return to the economic growth which has stagnated for 14 years under the Conservatives, meaning the average worker is £8,000 worse off per year than they would be under the growth rate delivered by the last Labour Government. For all the dodgy stats and minor giveaways, the real question today is will the Tories actually act to give Britain its future back or is it time for them to call the General Election and get out of the way for a party which will deliver.