This time last year the chancellor said his budget would ‘put fuel in the tank of the British economy’.
Since then the economy has stalled, unemployment has risen and he’s borrowing £150bn more than planned.
So just what fuel has the chancellor been using? I asked at business questions on Thursday.
After their lamentable record on growth, what was needed this week from the chancellor was a budget for jobs.
But instead we got a budget that will be remembered for giving a huge tax cut to the richest one per cent.
I was astonished to learn from the chancellor that he was not a top rate taxpayer. So, as I said in the Commons, the hunt is now on for the name of his accountant who will surely find himself in spectacular demand!
And now that the chancellor has answered this question surely the rest of the cabinet should do so too.
I asked the leader of the House for a note to be placed in the House of Commons library listing which members of the cabinet have benefited from the cut in the 50p rate.
It was a budget in which the government made a number of wrong choices. It gave a £40,000 tax cut to the richest 14,000 and introduced a stealth tax on pensioners to pay for it.
Cuts to tax credits in April mean 200,000 households will now be better off on the dole than in work.
And with VAT increased, fuel duty going up and child benefit cut the budget leaves families £253 a year worse off.
As I said after the chancellor delivered his budget speech, it is not just the government’s choices that are wrong. Their philosophy is wrong.
We have a government which believes that the top one per cent will work harder if they are given a tax cut while everyone else can only be made to work harder by having their income cut.
So I asked if the leader of the House could now find time for a debate on that notorious phrase: ‘We’re all in this together’
I said if the Leader of the House were to find time for a debate on the phrase ‘we all in this together’ it is one the deputy prime minister could lead. Because he claimed that this was a Robin Hood budget.
Now, the deputy prime minister had a very expensive education at Westminster School.
I wonder what they actually taught him, because in my more modest school Robin Hood took money from the rich and gave it to the poor. Not the other way round!
This was a budget that builds unfairness on top of economic policies that have failed.
And on Wednesday the Tories and their Lib Dem partners waved their order papers for tax cuts for the richest one per cent and the cabinet banged the table when the health bill passed.
Wrong choices. Wrong philosophy. Wrong Ideology. Same old Tories.
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Angela Eagle is MP for Wallsey, shadow leader of the Commons and writes the weekly Business of Parliament column for Progress