Tax cuts scraped from an empty barrel distract from a tetchy Budget that signals a bruising election year to come

SO Jeremy Hunt has fired the starting gun on the election campaign with a highly political Budget. 

There was lots of shouting, but with the cupboard bare, not as many giveaways as a Chancellor would have liked on the eve of battle.

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As he delivered what will likely be the last Budget before Britain goes to the polls this autumn, the glum faces behind him would suggest Tory MPs did not think it would be enough to turn around the Conservatives bleak numbers.

Even with some tax cuts, the problem the Government has is the tax burden still remains at the highest level since 1947.

And nobody really thinks that will be going down rather than up under Labour.

On top of that, the cold hard numbers are hard to spin. 

The small print of the Budget shows an extra £186.6 billion in stealth taxes over the next five years: more than double what the combined £105.4 billion savings from the combined tax cuts last November and today.

Also painful is the OBR’s prediction that net migration is going to stay at around 300,000 indefinitely and Tory tax changes have actually made Britain’s workshy issues worse.

With more people being dragged into higher tax bands, it turns out fewer people are bothering to work harder.

But the shape of the Tory manifesto is coming into sight, with the abolition of National Insurance clearly going to feature as a flagship election issue.

The dual taxation of wages through NICS and Income Tax has been a long running quirk of our complex tax system, but abolishing it completely would be eye-wateringly expensive.

That said, Hunt has reduced it by 4p, down to 8p in the pound on earnings in just six months, hence why he is dangling the prospect of phasing it out completely over the five years.

But given there are huge bills coming down the path for national security, massive compensation payouts, and sustainable public spending, is that loss of Treasury revenue really credible? 

I suspect we will spend a large part of the election campaign arguing about that.

Hunt peppered his hour-long speech with attacks on the opposition parties, and countless name checks – and real cheques – for key marginal seats the Government hope to save at the election.

Given how many times he mentioned his own seat in Surrey and the vicious pop at the Liberal Democrats who could oust him, its clear the Chancellor is as worried about his own seat as he is about anyone else’s.

It was the tetchiest Budget I can remember, with countless interventions from the Deputy Speaker needed after Labour heckled their way through the measures.

If this is the shape of the election campaign to come, it’s going to be a very long year…

This post first appeared on thesun.co.uk