A breathing space Budget? This is asphyxiation

If there were treats in John Healey s pre-Halloween Budget they were hidden in a gloopy soup of tricks. Forget the talk about a low-key, do no harm fiscal event; the Chancellor has delivered a mess of new interventions, subsidies, tax rises, quangos and complications against a backdrop of truly terrifying economic forecasts. Let s start with the politics. Breathing space now, hope for the future this was Healey s mantra. Boxed in by Labour s manifesto commitments and his tax-happy predecessor, Healey made a valiant effort to present a string of small interventions (and some big tax grabs) as a coherent cost-of-living strategy. Meanwhile, as predicted, big debates about welfare reform and defence funding were kicked down the road, subject to a series of consultations and reviews rather than decisions. When it comes to policy, just under 100 new measures were announced not all of them bad covering everything from data centre grid connections to (yet more) ISA reforms an