Thoughts on the Budget

I must admit, I had expected today's budget to be absolutely horrendous - the various bits of speculation I'd seen online had suggested it would be a near-perfect attack on every aspect of my finances, and that has proven not to be the case.

In the event, the effects we'll face are likely twofold: the freezing of the tax bands will mean paying slightly more tax than might have been expected... but in the way that frankly is unlikely to be noticeable, and the change to NI payments on salary sacrifice pensions means paying a little more in NI (though by my calculations is a pretty small increase). That's not horrible (though I can well understand that people living in very expensive properties, or those in London, people saving large amounts in cash ISAs, or people who use electric cars might feel differently).

And, frankly, the removal of the two-child limit for child support (and the corresponding "rape clause") can only be a good thing.

So, a cause for hints of optimism, I think.

However...

I was extremely bemused to see that the OBR published their report (by "mistake") ahead of the budget, meaning that the key analysis was all in place before Rachel Reeves even stood up to talk.

But more to the point, there was all the speculation beforehand, which as I said had given me the impression that this was going to be a horror show. The thing is, all that speculation involved a great deal of talking down the economy, of suggesting all manner of badness, which will have prompted a load of people to take actions that now are ill-judged (such as, for instance, the suggestion that the rules for pension lump sums were going to change, encouraging people to take them early, or the likely damage to investor confidence). There's a decent change that that very speculation caused damage to the economy.

Needless to say, this is something of a problem. (And, incidentally, I don't recall this level of feverish speculation about any other Budget. I don't like pointing to misogyny as the sole root cause of things, because it tends to be reductive, but in this case I can't help but think that it was a big part of it. Either that, or our right-wing press really hate Labour, which they do, and thought this could be a useful target.)

That said, I don't really know what could be done about that - I'm really loathe to advocate restrictions to the press without absolute need.