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Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

My hon. Friend is ahead of me. Their accomplice, the right hon. Member for Norwich, South described the Chancellor as ““deluded”” and said of him:"““It’s a controlling thing. He thinks he has to control everything””." I have still not finished with the Chancellor’s colleagues—there are so many. What about the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whom the Chancellor could not even bear to name-check in his Budget speech? The Secretary of State said that the Chancellor would make ““a—blank—awful Prime Minister””. It is not just all those colleagues. No less a person than the former Cabinet Secretary and head of the civil service said of the Chancellor—well, he said many things but I shall quote just one—that he has"““a very cynical view of mankind and his colleagues…The surprising thing about the Treasury is the more or less complete contempt with which other colleagues are held.””" We are of course all waiting for the Home Secretary to come to the House to dispute that version of events. The cynic of today cannot be the change we need tomorrow. The dealer in contempt cannot be the bringer of optimism and hope. The grim-faced commissar in the Treasury cannot be the wave of the future. If the British people want the economy to go in the right direction, if they want to share the proceeds of growth, if they want Conservative policies, they will vote for the real thing. The Chancellor could have gone so much further. He could have made it a Budget for the NHS. He did not. He could have made it a Budget for marriage. He certainly did not. He could have made it a Budget for raising green taxes as a proportion of tax. He did not. He did none of those things. This was the Budget in which the Chancellor ran out of ideas and time. If he wants a general election, we say—bring it on.