Brexit is already wrecking our economy, and the Budget is the proof

Brexit has already turned the country from the world’s fastest growing developed economy into its slowest. Teachers’ pay, which didn’t get the mention that nurses’ pay did; student debt; Universal Credit – no sacrifice, it seems, is too great for the altar of the high priests of Brexit

The Chancellor’s proposals are the financial exercise of betrayal, and the best case anyone has yet made to exit Brexit (AFP/Getty)

It was a downgraded budget for a downgraded Britain.

Chancellor Philip Hammond might have served up just about enough in the way of gimmicks and extra borrowing to keep his job. But a couple of baby rabbits pulled from a threadbare hat couldn’t disguise the cancer that it is eating into the nation’s finances, and crippling his ability to direct resources to where they are desperately needed.

Brexit was writ large in the dramatic reductions in the independent Office for Budgetary Responsibility’s (OBR) growth forecasts for the next five years. They are highly significant because they are the numbers which Hammond uses to do his sums.

Brexit has already turned the country from the world’s fastest growing developed economy into its slowest. That is an established and indisputable fact that no Brexiteer posturing can obscure.

If the nonpartisan OBR is even close to being right about the future, then it will remain there. A horse that was once winning races in classy company, with the potential to enter higher quality races down the line, has been transformed into a selling plater flirting with the glue factory.

The UK is expected to grow at a torpid 1.5 per cent this year, then by 1.4 per cent, 1.3 per cent and 1.3 per cent before picking up to 1.4 per cent again.

And that, remember, is based on a benign global outlook. If the global economy sickens even a little, Britain will be dialling 999.

Part of the reason for OBR’s pessimism is Britain’s dismal productivity, and the negative impact that Brexit will have on it.

Billions of pounds are being chucked at improving it – the Chancellor increased the amount allocated to Britain’s productivity fund to an eye-popping £31bn. And yet the money appears to be having little effect before the fan is even hit with the Brexit … well, you don’t need to me to spell it out for you.

The latter appears to be a bottomless pit that Thatcherite Tories, the claimed guardians of fiscal responsibility, seem content to pour money into.

Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, David Davis (for as long as he’s around) and Stumbledore (Liam Fox, of course) got an extra £3bn allocated to protecting the economy from their madness, on top of the £700m already spent and the further £2.1bn being wasted on reorganising the civil service so it can cope.

The extra cash was a sop to the hardline Brexiteers before whom Philip Hammond chose to take a knee. The people who want the Government to set the country adrift in the Atlantic Ocean via the no-deal “option”.

Hammond tickled their tummies still further by saying he was willing to spend even more in that eventuality, one that would see the economy struggling to meet even the OBR’s grim forecasts.

We were told by Vote Leave that the economy would benefit handsomely from quitting the EU. Now? Apparently a bit of belt-tightening will be worth it.

As for the Brexiteers’ core promise, that £350m extra a week for the NHS? Their Government is instead going to deliver £350m to cover the entire winter. It won’t be nearly enough.

It shouldn’t be forgotten that Britain’s social care system is in crisis, which adds to the pressure the NHS is already feeling. It leaves people stranded in hospital beds because there is nowhere else for them to go.

Without Brexit, Britain would have higher growth, higher productivity, lower borrowing and the funds to address these issues, and more besides.

The problems with universal credit, which got a £1.5bn sticking plaster; teachers’ pay, which didn’t get the mention that nurses’ pay did; student debt.... I could go on (and on and on). No sacrifice, it seems, is too great for the altar of the high priests of Brexit.

The brutal act of self-harm they demand sees Britain taking the carving knife not just to its nose, but to its eyes, hands, fingers and toes. They are cutting at all of them to spite not just the nation’s face, but its limbs and its body too.

This is not me talking Britain down. This is reality. A nation of potential, one that had prospects and possibilities, is being betrayed.

The Chancellor’s Budget is the financial exercise of that betrayal. It is the best case anyone has yet made to exit Brexit.