Quintin Jardine's blog

I’ve just had the displeasure of listening to the Chancellor of the Exchequer deliver his annual UK Budget statement, or rather listen to him deliver an hour-long election address. The whole exercise was a sham pure window dressing, with the bad news hidden out of sight and the public statement reduced to a series of headlines.  Still, there were a couple of items that held my attention.

The announcement of a tax disclosure deal with Belize drew great laughs from Darling’s side of the House. That’s the first time I can recall a Chancellor using a Budget statement to target an individual on party political grounds. Quite a precedent, but you can be sure that at some time in the future, it will come back to bite his government on the arse. The Tories aren’t the only crew with wealthy backers.

Then there was the announcement that 15,000 civil service jobs are going to be relocated outside London. That one always goes down well in principle; civil servants are popular whipping boys. But let’s look at it another way. Up to 15,000 people, 15,000 families, are going to be given a stark choice: up-root yourselves, take your children out of their schools and yourselves out of your circle of friends, and move to an area  not of your choice, or kiss your job, kiss your livelihood goodbye. But be clear, we’re not talking about the Whitehall mandarins here; we’re talking about the lower and middle segments of the operation, the ‘ordinary’ people. The top cats will still be kept handy, at their masters’ beck and call. That’s the social backlash of Bootstrap Bill’s throwaway, vote-winner, announcement. It’s the mark of the man and of the unelected, creatively and morally bankrupt administration to which he belongs.

The one upside of today’s pantomime is that finally the decks are cleared and we can have our election. May 6 is the chosen date, and I’m counting them down already. I’m not anticipating automatic change of government, but by God we need to send a river through the stables.