This week's opinion: 7 November 2024

What a very strange process Budget making has become. Officially we still have Budget purdah. Readers who have sat on HMRC consultative committees will know that virtually all dialogue shuts down once the Budget day has been announced. Yet the secrecy which used to surround Budget proposals before the speech itself has long gone. This year both the speaker and his deputy made very pointed criticisms of the chancellor for the extensive revelations about potential changes to the tax system which had been made in the weeks leading up to the Budget.

Gone are the days when a Budget leak by a minister led to a resignation. The case of Hugh Dalton in 1947 is the more famous; but more interesting is that of the colonial secretary Jimmy Thomas in 1936. The story there though accounts differ is that he is supposed to have shouted ‘tee up’ on...