Budget Preview: Chancellor Philip Hammond’s Impossible Task To “Square The UK’s Circle”

Jon Alternative Media, Blogosphere, Economy, Government

At lunchtime today, Philip Hammond will give the weakened Conservative government’s first budget in the new parliament.
Against a likely backdrop of downgrades for the economy from the OBR, the Chancellor will be under immense pressure to provide a sound plan going forward on many issues. As Statista’s Martin Armstrong notes, the NHS has already had its call for an emergency boost of 4 billion rejected, but there will need to be at least some answers to the problems surrounding health and public services funding.
As a new survey by ComRes shows, this topic is one of particular importance to the public, with 67 percent saying that there should be more investment in these services, with a slight majority even saying they would personally be prepared to pay more taxes to enable it.
Clearly, this is a highly significant budget and we would be greatly surprised if it’s considered a success. As we noted yesterday, Reuters columnist and former European economics editor of The Economist, Paul Wallace, believes:
Few British budgets have mattered as much as the one that Philip Hammond will deliver to the House of Commons on Nov. 22. The chancellor of the exchequer must shore up Theresa May’s perilously shaky government ahead of a vital Brexit summit of European leaders in mid-December. At the same time Hammond has to keep a grip on the public finances.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Nov 22, 2017.