Brexit has created a political climate no budget can fix | Martin Kettle

Philip Hammond’s efforts are mostly futile. Old party loyalties are now torn and the Tories and Labour are in denial

Former chancellor Ken Clarke writes in his memoirs that in British political history there is nothing so dead and forgotten as old budgets. That must be reassuring news for Philip Hammond. The current chancellor’s sticking plasters this week are best understood as a far from glorious 21st-century application of Harold Macmillan’s advice to Tory chancellors that “we must do something, or else the socialists will promise everything”.

This short-term approach lay behind the measures on stamp duty, universal credit, the NHS and the regions. But Wednesday’s modest handouts were dwarfed by the historic slowing of growth, and the consequently falling real wages and living standards over which Hammond presides. These will shape British life in the coming decade far more than any of this week’s budget measures. None of Britain’s political parties have the measure of this yet.

Related: Corbyn has seen the light on Brexit. Now he’s taking the fight to the Tories | Polly Toynbee

The Tory right are in fanatical mood. They don’t care much who gets in their way or who they offend

Related: The ‘millennial railcard’ shows the utter disdain the Tories hold us in | Ellie Mae O’Hagan

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