"Highly Political" Budget Contingent On Brexit Deal
30 October 2018, 10:14
Business journalist Declan Curry told Nick Ferrari that the budget is dependent on if we get the "double dividend" which Philip Hammond talks about when we leave the EU.
Declan compared the reveal of the Chancellor's new budget to the reveal in Jim Cohen's famous Bullseye quiz show, in which Cohen would tease "here's what you could have won" and then reveal a "dilapidated speedboat or something".
"That's pretty much what the budget reminded me of yesterday", Declan said.
"Philip Hammond was saying - here's the good stuff you could have if we get the deal on Brexit, if we get that double dividend", he continued.
"As Theo [Usherwood] was saying yesterday, it was such a highly political budget".
"It's when the detail comes out, that the devil is found... I would watch those borrowing figures because this budget was based on a whole range of assumptions of how much extra money the country is going to earn in the years ahead."
Declan expressed that "the idea that the government might work towards a balanced budget or even have a surplus in its day-to-day spending, that seems to have gone by the board."
