Not a lot has been made of the quick turnabout in policy. Philip Hammond presented a budget with lots of facts and figures and within a week, the key economic policy – being sensible – is out of the window and the budget has a £2bn hole in it.
This is not the first time this has happened with a “fiscally responsible” conservative government. George Osborne – the man who can hold down any number of full-time jobs – has had to reverse key policies within days – he was the man who decided a £4.4bn cut in benefits was not acceptable (in 2016). And he presided over the “omnishambles” budget of 2012 when various VAT changes (including the pasty tax) were later scrapped.
The problem is not limited to conservative politicians, with Gordon Brown announcing in 2007 he was “cutting” the 10p tax rate – which meant a hike in taxes, which he had to balance by national insurance changes of his own.
But the real problem seems to be the deficit in reality. When chancellors talk about “reducing the debt” what they seem to mean is “not borrowing quite as much as last year.” When ordinary people and businesses talk about “reducing debt” they mean paying some of it back.
When recent conservative chancellors talk about being fiscally responsible, 
they seem to ignore the numbers and try to claim that labour chancellors borrowed irresponsibly when borrowing under 40% of GDP (2005 to 2009 on average) when in recent years borrowing is only now coming back down to that level of GDP.
The idea of actually paying some of the debt back is still a dream. The “red book” which has all the forecasts in it still shows the government borrowing more money every year to 2021-22.
Borrowing Ideas 