The Budget should have been brave, but instead it was totally useless says Carole Malone

What was predicted to be the Tories’ last Budget before they get booted out should have been like Custer’s Last Stand – big, brave and fearless. Just like those soldiers at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, who knew they were done for but went down fighting anyway. That’s what the Tories should have done with a Budget that should have been one last revolutionary stand, to remind us why we should all vote Tory at the next election.

But it wasn’t. It was a safe, steady-as-you-go Budget – fine and dandy if your country is on the up but totally useless at a time the British people needed to see big ideas, big plans, something that after years of austerity would lighten their financial load.

But so cowed were Hunt and Sunak by the catastrophically incompetent Office For Budget Responsibility, whose wildly inaccurate predictions would, as Jacob Rees Mogg said, “make Michael Fish blush”, this Government went down not heroically, not fearlessly like Custer’s soldiers, but whimpering about how responsible they were being.

This budget was their swansong – a limp-wristed attempt to woo younger voters while betraying the very people who might just have got them re-elected.

First, there were the pensioners, eight million of who, thanks to Mr Hunt, will now be £1,000 a year worse off.

And then there are those people who still love this country enough to want to see it properly defended.

Shockingly Sunak and Hunt didn’t give a single penny to Defence even though the world has never felt more dangerous. Even though the chatter of war has never been louder. Even though the lunatic Putin – who some of our own political leaders have compared to Hitler – is threatening to drop a nuclear bomb on anyone who stands in the way of what he wants to do. Oh, and he wants to put them into space as well.

And just to make matters worse, this week a major new report says the military faces a black hole of up to £29billion. Sunak and Hunt did beggar-all about all that, despite the fact that for years our military leaders have been screaming about the impending threat just like Churchill did in the 1930s. But at least Churchill recognised the threat.

Today’s politicians are too thick to see it.

And for those who say we don’t need to spend money on weapons because technology means wars will no longer be fought hand-to-hand – just look a few miles east to Ukraine where the worst war in Europe since 1945 is raging and soldiers are very definitely fighting hand-to-hand. Shamefully this Government spends just one FIFTIETH (2%) of its national income on Defence.

We have the smallest army since Napoleonic times – just 76,000, which is half its number back in 1990. The RAF is being forced to mothball fighter squadrons and the Navy can’t put a flotilla together to protect shipping in the Red Sea. Yet Hunt and Sunak decided to spend what little money we had on trying to stuff up Labour by nicking some of their policies (few of which were even close to being Conservative policies) and blatant electioneering.

God knows I don’t want Starmer in charge because I have no doubt he’ll make everything worse. But this Government has wilfully thrown away the support and loyalty of voters.

Worse, it’s completely blind to the threat in our midst. Or do they just not care because they know that this time next year they won’t be in power and Britain’s security won’t be their problem?