Well, which one? For there are two. The one in the UK has seen friction, apparently, between the incoming Prime Minister and her Chancellor. For the Guardian notes;
Downing Street rebuffed talk of a split between No 10 and No 11 over how to deal with the market reaction to the mini-budget, and denied that there was a row.
However, Whitehall sources said there was talk within the civil service of an argument between the prime minister and chancellor at the meeting on Monday morning.
Sky News said Truss had been resisting Kwarteng's suggestion that a Treasury statement was needed to calm the markets.
On the one hand the anti-Tory in me goes, excellent. Keep this up PM. Go your own way. Damn the torpedoes. And so on. On the other hand all this means so much misery on the ground that another part of me looks on appalled. Yet another part of me wonders at the political fantasy that this represents. How did seemingly adult people arrive at this situation where sterling has tanked in the first couple of weeks of their leadership.
As to the ROI Budget. There was none of the drama of the UK one. Much to be said for living with a pan-national currency, not that this one was every likely to trigger economic weather of that sort. The best comment I heard on that was from a friend who noted that there was nothing in it to address systemic issues. It's not that it's an awful budget - there are some good points - but it is a budget that deals with symptoms, not causes. In some instances that's understandable. To address the roots of energy cost inflation will take years, and in some aspects is entirely outside the control of the state in the short to medium term (though as was put to me, why not take energy supply into state hands?). But in other instances - as with the unwillingness to address housing using the weight of the state, one has to wonder. Do they truly appreciate what is coming down the track politically? That light up ahead isn't the end of the tunnel. It is vastly more likely to be the SF express. And that party won't make this mistake. But then perhaps it truly is a case that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are simply ideologically unable to address housing in a way that would provide clear tangible evidence that they had moved beyond market driven approaches.
The problem is that if this Budget seeks to ameliorate these issues and the public perception of them it is only half done. More, much more, is required. And if they won't do it, well others will, sooner or later.
Any thoughts on the best and worst aspects of the Budget?
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