Why Osborne’s leaked his Budget

Tax cuts for 25 million people worth up to £320 a year. Millions of pounds of Government money to help first time buyers get on the housing ladder. Scrapping the 1p planned rise in fuel duty. Oh, and reducing corporation tax to its lowest ever level.

Listen to the leaks from this most leaked of budgets and you could be forgiven for thinking that there never had been a recession and we were not in the biggest public sector spending squeeze in more than a century.

But of course this will be no giveaway budget. The small print will ensure that most of us will be worse off next April than we are at the moment.

And thus the leaks. Mr Osborne and his advisors know that rosy façade of giveaways will not stand the scrutiny of the Institute of Fiscal Studies and other economists who will shortly be poring over the numbers.

They are getting the (small) good messages out first in the certain knowledge that by tomorrow the bad news will have drowned them out.

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