:00:00. > :00:00.the winner gallops back to greatness at Cheltenham three years after a
:00:00. > :00:00.heart problem threatened to end his racing days. That's all in Sportsday
:00:07. > :00:35.in 15 minutes, after the papers. Hello and welcome to our look ahead
:00:36. > :00:38.to what the papers will be bringing With me are Isabel Hardman,
:00:39. > :00:41.assistant editor of the Spectator, and Ben Chu, economics editor
:00:42. > :00:43.of the Independent. Tomorrow's front pages, the FT says
:00:44. > :00:48.that George Osborne attempted to sweeten bleak economic news
:00:49. > :00:51.in a "safety-first" Budget. Osborne
:00:52. > :00:53.sugars the pill is the Daily Telegraph's take, as it reports that
:00:54. > :00:56.Britain will become one of the first
:00:57. > :00:58.countries in the world to introduce a sugar tax on soft drinks.
:00:59. > :01:05.The Independent says that
:01:06. > :01:08.the tax did not hide the ?55 billion hole
:01:09. > :01:10.in the public finances. The i reports that Jeremy Corbyn lashed
:01:11. > :01:15.out at "six years of failures and unfairness
:01:16. > :01:22.in his Budget response. A sweet and sour Budget
:01:23. > :01:24.is Metro's verdict. The Daily Express says there was
:01:25. > :01:31.outrage from Brexit campaigners over what it
:01:32. > :01:33.calls a pro-EU Budget. The sugar tax formed part
:01:34. > :01:36.of a budget that raided big business to fund giveaways
:01:37. > :01:38.for middle-class workers and savers, the Daily Mail calls the budget
:01:39. > :01:49.George's Awesome Gamble. This is the eye-catching
:01:50. > :01:52.announcement of the Budget. It is a controversial measure but it is
:01:53. > :01:56.clearly what he wanted to be on the front pages because it knocks off
:01:57. > :02:00.some of the more sour bits of news which were in the Budget today. It
:02:01. > :02:05.is also another way for him to suggest he has a kind of moral
:02:06. > :02:08.mission as a politician, he wants to help the next generation and look
:02:09. > :02:16.his children's generation in the eye. And the Sun don't seem
:02:17. > :02:20.massively keen on it in their coverage. I do like their front
:02:21. > :02:23.page, not necessarily because I agree with their criticism of the
:02:24. > :02:29.sugar tax but they have the metaphor right. A lot of papers are saying a
:02:30. > :02:35.spoonful of sugar from the Chancellor, when actually he is
:02:36. > :02:40.taking away the sugar, which is what they eat mean with their mockup of
:02:41. > :02:44.Dizzee Rascal. They have captured the essence of what he tried to do
:02:45. > :02:50.well although they disagree with it. This will raise about ?500 million a
:02:51. > :02:54.year at its peak, according to the Treasury's forecasters. It is not
:02:55. > :02:59.that material in the scheme of things, in the scheme of these big
:03:00. > :03:04.deficits which have opened up as a result of these latest forecasts and
:03:05. > :03:09.yet all the papers are leading with it so quite a good result for the
:03:10. > :03:14.Chancellor in that respect. People say it has been tried elsewhere and
:03:15. > :03:18.hasn't worked. It is interesting because it was introduced in Mexico
:03:19. > :03:21.and campaigners on both is sides save either didn't or did work and
:03:22. > :03:26.there seemed to be all sorts of bits of evidence that support their
:03:27. > :03:29.thesis. I suppose it is one of those things that if it works it is a good
:03:30. > :03:35.thing, I am slightly ambivalent towards it if it works. But it
:03:36. > :03:39.depends what it means by worked, it won't solve childhood obesity. You
:03:40. > :03:43.can't test whether it works in reducing childhood obesity for some
:03:44. > :03:54.time in the future. And it is not the only fact. -- factor. The
:03:55. > :03:57.question of what the consumption of sugar would have been in the absence
:03:58. > :04:00.of this tax is difficult to prove one way or another. That is why you
:04:01. > :04:06.get these disagreements about what is happening in Mexico. Moving on to
:04:07. > :04:11.the Daily Mail's coverage, again we have the Chancellor dressed up as
:04:12. > :04:19.Dizzee Rascal on the Sun, I'm not sure who he is dressed as here. Is
:04:20. > :04:22.that some film reference we have missed out on? He is sort of wearing
:04:23. > :04:31.a dark bowtie and a velvet looking jacket and is obviously in a casino,
:04:32. > :04:35.he has put his chips on... Well, he has his chips ready to play. They
:04:36. > :04:39.seem to like the Budget, the Daily Mail, they say it is great for
:04:40. > :04:45.Middle England, helping savers, small businesses. The big issue for
:04:46. > :04:48.them is taking people out of the 40p rate of tax they have been
:04:49. > :04:53.campaigning for but what they want to draw attention to is the
:04:54. > :04:57.optimistic looking sons, which is an interesting line for the Daily Mail
:04:58. > :05:02.to take given it doesn't really play into any of their big concerns --
:05:03. > :05:07.interesting looking sums. They are right in the sense that the surplus
:05:08. > :05:11.which the Chancellor now has pencilled in for 2019/20 which is
:05:12. > :05:18.what he needs to meet his very, very inflexible fiscal mandate is only
:05:19. > :05:24.achieved I unspecified spending cuts and a bit of jiggery-pokery at the
:05:25. > :05:27.accountancy when he measures tax. And if the economy deteriorates a
:05:28. > :05:32.bit further, which it might well do, that could be blown away further.
:05:33. > :05:37.They are right that it is optimistic to believe he will necessarily get
:05:38. > :05:39.that surplus at the end of the decade. I thought the strangest
:05:40. > :05:42.thing about the Budget was that having talked about how terrible it
:05:43. > :05:46.was going to be and how many cuts he was going to make, he referred to
:05:47. > :05:52.them in a single paragraph, saying I have asked my colleagues to find
:05:53. > :05:56.?3.5 billion. Why would he not set out the detail? Perhaps he hopes he
:05:57. > :06:00.will never have to make those cuts and by the next Budget the money
:06:01. > :06:07.which has been found in the back of the sofa will have changed again.
:06:08. > :06:11.?3.5 billion is a significant sum, and it is from departments that have
:06:12. > :06:14.had to cut significantly already, presumably when you start cutting
:06:15. > :06:20.you do the easy bits and it gets harder and harder as you go on. And
:06:21. > :06:24.people start briefing against you, which if you are George Osborne and
:06:25. > :06:30.want to be Conservative leader is not convenient. It is really the
:06:31. > :06:34.worst of all Treasury fudges, it will come from an efficiency review
:06:35. > :06:38.which won't report until 2018 so really kicked into the long grass.
:06:39. > :06:42.And no one believes these are efficiency savings, they are the
:06:43. > :06:45.fallback of chancellors who are in a tight spot. They pluck them out of
:06:46. > :06:50.the air and hope that people don't notice it. But they have noticed it,
:06:51. > :06:55.and it is one of the reasons that the Daily Mail thinks it is a
:06:56. > :07:02.gamble. And the Daily Mail doesn't like the sugar tax either, swingeing
:07:03. > :07:06.suggests they are not keen. Getting into the politics of the Budget
:07:07. > :07:09.speech, the element where George Osborne referred to the Office of
:07:10. > :07:15.Budget Responsibility and what it said about EU membership. This was a
:07:16. > :07:19.very risky passage in his speech. He quoted the Office of Budget
:07:20. > :07:22.Responsibility Orr said he was quoting their warnings about the
:07:23. > :07:28.uncertainty and damage to the economy that leaving the EU would
:07:29. > :07:32.cause -- or said. They said they did want to make a judgement on this,
:07:33. > :07:39.and actually it seems that George Osborne had actually overeat their
:07:40. > :07:42.analysis of Brexit. To link the Budget with the EU referendum in
:07:43. > :07:45.anyway was always going to be difficult because of the number of
:07:46. > :07:50.Conservative back benches who are campaigning to leave but to do it in
:07:51. > :07:56.what the Express and the Telegraph are at furious about the pro- EU
:07:57. > :07:59.Budget. It is quite a dangerous game he is playing given that he doesn't
:08:00. > :08:04.really want the Conservative Party to split over Europe, and also
:08:05. > :08:07.doesn't want to cause Tory backbenchers to dislike him either,
:08:08. > :08:14.because he is trying to woo them at the same time. And puzzling as well
:08:15. > :08:17.because clearly he will have known that they will have gone through the
:08:18. > :08:24.full text and worked out whether he is being entirely honest. It is hard
:08:25. > :08:27.to know what his calculation is because often he will put things in
:08:28. > :08:30.a speech knowing that the sympathetic press will make a speech
:08:31. > :08:37.knowing that the sympathetic press will was never going to happen with
:08:38. > :08:42.something like OBR warning about Brexit because so much of the press
:08:43. > :08:46.is pro- Brexit Orleans very heavily to that sceptical case. It was
:08:47. > :08:50.always likely that they were going to do dig into it and rubbish it and
:08:51. > :08:54.that is what they have done. Ordinary people don't listen to the
:08:55. > :08:58.full Budget speech, they either get a little clip on the news or they
:08:59. > :09:04.get it through the papers. So it is hard to see what... How he could
:09:05. > :09:07.have thought that it would do anything but just antagonise people
:09:08. > :09:13.and antagonise the media by doing what he did, which was spinning it
:09:14. > :09:17.quite misleadingly. My understanding is they made reference to the
:09:18. > :09:23.short-term uncertainty that Brexit would cause but won't taking a view
:09:24. > :09:27.on the longer term. No, they certainly won't recommending one
:09:28. > :09:37.position or another -- they certainly won't recommending. They
:09:38. > :09:40.think their party is getting very upset about their members
:09:41. > :09:43.campaigning quite vigorously to keep written in the EU because David
:09:44. > :09:47.Cameron and ministers think it is the best way. There is a frustration
:09:48. > :09:50.that Conservative MPs would get that annoyed, that actually the
:09:51. > :09:53.government would try to campaign properly rather than being
:09:54. > :09:57.lacklustre and saying you can take it or leave it. Of course they are
:09:58. > :10:00.going to campaign hard, these ministers say but you can understand
:10:01. > :10:08.why George Osborne would want to be a bit careful. Take us to the front
:10:09. > :10:12.of the Guardian. Not the main coverage where Osborne's credibility
:10:13. > :10:19.gap is their big headline but the other story. Magical thinking was
:10:20. > :10:22.the same, but the audience failed to suspend disbelief, I think
:10:23. > :10:27.reflecting a lot of the coverage of an reaction to the Budget speech in
:10:28. > :10:29.the sense that some of the Magic has worn off George Osborne. Interesting
:10:30. > :10:36.looking at the Daily Mail earlier, this time last year, or a bit later,
:10:37. > :10:39.in the post election emergency Budget, post- election Budget that
:10:40. > :10:42.you had, he got some fantastic coverage not least from the Daily
:10:43. > :10:48.Mail saying that he had slain the Dragon of the left. A very different
:10:49. > :10:51.message as we have just seen today, taking a big gamble, and I think
:10:52. > :10:55.that is reflected in a lot of coverage. The chancellor who
:10:56. > :10:59.destroyed the political scene like a colossus only a year ago now seems a
:11:00. > :11:04.much more diminished figure, a lot more... A lot of it is because of
:11:05. > :11:08.Brexit, because people don't like the stance he has taken in the
:11:09. > :11:11.media. A lot of it is because the shine has come off the economy and
:11:12. > :11:15.there are all these storm clouds, and perhaps he has not done such a
:11:16. > :11:19.fantastic job on that front. And then there was the tax credit
:11:20. > :11:26.debacle. All these add together to make his political stock not as high
:11:27. > :11:29.as it was relatively recently. Now is not the worst time for him to be
:11:30. > :11:34.encountering some scepticism given the leadership contest isn't
:11:35. > :11:37.tomorrow. It is much better for him to have the opportunity to counter
:11:38. > :11:41.the worries that Conservative MPs really do have about him. Boris
:11:42. > :11:44.Johnson is almost in a worse position because he still has to
:11:45. > :11:48.prove himself in a serious government job and that is the worry
:11:49. > :11:52.that MPs have about him. He has much less time in which to do that.
:11:53. > :11:56.George Osborne knows what his weaknesses are and you can see him
:11:57. > :12:00.trying to do that in his Budget on social justice, education reform,
:12:01. > :12:05.trying to attack his critics who say he is being unfair to people on
:12:06. > :12:14.disability benefits. He knows what his weaknesses and he has time to
:12:15. > :12:22.try and address them. And it went through the Budget like a rock, this
:12:23. > :12:27.next generation. He was talking about the sugar tax as very much
:12:28. > :12:32.young children's obesity crisis, and it kept coming up coming up. To be
:12:33. > :12:35.honest I'm not sure the reality matches with the rhetoric. We were
:12:36. > :12:38.just talking earlier about the things he is doing on housing
:12:39. > :12:44.which... The demand side, increasing the ability of people to get
:12:45. > :12:48.mortgages and houses, unless you will have a complete revolution on
:12:49. > :12:52.the supply side by building more of the things, anything you do on the
:12:53. > :12:56.demand side will push up prices, which will hurt young people the
:12:57. > :13:00.most. There are many other elements like that which don't match up, it
:13:01. > :13:04.will be interesting to see how this message about caring about the Next
:13:05. > :13:11.Generation really cuts through. He does push much harder in government
:13:12. > :13:14.to get homes built than many of his colleagues, but it is really
:13:15. > :13:17.difficult when you have lots of Conservative councils and members
:13:18. > :13:21.who are very opposed to further housebuilding, to be able to do
:13:22. > :13:23.that. Because you don't want to upset the people living in your
:13:24. > :13:29.local parish who are not going to want it next door to them. Taking us
:13:30. > :13:34.finally to the FT, not so much their main coverage but a sketch. It is a
:13:35. > :13:40.wonderful sketch about George Osborne saying the word oops in his
:13:41. > :13:44.Budget and admitting things haven't worked out as intended over the last
:13:45. > :13:52.few months. He defines oops over an entire paragraph in George
:13:53. > :13:59.Osborne's speech. The paragraph includes the word paradoxical. This
:14:00. > :14:04.combination of our revision to nominal GDP produced by global
:14:05. > :14:08.inflation have produced this paradoxical result. What he means by
:14:09. > :14:12.that is oops, but he also means he is not going to hit one of his main
:14:13. > :14:17.targets which is to have debt falling as a share of GDP in the
:14:18. > :14:20.year 2015/16 which is a bit of a oops in other ways because why is it
:14:21. > :14:24.so important in that single year to have debt falling by a fractional
:14:25. > :14:32.amount? And this is one of the criticisms that many economists have
:14:33. > :14:41.a of it, which is why did you hem yourself in like that? Why it be so
:14:42. > :14:46.economically rigid? On the word oops we are going to draw things to a
:14:47. > :14:47.close. Thank you to our guests. Coming up next it is time for