We're really looking forward to George Osborne's emergency budget
We're now 24 hours in or so from the markets having to digest the implications of the Brexit vote. The pound is down, less so against the euro than the dollar. That is a nice stimulatory effect for the British economy, as devaluations are. The stock market, using a number of different measures like the FTSE 100 or the FTSE 250 is all the way down at the depths of Thursday last week.
And so in the face of this catastrophe we have something else to look forward to. George Osborne has promised us an emergency budget:
George Osborne will warn that he would have to fill the £30bn black hole in public finances triggered by a vote to leave the European Union by hiking income tax, alcohol and petrol duties and making massive cuts to the NHS, schools and defence.
In a sign of the panic gripping the remain campaign, the chancellor plans to say that the hit to the economy will be so large that he will have little choice but to tear apart Conservative manifesto promises in an emergency budget delivered within weeks of an out vote.
No one's really seen hide nor hair of him since the vote so we must assume that he's off working on exactly what he's going to cut and which taxes he's going to raise. All slightly odd given that stimulatory effect of the currency movements but there we have it. He did promise us he would punish us if we were naughty little boys and girls and so given that we have been we must expect to suffer.
Yes, that must be it. For it couldn't possibly be that he's simply hiding among the rubble of a once promising political career. Nor that the threat was just that, a threat, a piece of politics. For of course no Chancellor would just play politics with something as important as the economy, would they?
Who would prefer to offer an over and an under on that resignation speech being difficult to write?