They said “The most anticipated budget in many years”. Notable for a number of reasons of course. The first by a Labour Chancellor for 14.5 years. The first ever by a woman (I’m assuming we can agree the definition there, of course). This isn’t going to be a politicised summary however - I want to stick with my level-headed assessment in order to deliver something fair and accurate.

We kicked off with the usual, arguably mandatory, political approach of blaming the other side after they’d had a long time in power. We’ve heard enough of it by now, and most are sick of the “black hole” chat.

Hopefully, we’ve had it now, and the new Government can get on with fixing the problems that were obvious to those in the electorate who did turn out to vote and handed the Conservatives their biggest beating in a long time.

Big taxes raised - £40bn. Coming “not from the pockets of working people” - that would be disingenuous. Employers’ national insurance up £25bn - although nearly £5bn of that from the public purse anyway, and corporation tax relief on the other £20bn rounded to around £16bn net receipts from that raid. These costs must come from somewhere - I did the maths and at the national minimum wage, including the movement of the thresholds at which employers start to pay national insurance, the cost of a 20+ hour national minimum wage employee will be up 10.75% next year.

Those employees will see 4.8% of that, as basic rate taxpayers. That’s some slippage, right there, and to say it will all come out of the pockets of businesses would be wrong. Business owners, employees, and customers will split those costs between themselves. Some of those customers will have no pay rise at all, or 1-2%, as employers look at the total cost of an employee rather than their take home pay.