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Things may look different in six months

The Budget backfired badly, and ended up creating more political difficulties than George Osborne’s previous seven. Only if the EU referendum is won will this be forgotten, writes David Smith.

In my last column I asked about what kind of George Osborne we would see on 16 March when he presented his eighth Budget. I suggested that any additional spending cuts that the chancellor had warned about would happen some time in the future which was right. I also suggested we would see something on pension tax relief. A fortnight before the Budget this had looked like a racing certainty. It was not.

Rumblings from Conservative backbenchers about hitting the middle classes (and those above the middle classes) forced a reining back on pension tax relief taking it off the Budget agenda roughly a week before the event. We all knew what that meant. This had...

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