Jeremy Hunt has shown he doesn’t care about councils or defence – just tripping up Labour

First, let’s remember that before he spoke, the chancellor told local councils which are going bust in huge numbers thanks to being starved of funds by central government that all they needed to do to get back on the straight and narrow was to spend less on consultants and diversity.

In fact, Birmingham council spends just 0.02% of its money on diversity, money that elsewhere would do nothing to fill the huge hole in its finances. It’s a hole deliberately caused by this government.

The Tories have slashed the money given to councils for years. In response, councils have already sold off much of the family silver, closed down everything they can and still they are going bust. The chancellor’s contempt for the facts, the truth and the consequences of his actions was spelt out very clearly in those comments.

But just to reinforce them, it turns out that the budget contained a clause stopping the councils from using the funds they get from selling council housing and instead it will go to the Treasury. Ripping more money from local government now was a callous move.

It is almost as though Hunt and Rishi Sunak are trying to force councils to the wall. Maybe they think voters will blame Labour council leaders – more probably it is just another huge expense these two are leaving for the next Labour government.

On top of that the chancellor’s only mention of defence spending in his budget was that he would increase spending to 2.5% “when economic conditions allow”. Which rather misses the point as we need the higher defence spending right now. There is a war in Europe and our defence capability is shrinking by the day, not expanding.

As the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ Paul Johnson said, rather bluntly, Mr Hunt’s promise was “not worth the paper it’s written on unless accompanied by some sense of how it will be afforded”. After all, the economic conditions were perfectly good enough to find £10 billion to cut National Insurance.

Now the Public Accounts Committee has entered the fray with the fairly obvious point that there is a £29 billion black hole in defence spending, which we all knew. But also that the government doesn’t have a “credible plan” to fix that funding gap and this has ”undermined” the credibility of Britain’s armed forces. Which is pretty much what the IFS is pointing out too.

Surely no chancellor would find and then use money for tax cuts when the country is in this state? These are only two areas where the money desperately needed is just running out, but even if you don’t care about local government, you must care about defence when there is a war in Europe? Surely?

The feeling that the Tory Party is looking to the election after this one and is setting spending and tax-raising traps for the incoming Labour government is now becoming a certainty. They will then hope to bounce back when Labour has to make the spending decisions and tax rises necessary to fix the mess it has been left.

At a time of NHS waiting lists, child hunger, collapsing courts and schools, and all the rest, this is shameless.

But defence? During a war in Europe? Even Chamberlain never thought of that.