No one ever saw anything quite like that before. Just moments before the chancellor was going to stand up and deliver the Budget in the Commons, the document was accidentally published, in full, by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).

The entire document. Every page of it. For a few silent moments, journalists and press officers across the country simply gasped in air. Poor soul, they all thought. Someone somewhere in the bowels of the OBR pushed that button by accident. And now they would be whispered about by their colleagues, despised by their bosses, feeling the kind of mortification that hollows itself into your bones. There but for the grace of God go I.

In a way, it was the perfect end to this Budget. For months on end, we have been treated to an exercise in drift, hesitati

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