The Chancellor confirmed on Thursday that nothing is being ruled out, a position Treasury officials described as firm, in the sense that it will be very difficult to find again once everyone has moved on.
Asked at a briefing whether income tax thresholds would be frozen, extended, thawed or simply discussed in a low voice, the Chancellor said it would be wrong to speculate, and then spoke for eleven minutes about the dangers of speculation. Pressed on whether this amounted to ruling out ruling things out, the Chancellor declined to rule that out.
Tuesday, allegedly
The Treasury has been equally careful about the date. Gillian Pryce, a Treasury spokesperson, said the department could neither confirm nor deny that Tuesday would happen.
“I would not want to get ahead of the calendar. Tuesday is a matter for Tuesday. What I can say is that nothing has been ruled out, including the things we have ruled out, which we have been careful to describe as unlikely, unhelpful to discuss and not something we recognise.”
Ms Pryce added that she would be in the building on Tuesday if it came, and that this should not be taken as a commitment.
Reading the folder
With no official information available, commentators have turned to the available evidence, which on Wednesday consisted of a man carrying a red folder into a government building on Horse Guards Road.
Martin Elphick, chief political economist at a City consultancy, spent most of the afternoon on live television analysing the footage frame by frame. “He is holding the folder at chest height, which last year preceded a freeze on thresholds,” he said. “But the jaw is set in a way I would describe as fiscal drag, and there is a hesitation at the second door that suggests a pension measure. He also glanced at a lamp post, which I am provisionally treating as a levy on something.”
The man was later identified as a courier who had been looking for a sandwich shop. The folder contained a sandwich. Mr Elphick said this did not change his analysis, only the date by which he would be proved right.
The tally so far
According to a running count kept by this newspaper, the taxes that have now been not ruled out are as follows: income tax, National Insurance, VAT, capital gains tax, inheritance tax, stamp duty, fuel duty, council tax, corporation tax, tax on pensions, tax on the relief from tax on pensions, and the tax on things that are currently untaxed but have been looked at in a way that suggests they should be worried.
That brings the total to all of them, plus two new taxes to be named later. Treasury sources said the new taxes would be announced in due course, by which time people would be too tired to have feelings about them.
Priya Raman, an accountant in Stockport, said her clients had been asking for guidance since the beginning of October. “I have told them to prepare for every outcome,” she said. “In practice that means sitting in a chair holding a bank statement. One gentleman has been doing it since the third week of September. His wife brings him tea, and he says it helps, but I suspect he is being polite.”
The Chancellor was understood to be spending the weekend ruling nothing in, a process that officials said was every bit as demanding as it sounded. A source close to the Treasury said the Chancellor was in good spirits, though added that this was not a commitment, and that spirits were not being ruled out either.
The Budget itself was delivered at lunchtime on Tuesday, which the Treasury has since confirmed did happen. It arrived to find that everyone had already been sad about it for six weeks, and had gone home.