Jeremy Hunt is facing a day of reckoning after announcing the Budget on Wednesday. The Chancellor framed his statement as a tax-cutting package, but has faced considerable blowback for taxing by stealth. He was even dubbed the ‘fiscal drag queen’ on the Radio 4’s Today programme – watch out Ru Paul.

This was no election-winning Budget

There’s been a mixed response in today’s papers. The Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph both lead on the issue of national insurance and its possible demise: the Telegraph reports that Hunt confirmed last night that abolishing NI was ‘our ambition long term’, while the Mail quotes Treasury minister Bim Afolami: ‘We want to eliminate that double tax on work.’ It comes after Hunt repeated his Autumn Statement move and slashed national insurance by 2p – a cut that would save £900 a year for working people. The Times appears similarly ambivalent, reporting on the ‘scaled back’ Budget as giveaways ‘funded by increasing taxes in other areas’ – and pointing out that the Tories have been rather good at, er, stealing Labour’s ideas with the abolition of the non-dom tax and extension of the North Sea oil and gas windfall tax.

Were Labour thrown off? Quentin Letts suggested in today’s Daily Mail that there might have been some ‘Opposition unease’, describing how Starmer’s party ‘organised a wall of noise’ that left the Deputy Speaker dealing with ‘all manner of eructation and gadzookery’. Despite numerous interventions by Dame Eleanor Laing, the jeering continued on. ‘Could you please shout more quietly?’ she requested.

The Guardian were a touch more snooty – quelle surprise. The Grauniad lead on Sir Keir Starmer’s withering description that the Budget the ‘last desperate act’ of a ‘party that has failed’. Critics have since pointed out that Starmer’s remarks are a little confusing, given Hunt’s announcement took a not insignificant level of inspiration from Labour’s own proposals… The i has picked up on this point, with a Labour MP telling the paper that ‘we’re going to have to find some policies that strike out a different pathway forward for the country…or we will end up being the midwives of austerity 2.0’.

Meanwhile, the Financial Times – or friend of the deep state, as Liz Truss would rather it be known – is already looking ahead to the possibility of a second fiscal event before the general election. ‘Hunt leaves door open to more tax cuts’, the headline screams, before pointing to the Chancellor’s refusal to confirm or deny whether a second Budget-like-event could be held in the autumn. ‘That depends when the Prime Minister chooses to call the election,’ Hunt responded cryptically.

The Daily Express approached the subject with the most enthusiasm, describing how the Chancellor is ‘turbocharging the economy’ with his tax agenda and excitedly reporting that Britain is ‘ready for take off!’. Although the paper is keen to believe that the country is on the other side of the economic crisis, Mr S would take a moment to remind readers that the UK does remain in a technical recession…

It was all rather underwhelming, the papers tended to conclude. With so much trailed by the Tories in advance, including Sunak’s reference to a ‘union tax cut’ (a large hint at national insurance cuts) in Scotland last week, one of the only real news lines was that there will definitely not be a general election in May. This was certainly no grand freebie-filled, election-winning Budget. But after Sunak told journalists in December that the election would not be held in 2025, the range of possible timings is narrowing. Get your bets in now…