For brazen cynicism, I have seen nothing like Sunak’s plan in 40 years

theguardian.com:

The Conservative party’s conceit is that it is the country, speaks for the country and is the custodian of the country’s true values. The combination of a first-past-the-post voting system, a divided and often not very electable opposition and a pliant media certainly means it’s more often than not in government, so apparently warranting the conceit.

But that does not mean that the conceit is justified. Britain is a much more innately progressive, generous and fair-minded country than our party of the right ever imagines. But for an ambitious Tory politician, the falseness of the equation does not matter. What counts is the goodwill of backbench MPs and constituency associations. Not only are they seen in the Tory tribal echo chamber as proxies for mainstream public opinion, they are the voters who will confer the party leadership and thus prime ministership. Have them on your side and the prime ministership is yours.

So the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, must have thought as he prepared a spring budget whose hallmarks were fiscal deceit, political cynicism and an astounding lack of imagination. He presented himself as if in a tight spot, but in truth he was in anything but. The rise in forecast inflation to 7.2% and falling back only slowly thereafter, interacting with his pre-announced policy of freezing income-tax allowances and a stronger economic recovery than expected, means that borrowing will be an astounding £72bn lower over the next four years than he thought only last October. The forecast budget deficit in four years will be the lowest for 25 years. How was that largesse to be allocated?

Serious choices were available, but Sunak took us for fools. He assumed that a 5p cut in fuel duty, lifting the threshold for