"Do you welcome this budget?" "I welcome that it could have done more harm than we might have expected." Julia Lopez, Shadow Business Secretary, gives her assessment on the Budget. #Newsnight

The boss seeing off a pint of Chancellor's Choice after a long day at the office.

That felt to me like a small, defensive Budget, with the big decisions punted. Political imperative appeared to be protecting the Burnham bounce by avoiding a third massive tax hike. Tax only raised by £7bn, compared to £40bn and £26bn in Reeves’s two budgets. Chancellor made merit of no raise on workers. Popular targets hit: Banks, bookies, vape shops, landlords. Focus from spending on taking the edge off cost of living in a targeted way. £100 quid off for council tax bands A-D. Zero biz rates for 70k more high street firms. But v limited: Just £6bn extra spending. No path to 3% GDP defence spend by 2030 laid out (though ‘target’ now publicly adopted). No overhaul of welfare yet. No big change to departmental spending. All punted to 2027. Meanwhile economic numbers are bleak. Growth down to 1% next year (down from 1.5%). Inflation heading to 4% early next year. Real living standards now falling rather than rising. And all fundamentally out of Downing Street’s control: Trump’s Iran conflict defining the weather here. Treasury pointing to “radical” devolution, handing over tax receipts to mayors, and non-tax moves like encouraging AI growth and tax cut for entrepreneurs. But in scale it felt small. The big qu: Can this government afford to be small given the scale of challenges faced? (NB: George Osborne just called it “the least consequential budget that I can remember” on tax and spend).