Brexit has created a political climate no budget can fix | Martin Kettle

Philip Hammond’s efforts are mostly futile. Old party loyalties are now torn and the Tories and Labour are in denialFormer chancellor Ken Clarke writes in his memoirs that in British political history there is nothing so dead and forgotten as old budgets. That must be reassuring news for Philip Hammond. The current chancellor’s sticking plasters this week are best understood as a far from glorious 21st-century application of Harold Macmillan’s advice to Tory chancellors that &l