How Philip Hammond has managed to avoid his Budget unravelling

Despite the best efforts of shadow chancellor John McDonnell to spread doom and gloom, Philip Hammond’s Budget remains stubbornly well received

In his Budget speech, Hammond closed down or muffled every possible line of Labour attack (Getty)

Ten years ago, Gordon Brown asked Alistair Darling, the chancellor, after the 2008 Budget: “Has anything unravelled yet?” Brown was so used, when he was chancellor, to having something go wrong after number-crunchers analysed the detail of his Budgets, that he couldn’t believe most commentators seemed to think his successor’s Budget was broadly sensible.

Today, if Theresa May asked Philip Hammond if anything has unravelled yet, he could say that his Budget has stayed pretty ravelled on day two. It has survived the morning headlines and even the stiffest of all tests, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) assessment, delivered at lunchtime today.

The worst the IFS can say is that the chancellor is taking a risk by increasing borrowing over the next few years, and that he ought to be raising taxes instead. Those are not criticisms that are likely to gain much of a following in public opinion, or in the House of Commons.