13:56

Well, that wasn’t quite as boring as some people were expecting. Philip Hammond has a reputation for being rather humourless, but he injected far more jokes than is usual for a budget speech and he managed to conclude with a surprise stamp duty announcement likely to play well with the tabloid press.



Whether or not abolishing stamp duty for first-time buyers will actually bring down prices is an entirely different matter; if anything, it seems just as likely that it will allow sellers to increase prices. And in cash terms, it is not a huge giveaway.



The red book has just landed on my desk, and it shows that the measure will only cost the Exchequer around £600m a year over the course of this parliament. This was the headline-grabber at the top of a package of measures that otherwise sounded pragmatic but relatively unambitious.



Will this be enough for the budget to be judged as a success (by the low expectations set in advance)? It is too early to know, but it does seem possible.