This was the budget with everything  going wrong. 300 jobs have been lost in manufacturing every day of this government so far. It is likely to get worse.

The Chancellor has had to admit he is running out of money. He’s going to borrow and borrow and borrow. That means we will all be paying more for years to come.

He is a Tax and Waste Chancellor, a Chancellor taking ever larger sums from us yet buying little extra of value with it all.

He should learn from his past mistakes. High taxes destroy jobs, undermine companies and clobber investment. He imposed a mighty tax on the telecoms industry - £22,000 million. Companies went bankrupt, jobs were lost and capital expenditure cancelled on a huge scale.

He put through a large tax increase on pension funds. It worsened the Stock Market crash, as investors worked out their shares were worth less after the taxman had taken so  much. It left pension funds short of money to fill the gaps left by the falling share values. As a result some people are now retiring with only half the pension they expected, and many others are being told by their employers that their pension fund is going to be closed down.

So now he’s going for a large tax on jobs, National Insurance. It is very bad news for manufacturers, struggling to survive in a very competitive world. This budget has done nothing to help them. The Chancellor just doesn’t seem to understand the damage he is doing.