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It’s difficult to know where to begin when analysing this year’s budget; spin not substance, gimmicks not economics. Some measures will undoubtedly be popular but loopy. The £2,000 incentive to scrap vehicles over 10 years old when buying a new car, for example. It can be argued that it’s no bad thing to support the car industry at this time. The argument basically runs as follows: the market for the car industry will recover when the economy does. But if skills developed over long periods of time are lost because of too many redundancies, the industry may be in no position to recover properly.

Of course, EU rules prevent direct state aid – leading the Chancellor to jump through hoops to find a way of supporting the car industry. But bizarre things will now happen to the second-hand car market as a result. A small car aged 19 years will be worth far more than a family car aged 9 years. How will the government stop people from buying a cheap old car for the sole purpose of trading it in?

The 50% tax on top earners is another gimmick. Basic economics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve) tells us that increasing tax on high earners doesn’t necessarily lead to increased revenue. Entrepreneurs have less incentive to take risks and hire new staff, and the very rich simply have new incentives to take their money (and tax) abroad to tax havens. If the idea is to use it as a smokescreen to play on public feelings of jealousy then it may well succeed – but the politics of envy do not make for a healthy economy.

But behind the soundbites, another 2% rise in alcohol duty is unhelpful. With 6 pubs closing every single day, a freeze was the very least that the pub industry should have been given.Raising the price of fuel in a recession is one of the worst things that the government could do. Almost every business relies on transportation in one form or another. That oil prices fell from their recent peak is one of the few crumbs of comfort for ailing businesses; the Chancellor plans to take even that away.

So what should the Chancellor have done? He is already operating with one hand tied behind his back because of the government’s commitment to EU membership. The most audacious moves are already prevented under EU rules. He cannot reduce fuel duty, he cannot provide state aid, he cannot cut public spending by sacking an army of bureaucrats, he cannot relieve business red tape, he cannot simplify the VAT system or even ask the government to legislate to ease employment law for small businesses. The UK Independence Party has a simple solution to give the Chancellor the power to deal with the credit crunch. As bad as the Labour government has been, we have heard little from the Conservatives to oppose the government’s economic strategy. With good reason – their proposals too are limited by their commitment to EU membership.

Even so, there are other options available. How about UKIP’s simple, fair flat tax policy? Let’s be bold and imaginative to stimulate economic growth. In what kind of system do we have a minimum wage (below which people would be in poverty) THEN tax them on it to bring them below the breadline THEN force them to fill in reams of paperwork to qualify for poorly-administered tax credits? Why are so many people stuck in a ‘benefit trap’ where they cannot afford to take a job? At the other end, flat tax encourages business to invest – to take a risk, to create new jobs. Not only would all taxpayers be better off – usually by well over £1,000 per year – but we would be able to create the jobs needed to get the public spending again, and get us out of this recession.Alistair Darling lacks such imagination to deal with the economic crisis, or perhaps he fails to grasp the scale of the problem. As the Taxpayers Alliance has already shown, revised borrowing figures now exceed in real terms the entire cost of both World Wars and the Napoleonic wars put together (see http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/research/2009/04/brown-bombshells-bigger-than-debts-from-the-napoleonic-wars-first-world-war-and-second-world-war-com.html)!

Overall, a dull budget from a dull Chancellor with a few counterproductive gimmicks thrown in. Where is the support that the British public deserve? In a time of crisis we should have expected much more.