The harder Jeremy Hunt tried to be funny and normal, the weirder he became

Actors say the secret of playing a drunk on stage is to try really hard to look sober. Jeremy Hunt spent Budget day trying to appear funny and normal, and managed brilliantly to be the exact opposite.

Hunt’s campaign to look normal started after breakfast with a jog with his labrador, and posting a video of himself saying: “I hate watching myself on TV.” But then he just blurted out “Great budgets change history”, which is the kind of thing only weird people say.

Normal people don’t have this exaggerated sense of destiny. Only people descended from 17th-century colonial administrators assume that, like Luke Skywalker, they were born to change the future. (Hunt’s ancestor was Sir Streynsham Master, who ran Madras for the East India Company and imposed licences on taverns and theatres.)

The House of Commons was in a rowdy mood as the chancellor began a speech that started to shape the coming Tory manifesto: barely-funded tax cuts and a lot of rhetoric against immigration.

With no rabbits to pull out of his leaky hat, the chancellor attempted humour to rally his side. “The Treasury and the OBR have discovered their inner Laffer Curve,” was one of his zingers. Maybe Liz Truss would have loved that thigh-slapper, but the shortest-lived PM was keeping a low profile. So low that Labour MPs were shouting: “Where is she?”

Hunt did better with a joke based on Lord Mandelson’s “rather uncharitable” remarks about Keir Starmer’s waistline, adding: “Ordinary families will shed more than a few pounds if that lot get in.” Rishi Sunak fell about.

“This is not amusing any more,” intoned deputy speaker Dame Eleanor Laing from the chair. She was looking at Labour hecklers at the time, but we knew what she meant.

You could tell an election was coming because Hunt name-checked dozens of Conservative MPs in marginal seats who had lobbied him. His biggest cheer was for a weak gag against Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader; the blue wall is scared of the yellow peril.

Thanks to some leaks, we knew 24 hours in advance that the chancellor’s big surprise would be a spectacularly boring repeat of his, yawn, big surprise of November’s autumn statement, a 2p cut in national insurance. Tory MPs waited for the announcement with glassy-eyed expressions that might have translated as: “Oh God, we are so stuffed.”

Their problem is the last 2p cut proved as effective as the famously undersized rudder on the RMS Titanic.

“Captain Hunt, sir, we’re still heading for the massive electoral iceberg.”

“Tell the band to keep playing the same tune.”

Amazingly, the chancellor managed to spend an hour talking about the economy without once mentioning the elephantine fact that the UK is in recession. Not once did he utter the R-word, or even No 10’s preferred term, “technical recession”. Instead, he painted a picture of a UK so fabulously successful that it can afford a series of election giveaways.

Nodding at his side was a man who could be called the “technical prime minister”, because, like the downturn, he is small, shallow and not expected to last very long. In fact, many authorities think Sunak is already over and done with. Just a lagging indicator, hanging around until the electoral cycle catches up with hard data on the ground.

Hunt had a crack at shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves’s “thespian skills” for “acting like a Tory” to persuade bankers she would be sensible. The gag landed with a dead cat bounce, as they say in the Square Mile.

He listed more giveaways, to a steady barracking from the opposition. His own front bench nodded enthusiastically, but on the benches behind them the mood was more subdued. It really wasn’t a Nigel Lawson moment. Penny Mordaunt started tapping on her phone. Wordle proving tricky?

One Labour MP who was keeping unusually quiet was deputy party leader Angela Rayner. Following weekend reports that she might have neglected to pay capital gains tax on a family home sale, she knew what was coming her way – and Hunt didn’t miss the open goal. Announcing changes to “multiple dwellings relief”, he quipped: “That really is for you, Angela.”

Starmer and Reeves looked pained, but Rayner came alive, jabbing her finger at Hunt and bellowing “pathetic”. She may have a point: a quick check confirms that Hunt is a far more ambitious multiple-dwelling owner than she will ever be, with a pad in Pimlico, a home in Surrey, and no fewer than seven buy-to-let flats. Luckily, he gets to live free above 10 Downing Street while collecting all that rent.

When Hunt confirmed the abolition of non-dom status for wealthy foreign tax avoiders, shooting dead one of Labour’s few revenue-raising measures, Starmer and Reeves made a brave show of faking delight, raising their arms in victory and cheering “More!” But you could sense their dismay as he gleefully converted £2.7bn from Labour’s future spending plans into a Tory pre-election tax cut.

“Could you please shout more quietly?” Dame Eleanor requested during the din.

Unexpectedly, the Scottish Nats forced a division that delayed Starmer’s response by 20 minutes, a petty revenge for their Gaza debate being hijacked. Starmer performed solidly, attacking the “last, desperate act of a party that has failed”, and pleading for a May election.

On this latter, he is likely to be disappointed. Hunt’s announcements all pointed to a late polling day when a return of growth might permit the income tax cut that Tory MPs really wanted.

The iceberg will have to wait.