The Tories have recognised the public spending crisis – and ignored the climate crisis

Editorial: For all his Budget triumphalism, the chancellor could not disguise his failure to deal with the transcendent question of climate change

For a man not so long ago compared unfavourably to a children’s television presenter, the new chancellor gave a remarkably grown-up performance. Much of the Budget was smart politics and smart economics. Such was the audacity of its commitment to public spending that even Jeremy Corbyn struggled to find fault with it.

There were, to be clear, grievous flaws in the chancellor’s plans – especially its abject failure to face up to the climate change emergency – but in conventional economic terms, he did what he needed to do.

The chancellor skipped the usual self-satisfied overtures about the Conservatives’ achievements to date, and the macroeconomic outlook. The first is irrelevant; the second unknowable until coronavirus and Brexit are resolved.