Star Comment: Time for Government to stop spinning, and get on with sorting out the mess

And given the amount of coverage it had already received, it is perhaps unsurprising that the final result was more than a little underwhelming. 

Having abandoned the initial plan of a straightforward increase in the basic rate of income tax, the Chancellor has instead opted for a more piecemeal approach of imposing a mind-boggling array of comparatively small tax increases on everything from pension contributions through to online gambling. There are two ways of looking at this: It could be viewed as death by a thousand cuts, meaning that everybody feels worse off; or being more charitable, it could be said that she is spreading the pain around evenly, so that nobody is unfairly burdened.

Whichever way you look at it, though, the tax rises are brutal. After last year's 'once and for all' tax rises of £37 billion, the Chancellor has now gone back and hit us all with another £26 billion. The freezing of tax allowances for three years will mean an extra 780,000 low earners will now have to pay income tax, and an extra 980,000 middle earners will now find themselves paying the higher rate of income tax. That will stick in the craw for many working people struggling to provide for their families at a time when she has chosen to remove the two-child cap on people claiming benefits.