Welcome to a Budget Special of FT Politics, the Financial Times

podcast on British Politics. I'm Sebastian Payne and today we are discussing Philip Hammond's autumn budget.

The chance that had a difficult hand to play with gross forecast slashed,

productivity levels continuing to decline and demands for more money on health service unmet, but fiscal

fill seemed to do it pretty well. I'm delighted to be joined by Rupert Harrison,

portfolio manager at Blackrock, and a former Chief of Staff to George Osborne,

plus Torston Bell, who's head of the Resolution Foundation,

and previously director of policy for the Labour Party.

Thank you both for joining.

So to begin, there were two standout announcement in Mr Hammond's budget.

The first were growth forecasts which have been revised down reaching as low as 1.3% in 2019.

The second was a gamble to tackle some of the problems in the UK's housing market,

where Stamp Beauty abolished for first-time buyers.

Torsten Bell, just to begin, what did you make of the budget overall here?

Their expectations were pretty low, this was meant to be boring and dry,

and it was relatively dry, but with this rabbit out of the hat you so often get.

Well, I mean the big picture of the budget is that the Office for Budget Responsibility has punched the Chancellor in the face

with very very big downgrades to their economic and the public finance

forecast and the Chancellor has chosen to largely take that on the chin

and actually to choose to borrow a bit extra. Some of that is... to

largely take that on the chin and actually to choose to borrow a bit extra.

Some of that is as you say for a big package of measures on housing and the

...