Welcome to the special edition of The Spectator podcast.

So what does Philip Hammond's budget mean for Britain and the economy overall?

We've had a couple of days to digest it now, and this evening The Spectator is hosting his annual budget briefing, sponsored by Merion Global Investors.

I'm delighted to say that Richard Buxton from Marion joins me now, along with James Forsyth, our political editor.

Now, James, the dust is settling on this budget. Normally when we do these presentations we've had hours to digest it.

Now we've had a couple of days. So what does it look like?

I think it represents a big strategic shift on behalf of the Conservative Party.

Now some of this has been signalled in advance when Theresa May announced in June this massive amount of more money to the NHS,

you know, 20 billion in the year extra by the end of the Parliament, and when she said in our conference speech,

austerity is over. So we saw more public spending, but also I think we also saw something

interesting, which is no tax rises. When this initial money for the NHS was announced,

it was made quite clear that Philip Hammond had been given to have given the liberty to raise tax if he saw fit.

Because of the extra money that the OBR provided, he didn't need to do that.

And he also argued that his definition of austerity didn't involve raising anyone's tax bill.

And I think you see how the Tory is going to try and position themselves against Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party in the next election.

They're not going to run as the party that want to balance the books, the party of deficit

reduction as they were in 2010 and 2015.

Instead, they're going to run as a party, but they're going to spend more money on public

services but won't raise your taxes in contrast to Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party.

They will increase debt, though.

This is a funny thing.

I mean, the extra money needs to be funded somehow.

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