Jeremy Hunt’s budget is better at diagnosis than treatment

The bar for a successful budget has been dramatically lowered in Britain over the past year. By not blowing up the gilts market on March 15th, , the chancellor of the exchequer, easily bested his predecessor, Kwasi Kwarteng. He managed to talk about tackling Britain’s without relying on magical thinking about unfunded tax cuts. But Mr Hunt’s budget, a little like the man himself, was nonetheless a curious mixture of the reassuring and the unnerving. The country is in much more competent hands with him and Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, at the helm, but its underlying troubles persist.Start with the reassuring elements. Mr Hunt is taking a far more methodical approach to tackling Britain’s problems than happened under Liz Truss and Boris Johnson. Mr Johnson made “levelling up”, the ironing out of regional inequalities, into a powerful campaign pitch; Mr Hunt’s decision to give two big conurbations in England more control over the money they are given by Whitehall adds substance to that slogan. Ms Truss wanted to cut the ribbon on investment zones everywhere; Mr Hunt plans a more targeted approach focused on high-potential clusters. (His usual language about turning Britain into another Silicon Valley was absent, perhaps because of a bust American bank.)