A peculiar thing happened when the Chancellor of the Exchequer, /u/Friedmanite19, delivered his maiden budget speech to the House yesterday.

In the inevitable maelstrom of debate, the former Prime Minister, /u/InfernoPlato, said:

A budget put together following the collapse of the [Sunrise] coalition. We have had just a month to put this together and we have delivered. Low taxes, more investment is a key condition of any Conservative budget and we have delivered on it.

This line from the Tory grandee is illuminating on two counts.

Note his use of the first person plural. We created this budget, and we have delivered. And what did they deliver?

They delivered a Conservative - note the capitalisation - budget. Not a “Blurple” budget, or even a “People’s budget”, as the Chancellor was at pains to point out in his speech. No, a Conservative budget.

However, we mustn’t take /u/InfernoPlato’s as an opinion entirely representative of his party or, indeed, his coalition. As Saltcon discovered while the debate was still raging, there were significant discussions happening behind the scenes. Allegedly, the Libertarian Party saw fit to give a glimpse of the budget a mere two hours before it was submitted to the Speaker’s office. While we can be fairly certain that the Prime Minister, /u/model-mili, was more than aware of its content, most of the cabinet was not.

So, was this a Conservative - or even Blurple - budget at all? Not according to another former Prime Minister, /u/DrCaeserMD, who sent an open letter of barely-constrained outrage to the Conservative Party. “This is not a budget of the government, or of the Conservative party,” he said. Points of consternation include transport policy and childcare, which he, and, it must be said, a lot of opposition parties, said were badly-served by the budget. Furthermore, he insisted that these points were part of the coalition agreement, and the Tories were deceived.

Evidently, then, this is not a Conservative budget - with a big C. It is, however, possibly a libertarian - small l - magnum opus. Ideological budgets have not been seen in the Commons since the Radical Socialists were an electoral force, and it’s quite possible that the Libertarians - big L - saw the opportunity to be the tail that wags the dog, and slip a budget made in their image into the House under the guise of being a budget supported by the two largest parties.

The question now is: Will the Libertarians allow the Tories to undermine their libertarian agenda? Or will they permit compromise and accept failure?

With a second reading of the budget due later today, and a vote in the next few days, only time will tell.