YESTERDAY’S Budget hit a new height of sneakiness even for a Chancellor renowned for his deviousness.

An apparent boost in the minimum wage, but paid for by a taxpayer handout in the shape of corporation tax reductions over two years.

That, plus hacked-back housing benefits, a further reduction in the welfare payments cap and an absolute barrage of cuts to working tax credits were the prominent items on the menu as George Osborne butchered Britain’s welfare state in his so-called “emergency” Budget.

And don’t forget the public-sector workers, limited to maximum 1 per cent rises for four years and hit hard, like everyone else, by tax credit cuts. They’ve taken it in the teeth from this Tory twat.

Be very clear about this. It’s not a Budget in the way we used to understand them. It’s simply a schedule of £12 billion of cuts and how they will be delivered, with a few other bits of window-dressing.

It’s Osborne’s first fully Tory Budget, unhindered by the need to placate the Lib Dems, and he’s delivered a class-ridden austerity programme designed to make the rich richer and move the poor further into poverty.

Even the much trumpeted hike in the personal tax allowance is a two-edged sword. Up to £12,500 by the end of this parliament? Maybe, but what proportion of that tiny tax gain will be eaten up by benefit cuts, which impact far more heavily on the poor? Almost certainly, all of it.

But changes to the top rate of tax have no such diminishing counterweight and essentially represent new money for the better-off, who aren’t so vulnerable to benefit cuts.

And don’t swallow the rubbish that our “caring” Chancellor has slowed the implementing of his plans out of concern for the less well-off. If you believe that, you’ll believe anything.

Leak a quick two-year schedule on implementing cuts and moving it to three years becomes a “concession,” according to the rich lad.

Make no mistake, the Chancellor is grabbing in the cash. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, there are £47.2bn of additional taxes being raised.

The Bullingdon boy lifted all but the richest households out of inheritance tax on the same day that he set out £12bn in cuts. New provisions allow a couple to pass a house worth up to £1m to their children.

And don’t believe the nonsense that even average family homes can hit a million. It’s just not true, except perhaps in parts of London, and not many of those.

The average family home across Britain now costs £193,048.

He’s taken about £4.5bn in tax credits away from working people, which pretty well nullifies the working wage, itself not that much of a rise as it only reaches the £9 mark in 2020.

With the reduction in the benefit cap plus the effective introduction of a means test on council rents and the housing market, far from being the free market of Tory wet dreams, it becomes comprehensively rigged in favour of the wealthy, even discriminating against marginally better-off council tenants.

Mr Osborne confirmed there would be cuts to tax credits paid to working families to top up their wages, while at the other end of the scale he will be raising the starting point for the 40p upper rate of tax to £43,000, on the way to £50,000.

According to the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, any cut in tax credits will reduce the incomes of 45 per cent of working families.
About 72 per cent of the losers earn less than £20,000 a year.

And, if he’s cutting top-rate taxes, that means less tax revenue, which means — you’ve got it — more benefit cuts.

It was a fitting climax to a Budget which confirmed left claims that this arrogant government out-Thatchers Thatcher in her prime.

And as a reminder, there are still £43bn in government departmental cuts to come.