Taylor (Lt), War Office official photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
These days Edward Hugh John Neale Dalton, known as Hugh, would be considered one of the good guys but in 1947 he committed one of the worst sins possible in those more genteel times. He leaked details of the 1947 budget to a journalist, you know, those paragons of virtue who would sell their grandmother’s soul for a story. He even did it while walking into the House of Shame to deliver the budget speech telling said reptile of some of the tax changes in the budget. This was printed in the evening newspapers before he had finished his speech and while the markets were still open. What a villain that journalist was.
Contrast that with our most recent budget delivered by Rachel from Complaints. Not only were many of the details flown as kites beforehand, along with many others that weren’t adopted, but it turns out it wasn’t even her budget, she just made the speech. It was crafted by Torsten Bellend and his cronies under the direction of our dear leader hence the absolutely nonsensical list of changes.
I decided Hugh should be number 2 (pun intended) in the list of villains because it is such a contrast with how things are handled these days. The convention that budget details should not be released beforehand has been described as long standing and only two resignations have resulted. The first being Hugh, the second being Richard Hughes who resigned this year (2025) as the Chair of the OBR when the budget was leaked a few hours early by an “inadvertant” “technical error” that happened one hour earlier than it should have.
Google tells me that in November 2024 leaks concerning income tax plans caused UK government borrowing costs to spike and this forced the Chancellor, the same Rachel from Complaints, to condemn the unacceptable flow of information. And the eejits cannot stop moaning about Liz Truss
If we have a quick butcher’s at Hugh’s career we see he was not the most prudent custodian of our wealth.
His biographer, a certain Hugh Pimlott who also did Harold Wilson and QE2, described him as peevish, irascible, given to poor judgement and lacking administrative talent. Not something you would want on your CV especially when applying to be Chancellor but in his defence, I have to say there have been many many more who were worse.
To quote “as Chancellor he pushed his policy of cheap money too hard and mishandled the sterling crisis of 1947 in which much more of the 1946 loan from the USA was wasted”. Sounds about right for a socialist. As has often been said, if socialists understood economics they wouldn’t be socialists. In 1946 we were really broke and had to be bailed out by the yanks and the Canadians to the tune of billions. The deal was negotiated by that well known lefty John Maynard Keynes. No wonder it was a dog’s breakfast. It is for this reason that I call him a number 2. We did not finish paying these loans off until 2006.
He obviously served during WW2 but not in the military, he was a politician after all. He was the Minister of Economic Warfare and as such established the Special Operations Executive. I suspect he merely put his name to it, the legwork must have been done by others more capable of handling details.
© well_chuffed 2026
