This was the chancellor’s final scheduled Budget before Brexit, delivered exactly five months to the day before the UK leaves the EU.
But a quick search of Philip Hammond’s speech online reveals he only used the word once – when he unveiled a further £500million for departmental Brexit preparations.
There’s the usual “check against delivery” proviso and I didn’t feel the need to play Brexit bingo as the occasion unfolded in the Commons yesterday.
So I can’t say for sure it didn’t creep in a second time.
But Spreadsheet Phil, as he has become known, certainly didn’t devote that much time to it in the hour and 12 minutes he was on his feet.
What he did say was important, however.
On the one hand, he described feeling “confident” the EU negotiations would deliver a deal resulting in a “double deal dividend”.
And there are plans for a coin to commemorate the UK’s departure from the EU, in the same way the Royal Mint marked the 2012 Olympics and Britain’s accession to the EEC, as it then was.
But Mr Hammond also reserved to take “whatever action is appropriate” if the “economic or fiscal outlook changes materially in-year”.
This included, he insisted, upgrading the spring statement to a full fiscal event.
So in a nut shell…
Austerity is finally beginning to end, here are all these carrots: more money for universal credit, an increase to the National Living Wage and personal tax allowance etc.
But if there’s no deal – and this remains a distinct possibility – we’ll probably have to rethink our strategy and it could be all change come the spring.
A message to Tory backbenchers engaged in very public battles over the best way to deliver Brexit perhaps?
Get behind the prime minister as she enters the final phase of the negotiations, she needs your support.
Because for this promised end to the “era of austerity” to come to fruition, a deal with the EU is crucial.
