The ‘no unemployment’ chancellor needs a budget of compassion | Matthew d’Ancona

Like one of those gloomy American highways lined with liquor stores and gun shops, the road this government limps along is distinguished only by a series of last-chance saloons. Since the Conservatives’ disastrous performance in the election, we have been told that the prime minister’s Florence speech on Brexit would restore her authority, unite the party and energise her administration; then the Tory conference in Manchester (cough); and now – most absurdly – Philip Hammond’s budget on Wednesday.

Rarely in recent years has a major financial statement by a chancellor been so freighted with political expectation. Level-headed Tories limit themselves to the hope that Hammond’s speech does not unravel in a few days – as his first budget did in March, when it became clear that his promise to increase national insurance contributions for the self-employed breached the 2015 Conservative manifesto. “A non-disaster would be a result,” says one MP.

But, with the public bravado that so often accompanies private despair, a greater number of Conservatives claim expansively that the chancellor has it in his power to “press the reset button”, to “draw a line under the mayhem” and to “put Corbyn back in his box”.

This is all nonsense. Budgets are not designed, at a stroke, to save governments – or nations. The red box held aloft outside No 11 does not hum like a holy relic in an Indiana Jones film, and not even the most politically minded of chancellors – Gordon Brown or George Osborne – pretend that a single speech disclosing the government’s economic assumptions, financial plans and fiscal decisions can turn electoral lead into gold.

In normal circumstances, Hammond’s calm, deliberate manner would be an asset. The guardian of the nation’s finances is not meant to be the caretaker of its soul, or a source of poetic inspiration.

Alas for “Spreadsheet Phil”, the circumstances in which he operates are far from normal. He is expected to prepare for Brexit, the consequences of which are completely unknowable, and is savaged by some fellow Tories for doing too little to ready the nation for departure from the EU without a deal.

Worse, he finds himself – in practice – acting head of the government, for reasons that make the task almost impossible. The prime minister looks ever more translucent, a grey hologram that may at any moment fizzle into nothingness: she brings new meaning to the words “barely there”. Meanwhile, her de facto deputy, Damian Green, awaits the outcome of a Cabinet Office inquiry into allegations that he made inappropriate advances to a female journalist, and that extreme porn was found on a computer removed from his office in 2008. For now, Hammond – God help him – is the grown-up to whom the squabbling Tory children turn to for guidance and leadership.

It does not help that, by his own admission, the chancellor is not a showman or a poet. Asked by ITV’s Robert Peston whether the budget would be big or boring, Hammond answered that it would be “balanced”. Of course, “balanced” used to be such a nice word. But in this era of polarised politics, echo chambers and hyper-emotionalism, it is a term associated with technocrats, difference-splitters and detached elites.

Nor did Hammond do himself any favours today on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show by declaring that “there are no unemployed people”. This will come as a surprise to the 1.42 million who are presently out of work. It will not have impressed those who are underemployed, either, or those whose experience of work in the gig economy is so horribly insecure that it bears little relation to any decent notion of a job.

What Hammond meant, I assume, was that the proportion of adults in work has risen to a point that, by some technical academic definitions, is approaching (or has reached) “full employment”. But for the chancellor of a hollowed-out government to make such a claim on the eve of a budget was spectacularly tin-eared.

Given the constraints of circumstance and personality, what can Hammond hope to achieve on Wednesday? Nobody should expect a repeat of Robert Peel’s 1834 Tamworth manifesto, or even the passion of May’s speech outside 10 Downing Street when she became prime minister.

But the chancellor should have the courage to return to first principles, and describe anew the frame of modern compassionate conservatism – a matrix of values that has been eclipsed by the inanities of Brexit and the tumultuous aftermath of the election.

Hammond should acknowledge that every age poses a fresh inventory of questions. In 1979 Margaret Thatcher faced the triple challenge of a failing economy, excessive union power and the cold war. In 1997 Tony Blair sought to demonstrate that social justice and economic efficiency were not only compatible but complementary.

Twenty years on, the challenges are different: the pathologies of globalisation, the chronic shortfall of housing, human longevity, intergenerational fairness, and the driverless juggernaut of automation. Hammond will announce measures to build homes, increase some elements of public sector pay, improve productivity and fund the health service. He will not abandon fiscal conservatism, but seek to address the weariness with austerity that was the engine of the Corbyn surge in June.

There will be gimmicks – there always are, whatever the chancellor’s allies claim to the contrary – and substantial measures that will shape everyday lives. But what matters is that the budget is more than the sum of its parts: that there is connective tissue between its inventory of proposals.

Quite right, for example, that Hammond is quick to embrace technological innovation and its potential to enhance the human condition. But in his enthusiasm for driverless vehicles, he absolutely has to address the fears that such a prospect raises, head on and without ambiguity. What does he have to say, for instance, to the hundreds of thousands of truckers who must be wondering if they will soon be replaced by algorithms? Platitudes about technology’s intrinsic capacity to create jobs simply will not do. What jobs, chancellor?

In an infelicitous phrase on Peston on Sunday, he promised to “listen to the noise”. This said it all, really. He wanted to appear receptive to voters’ grievances – but somehow managed to insult them in the process.

This is not a “make-or-break budget”. But it is a precious opportunity for the chancellor of a failing government to display some humility, and an awareness that what he hears beyond the battlements of office is not just noise.

• Matthew d’Ancona is a Guardian columnist