There is a piece of received political wisdom that Budgets which are well received on the day usually end up being unpopular.

If the reverse is true, then Jeremy Hunt’s first full Budget – which has been received with a collective shrug of the nation’s shoulders – should have been looking better with every day that passes. Instead, even this lacklustre affair seems to be unravelling fast.

Let’s look at the positives first: at least this Conservative Budget didn’t crash the economy. I know that’s a really low bar to clear but let’s be thankful for small mercies.

And it did attempt to tackle some problems facing the country.

It is generally accepted that the current rules around pensions are causing a real problem in the NHS, discouraging doctors from undertaking more work at a time when we need all hands on deck to try and clear the horrendous backlog of people waiting for operations.

But instead of tackling this specific instance, the Government has introduced a massive untargeted tax cut which will benefit the very wealthiest people in our country. Multi-millionaires will now be able to save £60,000 a year – nearly double the average salary in the UK – tax free into their pensions.

The reason for making pension contributions tax free is to encourage people to save so that they are not reliant on benefits when they retire. With the best will in the world, nobody who can afford to put away £60,000 a year is going to end up on benefits when they are a pensioner. They don’t need a state subsidy paid for by ordinary working people to incentivise them to save.

The cost of the Government’s pension changes is £7 billion a year, but the British Medical Association has estimated that a targeted doctors’ scheme would cost as little as £32 million.

The Conservatives continually tell us there isn’t any money to make things better for ordinary working people, but they always seem to be able to find the cash to reward their wealthy pals.

That money could have been used to properly fund the expansion in free childcare.

Currently, nurseries don’t receive enough money from the Government to cover the costs of existing free places. They make ends meet by charging parents who can afford it more for the childcare the Government doesn’t fund such as for one- and two-year-olds.

Making this free too, paid at the same uneconomic rates, will force many nurseries to close.

Parents will end up with an entirely theoretical entitlement to free childcare because there won’t be any places available.

The Budget also continued to demonstrate the Conservatives’ almost wilful neglect of Suffolk.

We weren’t expecting much. Suffolk’s Conservative politicians have been banging on about our county being unfairly funded for the last thirteen years without getting a single penny more out of the Treasury. Needless to say, that didn’t change this year.

The Chancellor announced twelve new “investment zones” to “drive business investment and level up the country”. None were in Suffolk.

There is a massive consensus in the East of England of the vital need to upgrade rail junctions at Ely and Haughley to enable more freight to be taken off the roads and be carried by rail. This is nationally important investment. It was ignored again in the Budget.

But the cherry on the cake of the Conservatives’ contempt for Suffolk was surely their decision to delay for five years, and possibly downgrade, the improvements to the Copdock junction.

Not content with just ignoring Suffolk, they now taking away even the little that they have promised us.

I can’t help wondering where our MPs have been in all this.

In most areas, MPs in the lead up to a Budget will have been lobbying the Government hard to gain extra investment or stop it being taken away.

Suffolk’s Conservative MPs appear to have been asleep on the job.