“A nuanced, quite subtle budget,” is how a cabinet minister described what UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt presented on Wednesday. The opposition Labour Party was less kind.

Budget day is typically an important opportunity to advance the interests of the party in power, do what’s needed to produce better economic outcomes, and improve the government’s popularity among citizens. It is never an easy task, but Hunt lacks the fiscal and economic flexibility to satisfy even one of those objectives fully, let alone three, given the political calendar, the economy he inherited, and the popular mood.

The upcoming general election made this budget more politically charged than usual. Hunt’s Conservative colleagues were looking for a catalyst that would allow them to narrow Labour’s significant lead in the polls. Labour, for its part, was keen to portray it as yet another futile effort by a government that has overseen the biggest increase in public debt during peacetime.

The UK’s significant debt burden and the jump in budgetary interest costs, due to higher rates, limited the Chancellor’s fiscal headroom. As important, if not more so, is the economy’s weak growth performance and challenged potential.