Philip Hammond has been wondering if he did enough to seduce young Labour voters in yesterday’s budget and should not perhaps have sat on a chair backwards.

Faced with the impossible task of increasing spending while being Tory, the Chancellor scrapped stamp duty for first-time homebuyers and now wonders if he should have done more to reach the young, like chewing gum or wearing sunglasses.

Mr Hammond said: “Obviously this policy will make young voters warm to us, because they’re basically selfish, like everyone, right? I mean they’re young but not mentally ill.

“Are they? I don’t really know and that’s what worries me. Should I have tried to speak their language more? What is their language? Do they still jive dance?

“Are they even real? Where are all these young people? There aren’t any young people.”

A senior Conservative source said: “Yesterday was make-or-break for Philip. Would he deliver the budget speech without setting fire to himself? Would he get through breakfast without stabbing himself in the head with a fork?

“We think it went quite well. Like us, the country was so distracted by whether or not he would say something bewilderingly stupid that the message of economic doom doesn’t yet seem to have registered.”

But young voter Sabrina Duncan said: “If buying a home hadn’t been made an impossible dream, I might well give a shit about stamp duty.”

People facing six weeks without benefits should simply manage their budgets, a woman in £1,000 leather trousers has explained.

Told by Jeremy Corbyn that families faced eviction from their homes because of universal credit payment delays, Theresa May said they should dip into their savings as she would, adding: “What is wrong with them?”

Challenged by the Labour leader in PMQs, the Prime Minister said: “There have been concerns raised in the house previously over the issue of people managing their budgets to pay rent.

“Why don’t they just take a walking holiday in Switzerland instead of going to the Algarve, as I did. Or cut back on cashmere sweaters. It’s a piece of piss.

“Quite honestly, if people aren’t responsible enough to realise that rent comes before cashmere then there is literally nothing this government can do for them. Fuck them. It’s for their own good.”

Benefit claimant Ray Doyle, due to be evicted over the payment delay, said: “I suppose I could sell the carpet. If I owned a carpet.”

EU leaders will show their creativity over Brexit by scribbling absent-mindedly during Theresa May’s speech in Florence, they have confirmed.

As the Prime Minister calls on them to be “imaginative and creative” about reaching a Brexit deal, they will pen rough caricatures of her in range of perilous situations, they have said.

After learning Mrs May would call on them to “show vision” in overcoming deadlocked Brexit talks, EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said: “I’m seeing her being eaten by a massive crocodile.

“No, a toad. A gigantic toad. It’s got blond hair and a hat that says ‘Boris’ on it. And she’s imploring it to be creative and imaginative in reaching an arrangement where she doesn’t get eaten. She’s saying it has a ‘profound sense of responsibility’ not to eat her. But it’s just eating her anyway. It’s eating her up.”

Chief Brexit coordinator Guy Verhofstadt said: “I know what to do here. You use your notepad to make a flip book. The toad can eat her and then use its creativity to create a poo.

“Or get eaten itself by something even bigger. Or just squashed under a massive boot. Really badly squashed. The boot’s massive.

“That’s a bit complicated though. I’ll probably just draw a huge cock and balls.”

Theresa May will deliver a series of stock phrases to the sea in the hope of halting the encroaching tide, Downing Street has announced.

After delivering a speech in Florence aimed at kickstarting deadlocked Brexit negotiations, the Prime Minister will travel to an Italian beach and shout similar platitudes to the waves, a spokesman said.

The spokesman said: “The Prime Minister will attempt to sway the course of a non-negotiable event by shouting soundbites like “Brexit means Brexit” into the air.

“And she will try the same shit on the Adriatic.

“As the Prime Minister has said on many occasions, ‘We are leaving the EU but not Europe.’ The EU hasn’t listened, so now the waves have to hear it.

“There is some hope that she can dissuade the tide from sweeping her out to sea but more importantly that it won’t heckle her, which would be worse.”

The Adriatic Sea said: “I think she’s going to be out of her depth.”

A man who thought it would be okay to be rude to everyone like Prince Philip is has realised that no one likes him.

Ray Doyle was inspired by the popularity of the Duke of Edinburgh to make insensitive remarks to everyone he meets and does not understand why he has no friends and also faces disciplinary action at work.

Mr Doyle said: “I was introduced to a new recruit at work the other day and I said: ‘Are you descended from a pirate?’

“Not even a chuckle. Just a palpable silence descending on the whole office. Then she walked off.

“I pointed out later that the pirate line was actually one of the Prince’s, printed in a newspaper souvenir edition about how great he is. She shrugged and said: ‘He’s racist.’

“Quick as a flash I thought of one that isn’t racist and fired back: ‘Do you work in a strip club?’

More silence, so I added: ‘You are a woman, aren’t you?’

“Then I was led away.”

Mr Doyle’s manager Will Bodie said: “Ray’s a hard worker but I think it’s time he retired from official duties.”

British citizens have the right to pass freely and without hindrance wherever they want, irrespective of the freedoms they permit others, right-wing newspapers have reminded the EU.

We may not want you here but don’t you dare forget the entitlement of British holidaymakers to the world, the Daily Mail and Express said.

Borders should be thought of as doors to which the British alone hold the key, even those separating other countries, the papers clarified.

The Mail told the EU: “Britons unlock them, walk through and then shut them firmly in your foreign face. That is how borders work, including yours.”

The Express said: “Basically, you all stay exactly where you are, wherever that is, while we use all the doors.

“And don’t touch the doors. They’re British doors. We don’t want foreign muck on them.”

People who know about things because they have spent time finding out may in fact be useful, Government Ministers have concluded.

A year after Micheal Gove said Britain had “had enough of experts” and should vote Brexit regardless, Home Secretary Amber Rudd has asked experts at the Migration Advisory Committee to find out what Brexit means.

The MAC will now assess the contribution of EU citizens to Britain to establish what it is that Ms Rudd’s Cabinet colleague got the country to do by telling it to ignore “organisations with acronyms”.

Announcing the study, Ms Rudd said: “Yes, experts can be stuffy and boring and sometimes they say annoying things we just can’t understand like ‘Britain shouldn’t leave the EU.’

“But what we’ve come to realise is that they don’t just make this stuff up as they go along, whereas Michael patently does.”

Mr Gove said: “Cheese is a kind of ham.”

Cars that use fossil fuel will be banned from the roads when they stop working because it has all run out, the Government is expected to announce.

In a move to stop people thinking about chlorinated chickens, Environment Secretary Micheal Gove will propose not simply leaving the cars in the road where they finally splutter to a halt.

And manufacturers will be required to start selling different sorts of cars that can still move without being pushed.

A Government spokesman said: “Poor air quality is the biggest environmental risk to public health so the last thing we want is people breathing in more of that shit because they are pushing their cars.

“That is why we will say to people, ‘Stop that, it’s not working, do something else, don’t leave your car there,’ and to manufacturers, ‘Make cars that work on something else now. We have some cheap chicken if that’s any help.’”

Prof Brian Cox, an automotive industry expert at Aston Martin University, said: “The timescale involved here is sufficiently long-term for the proposals to be of no real consequence, so yeah, all right, whatever. We’ll all ride chickens or something.”

A woman wearing a pair of leather trousers that cost £1,000 has explained to Britain the importance of living within its means.

Theresa May, whose husband is senior executive at a $1.4 trillion investment fund, has explained that literally no one in the country has the money to pay nurses more and so it would require borrowing instead.

Mrs May, also wearing a £500 cashmere sweater, told Britain: “Do you want to go bankrupt? Do you?

“Because it’s all very well saying things like ‘Five pairs of my trousers would have paid for safe cladding at Grenfell’ – but then who would have paid for the five pairs of trousers?

“There’s isn’t a magic £1,000 leather trouser tree, you know.”

Mrs May, who spent £1 billion of the country’s money in order to retain control of it, added: “So we’d have to increase the deficit, like Greece, and there would be no jobs or nurses at all, and I would still have my leather trousers.”

Former prime minister David Cameron, architect of austerity and personally worth £40 million, waded in to tell the country: “You selfish bastards.”

A major nationwide police search is underway for anyone who voted for this.

The alarm was raised after it emerged that someone to vote for this was last captured on CCTV nowhere ever.

Supt Ray Doyle, leading the investigation, said: “What we do have on CCTV – well, TV actually – is Tories saying ‘No one wants another election.’ A lot.

“We’re very interested in speaking to this ‘no one’ because he or she sounds like the exact same person that may have voted for a minority Tory government propped up by creationist homophobes at a cost of £1 billion.

“There’s also a possible matter of identity theft, since we have evidence that it is in fact ‘everyone’ who wants another election.”

Everyone confirmed: “Yes, it’s me that wants another election.”

Speaking exclusively to Swan Bake, no one said: “It was me who voted for this bullshit.”