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Rishi Sunak has unveiled his first Budget. The Chancellor has promised a £30bn war chest for tackling coronavirus. There is also £6bn of new funding for the NHS, a new £2.5bn pothole fund and £5.2bn for flooding defences. Here are the main headline announcements: A promise to increase public spending by 2.
The Bank of England hasn’t wasted time getting in front of the coronavirus, and its actions this morning show how far things have moved from the days of Mervyn King. Perhaps more interesting than the interest rate cut is the Bank’s moves to quickly free up the best part of £200bn of lending capacity for UK businesses, particularly small firms who are entirely reliant on banks for funding. The idea is to create a firebreak, to make sure economic malaise doesn’t lead to businesses failing through lack of working cash flow. Fewer restaurants and hotel customers, a fall in those travelling, and more people working from home will all put pressure on businesses who need day-to-day income to cover their costs.
Westminster is abuzz this morning not with anticipation for Rishi Sunak's first Budget but over the news that Nadine Dorries has become the first UK politician to contract the coronavirus. The health minister began to feel unwell at the end of last week before showing symptoms relating to the coronavirus – dry cough, high fever and chest pains – at the weekend. She has since tested positive for the disease and self-isolated. However, before doing so, Dorries was in contact with hundreds of people including fellow politicians at a No. 10 reception the Prime Minister hosted on Thursday, health officials and constituents in a surgery on Saturday.
The great state of Michigan was oh-so-kind to Bernie Sanders four years ago, bringing him back from the dead against a Clinton political machine that looked insurmountable after multiple wins across the south on Super Tuesday. But if Sanders was hoping for Michigan to resurrect his presidential campaign for a second time, the septuagenarian will hit the pillow tonight disappointed and perhaps even flummoxed at Joe Biden’s remarkable turnaround. With 55 per cent of the vote in, the networks called Michigan for Biden, who swept the cities (with the exception of Grand Rapids, the progressive centre of the state courtesy of its many colleges and universities) and outperformed Hillary Clinton’s margins four years ago in the all-important suburbs.
It seems fresh infighting has broken out in Whitehall on what is supposed to be the most important Budget day of a generation. Yes, a briefing war has spilt out into the open, with the PM's fiancée Carrie Symonds taking to Twitter to defend... Dilyn the dog. Some fed-up official appears to have been whispering that the prime ministerial pooch is 'sickly' and could be on the way out. https://twitter.com/carriesymonds/status/1237650287256571904?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw According to reports, the inhabitants of No. 10 are sick to the back teeth with, to borrow Ms Symond's phrase, 'a load of total crap'. The Times's Ben Ellery reports the words of one insider, who told the paper: 'For a while there was dog shit everywhere in the flat'.
We are likely to see a significant fiscal and monetary stimulus across the UK, eurozone and US in the coming days — lots more spending (e.g. tomorrow’s UK budget), and probably significant easing by the Bank of England, ECB and Fed (presumably measures to increase the flow of cheap credit to cash-strapped businesses and individuals, rather than pointless discount rate cuts). But all of that could be a temporary markets steroid unless the spread of virus is decelerated. So what really matters are stats on daily increases in infections, and whether what is happening in China and Korea — namely a sharp slowdown in new Covid-19 cases — is artificial suppression or genuine victory. All eyes are therefore on the Italian lockdown and how effective that will be.
How far the Tories have come. Once, the former chancellor was unassailable, bestowing his patronage on those who knew the true value of loyalty. Now, MPs from northern working-class constituencies openly mock George Osborne on the floor of the House of Commons. Jacob Young, the new Conservative MP for Redcar, used his maiden speech to poke fun at the elitist tendencies of the mastermind behind the Northern Powerhouse. He told fellow his fellow parliamentarians: 'Most people down here think PPE is a degree course but where I come from it's what you wear to work. Indeed, Mr Deputy Speaker, to the envy of George Osborne, I believe I am the first MP to be wearing a hard hat on his parliamentary pass.
The heart of Wednesday's budget will be a pledge to increase infrastructure spending in the five years of this Parliament by just under £100bn to around half a trillion pounds. The aim, according to government sources, is to boost UK public spending on roads, rail, broadband, flood defences and so on, so we spend more than competitor economies like the US and France. The plan is to allow public sector net investment to rise to 3 per cent of GDP or national income, up from 2.2 per cent per cent. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the UK government hasn't invested this much since 1978 – though in the decades after the second world war this rate of investment spending was the norm.
Back in 2009, proposals were published to switch off FM and AM radio completely by 2015. The assumption was that most people in Britain could be persuaded to upgrade to DAB radio within six years. However, in 2018 the BBC announced that it was shelving plans to move away from FM. The upgrade cost proved to be too high. And as the BBC's then-director of radio Bob Shennan pointed out, 'audiences want choice'. Perhaps this should provide a cautionary tale for the Government as it seeks to meet its commitment to becoming 'carbon-neutral' by 2050 (a date which is conveniently beyond even the wildest estimates of the current Government’s term), let alone the demands of groups like Extinction Rebellion to bring that date forward.
I've just been talking to a Government official about 'how the market is being sounded out' about the cost and availability of 'mobile morgues'. It is obvious this sort of contingency planning – emergency procurement of industrial refrigeration, in essence – is sensible and necessary, given reasonable worst case scenario estimates that additional deaths stemming from Covid-19 would run to several hundred thousand. The practicalities are grim. That said there is seemingly reassuring news out of China today, in the disclosure that the daily rise in new Covid-19 cases has fallen to a relatively small 19. Even if the stats aren't rock solid, they must approximate the truth, given that president Xi Jinping has emerged from his self-imposed purdah to celebrate them.
This afternoon Boris Johnson came close to losing a Commons vote for the first time since the election. Over 30 Tory MPs broke a three-line whip in order to protest over the government's decision to allow the Chinese company Huawei to be involved in the UK's 5G network. The government saw off the rebellion by Tory MPs over an amendment calling for Huawei to be removed from the 5G network in two years time if it is still deemed 'high risk’ by British cybersecurity experts by 306 votes to 282. This means that the government's working majority of 87 was cut to 24. The rebellion was spearheaded by Iain Duncan Smith who was backed by Damian Green, David Davis, Owen Paterson, Tom Tugendhat and Bob Seely.
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Wolf-whistling isn't a crime, but one Labour MP seems to think it should be. Stella Creasy clashed with Nick Ferrari on LBC this morning on the issue. Ferrari asked Creasy whether a builder should be criminalised for wolf-whistling at a woman. Here is her response: 'I'd really hope in the same way if someone uses a racially abusive or religiously abusive term we don't send them to prison but we do take action and we do say that that's not okay. What we are talking about doing is equalising that, so you would record that in the same way you record racial or religious abuse but obviously there is a spectrum here. But misogyny is also behind sexual violence towards women and murder.
Trevor Phillips' suspension from the Labour party over allegations of ‘Islamophobia’ has been roundly condemned, but it should come as little surprise. After all, Phillips has been a high-profile opponent of the very definition that is now being weaponised against him. What has happened to him should serve as a warning to others who call out the problems with 'Islamophobia'. If someone as well known as Phillips can be targeted for speaking out, no one is safe. Within hours of Phillips being suspended by the party whose cause he has promoted for 30 years, his colleagues, both past and present, leapt to his defence.
I do not know enough to comment on the merits of the Labour party's action against Trevor Phillips. But I know what the far left looks like when it is building a cover story to hide its wickedness, and everyone else looking at the Phillips case should know it too. In normal circumstances, you would wait to see the evidence that Phillips is an 'Islamophobe', and read with care the judgement of impartial and competent Labour officials. But nothing about Labour is normal now, and its officials are the last people whose judgement you should trust. The easy point to make – and just because it is easy does not mean you shouldn’t make it – is that the Labour party isn’t competent.
Many of us suspected the Labour party was on a suicide mission. Now we know for sure. The party’s suspension of Trevor Phillips over allegations of Islamophobia feels like a turning point. It is surely one of the final nails in the coffin of irrelevance that has been enveloping this party for a few years now. The casting out of Phillips confirms two things about Labour under the baleful, Stalinist rule of the Corbynista left. First, that they will brook no dissent. No questioning of their deathly creeds of identitarianism and multiculturalism — a questioning Phillips has pursued with great clarity and purpose in recent years — will be tolerated.
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International Women’s Day (IWD) is a great idea — in theory. Why not set aside a moment each year to highlight both the historical and present-day circumstances that impact women's lives? If used properly, it could do some good. But the problem with international-anything-day is that the plights and progress of historically disenfranchised people vary dramatically throughout the world. Yes, global citizens have plenty of shared values and many of the same end-goals, but the advancements happening (or not happening) in one community will often be different in the neighbouring town, city or country — and certainly different from what’s happening continents over. A woman’s life here in Britain will not reflect her counterpart in Mexico, Saudi Arabia or China.
Rishi Sunak - We will give the NHS whatever it needs The Chancellor Rishi Sunak was the government's representative across the TV studios today, ahead of his first Budget on Wednesday. Sunak remained tight lipped when asked about many of the specific measures he would be taking, but told Sky’s Sophy Ridge that the NHS could expect more cash to help with the strains caused by the coronavirus: https://twitter.com/RidgeOnSunday/status/1236572324889006081?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw SR: Are you ready to give more money to the NHS? RS: Absolutely. We stand ready to give the NHS whatever it needs. Flood defence spending will double Sunak also told Ridge that the amount of money the UK spent on flood defences would go up to £5.
If there was any doubt still remaining that Rishi Sunak's first Budget will be dominated by the coronavirus, the Chancellor's Sunday media round ought to have put that to bed. With three days to go until the government’s first big fiscal event since winning an 80-seat majority, Sunak has been touring the broadcast studios of Sky and the BBC to trail the contents of his red box. Speaking to Andrew Marr, Sunak was clear that the priority of the Budget would be making sure that both members of the public and businesses receive the support they need to respond to the virus in the coming weeks and months: I can say absolutely categorically the NHS will get whatever resources it needs to get us through this and to respond to the health crisis ...