Uk politics

In the March Budget – and, indeed in the Conservative manifesto - we were promised budget balance by 2018-19. That magic moment has now been shifted back a year. In part, that reflects a gentler than planned path for spending cuts, including welfare spending cuts. The gentler path does not however represent a let up in the overall scale of cuts – other than for defence. Spending in unprotected departments (those other than health, overseas aid, schools and, now, defence) will still have fallen by about a third in real terms over the ten years to April 2020. The Budget was certainly not short on measures. The scorecard shows net tax increases of £6.

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/spectatorpolitics/summerbudget2015/media.mp3" title="Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss the Summer Budget"] Listen [/audioplayer]Chris Leslie has just briefed journalists on Labour’s response to the Budget. In summary, it’s all quite difficult. Leslie repeatedly used that word when asked about individual measures such as the benefit cap and public sector pay, while also saying that Labour didn’t want to be a knee-jerk opposition which opposed everything. The key themes of the Labour response are that the changes to tax credits represent what the Shadow Chancellor deems a ‘work penalty’.

Tomorrow’s Budget is expected to be brutal, with the Conservatives recognising that now is the time to inflict the maximum pain as the party is the furthest it will ever be from the next election. But Sky News reports tonight that one of the most-reported aspects of that brutal Budget, the £12bn of welfare cuts, will be introduced a little more gently than expected. Faisal Islam writes that this is ‘partly because buoyant tax revenues and new Office of Budget Responsibility projections mean the Chancellor can meet his fiscal mandate without making the welfare cuts within two years’.

How, as a seasoned politician, might you decide who to back in the party’s leadership contest? It might be that you’re swayed by the ministerial experience of one candidate, or perhaps the fierce commitment of another candidate to a policy that you hold very dear. Perhaps it’s because you’re from the same faction in the party, because you’ve been friends for years, or maybe it’s because, as a result of various twists of good fortune and circumstances not entirely under their control, they have children. Apparently, that last is the primary reason that Helen Goodman, a Labour MP who served as a minister when her party was in government, selected Yvette Cooper as her star candidate for Labour leader.

We learn today that George Osborne will say in his Budget that he’s using the fines he’s collected from bankers to build a memorial to terror victims. I find this juxtaposition rather odd: why link terrorism to banking? Why not just be honest: that any memorial will be funded from the the same tax pool as everything else? But moreover, I do wonder where this memorial will go.  We’re told that the Chancellor will consult with the relatives of the victims before agreeing a location. These memorials do serve a purpose: they become part of the world our ministers operate in; part of their daily lives. Most politicians will know every memorial in Westminster - who they commemorate, and why. You can see what has given him the idea.

This time tomorrow, we’ll have had the first projections from the Greek referendum. We will have an idea as to whether the country has said Oxi or Nai. At the moment, the polls make the referendum too close to call. Whatever the result, there’ll be no quick deal between Greece and its creditors. But if the Greeks vote Oxi, then the country could be forced out of the Euro by the ECB cutting off assistance to its banks. If that were to happen, then the Eurozone would have to move to integrate very quickly to prevent Portugal, Italy, Spain and even France being pushed towards the Euro exit the next time there’s a fiscal crisis. This would almost certainly require a new EU treaty, which would provide Cameron with quite an opportunity.

Could Greek voters back austerity measures to keep their country in the eurozone this weekend? Today’s papers cover a poll by GPO which put ‘Yes’ on 47.1 per cent and No on 43.2 per cent. This result would see resignations at the top of Syriza, but effectively no Grexit.