Uk politics

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

Labour’s spending cuts exposed

From our UK edition

Darling has now exposed as false the Brown/Balls dividing line of "investment vs cuts". If Labour were to win, he said, the cuts would be worse than anything seen under Thatcher in the 1980s. This is Darling's problem: he's a dreadful liar. The IFS today laid out the scale of the cuts that would happen whoever wins the election, and the below graph is worth reprinting. Overall spending falls 12 percent (once dole and debt interest are taken into account). So when Darling says this is worse than anything in the 1980s, he is simply stating a fact. You'd never catch Balls or Brown doing that, by the way, and I hope that, when either pop up for interview, they will be asked if they agree with their Chancellor's assessment.

Peter Hoskin

The two sides of Alistair Darling

From our UK edition

After delivering an insipid, insufficient Budget yesterday, Alistair Darling has now smuggled a little bit of honesty into the fiscal debate.  In interview with Nick Robinson, he has claimed that if Labour is re-elected its spending cuts "will be deeper and tougher" than Thatcher's.  Needless to say, that's a message which will not sit well with his Cabinet colleagues like Ed "investment vs cuts" Balls. And this is precisely why Darling is such a confusing figure.  Yes, he deserves some praise for being more upfront about the public finances than his predecessor ever could be, and for restricting the wilder excesses of Brown and Balls.  But it's hard to forget that he, as Chancellor, hasn't delivered a spending review when we need one most.

James Forsyth

Labour’s plans require non-ringfenced Budgets to be cut by 25 percent in the next parliament

From our UK edition

At lunchtime, the press headed off to hear the referee's verdict on the Budget. The Institute for Fiscal Studies is now so respected that its view of the Budget largely determines the news agenda. Its briefings are now so popular that they can no longer be held in their basement. So, journalists, economists and accountants piled into a room at the University of London Union which is normally used for battle of the bands contests rather than Budget analysis. The most striking number the IFS presented was that if Labour ringfences the already protected areas of spending for the whole parliament, other departmental budgets will have to be cut by more than 25 percent. One dreads to think what the consequences of slicing a quarter off the defence Budget would be.

Peter Hoskin

How to foil a Dispatches sting

From our UK edition

The producer and director behind the Dispatches lobbying sting, Philip Clothier, has a snappy article over at Prospect, in which he basically asks the question: how could MPs have been so stupid?  But it's his suggestion that some former ministers may have got off lightly which really caught my eye: "Meanwhile, one former Labour cabinet minister was interviewed, but the sound was so poor that we could only hear appetising phrases. He had the good fortune to be sitting in front of a brightly lit window, over-exposing the shot. And we just couldn't understand much of what another former minister said because of his thick accent." Cue all MPs adopting impenetrable accents, and sitting in front of windows, from now on.

David Blackburn

Vested interests at the MoD

From our UK edition

Yesterday, Alistair Darling pledged £4 billion for the MoD, earmarked for Afghanistan. He did not specify what the cash would buy, presumably because the Defence Spending Review will take place after the election. But a day is a long time in politics and the forthcoming spending review no longer seems to be so decisive: BAE and the MoD have signed a £127million four-year contract to design the proposed Type 26 frigate. This is welcome in principle: the Type 22 and 23 frigates need to be replaced eventually and British companies and their employees will prosper. But this contract should have fallen under the spending review – defence procurement remains unreformed and the nation can ill-afford a £127million design contract.

David Blackburn

Proscribing legalised drugs

From our UK edition

‘My wife says these drugs turned me into a zombie, but the truth is I wouldn’t know, as I have hardly any memory of the past 40 odd years.’ The Mail printed Keith Andrew’s testimony, a 74-year-old retired electrician who has guzzled prescribed benzodiazepines for nearly half a century. Andrew is one an estimated 1.5 million British people who have been addicted to valium and other tranquilisers. Whether addiction is voluntary or not is irrelevant. Anti-anxiety treatment remains a laxly regulated area of medicine: more than 8 million prescriptions are made each year and there are an estimated 100,000 illicit addicts currently using. In a fascinating piece in the Telegraph, Andrew M Brown outlines the side-effects of long-term ‘Benzos’.

Peter Hoskin

A glass of clear, blue water?

From our UK edition

One of the most eye-catching stories this morning comes courtesy of ConservativeHome: "As part of the pre-election package, ConservativeHome expects Mr Osborne to announce that a Tory government will cancel Labour's National Insurance tax rise. The Tories will announce an alternative way of plugging the hole. Earlier this week Policy Exchange argued that the NI rise was a very damaging way of raising extra revenue." Sure, Cameron has hinted at this before, and there will be questions about how the Tories would fill the fiscal gap.  But that doesn't make this anything less of a smart move.  Not only does it makes sense economically, but it would give the Tories a clear, positive message to deploy on the doorstep.  I'd be astonished if Team Osborne didn't move on it.

Fraser Nelson

Osborne’s weak response

From our UK edition

I was all set up to Fisk the post-Budget analysis which Darling normally gives to the Today programme after the Budget - but he wasn’t there. The Treasury refused to have him debate with Osborne which is what Today (unusually) seems to have assumed. Well, we’d best get used to hearing Osborne post-Budget day. At first, I thought it was a coup for the Tories - but as Evan Davis sharpened his claws, it soon appeared to have been a net negative. Osborne just didn’t sound confident. A series of exchanges left him looking unprepared. His line - that he will eliminate ‘the bulk’ of the annual overspend over the lifetime of the parliament - was challenged: what does it mean?

Peter Hoskin

Darling and Brown get away with it

From our UK edition

Strange days, indeed.  While most of the frontpages today are unflattering for Labour – particularly, and unsurprisingly, those of the Telegraph and the Sun – I imagine that Brown & Co. will be quite pleased with the general tone of the Budget coverage.  Much of it mirrors the Independent's view that Darling "played a weak hand well".  Or, elsewhere, there's a kind of detached indifference about what is described as a "boring" Budget. Yes, if you like, you can take that as proof that the Darling-and-Mandelson approach to the public finances is less politically toxic, and a good degree more sensible, than the Balls-and-Brown approach.

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Darling’s nothing budget puts the ball in the Tories’ court

From our UK edition

This year’s Budget was never going to win the election for Labour but it could have lost it. If the markets had reacted really badly to it, warnings about how Britain is in danger of going Greek would have suddenly gained traction. But Darling avoided that fate with a Budget that did little. Listening to it, it was clear that those inside Labour who argued that the strategic imperatives for this Budget had to be appearing credible and not risking an adverse market reaction had prevailed. The mood music was very different from the PBR, with its emphasis on investment versus cuts.

James Forsyth

Fiscal drag

From our UK edition

It is good to see the Tories calling fiscal drag what it is, a tax rise by another name. Fiscal drag is a result of holding income tax thresholds steady while both prices and earnings are increasing. This means that more people have to pay more of their income in tax. Gordon Brown indulging in this ploy so often as Chancellor was one of the main reasons that the number of people paying the 40p rate pretty much doubled between 1997 and 2008. One other good thing about the Tory line on fiscal drag today, is that it will put pressure on them to raise personal allowances and income tax thresholds in line with inflation every year. If they don’t, they will be—by their own definition—raising taxes.

Fraser Nelson

In defence of Alistair Darling

From our UK edition

It's unusual for Chancellors to stand with their wives on the steps of the Treasury on budget day, and to see the Darlings together this morning gives an indication of what they have been through. Brown doubtless thought him an automaton when he appointed him to the job - but I was wrong to say that he would be "no more a Chancellor than Captain Scarlett was an actor". He has defied Brown, bringing moderation and much-needed dullness to the worst fiscal crisis in Britain's peacetime history. In James's political column last week he suggested that Darling calls his autobiography "the forces of hell" - that he would defy Brown like that takes some guts. It felt strange to praise Darling in the editorial of tomorrow's magazine, given that he has presided over this fiscal collapse.

Matthew Sinclair

Darling, what about the deficit?

From our UK edition

Alistair Darling was terribly proud of the Government's record in his Budget speech today.  But he again dodged the question of how he'll get the deficit under control.  Ruth Lea has called this his "do little" Budget. With the country still facing hundreds of billions in borrowing, the few billion being saved are virtually neglible.  There are huge downside risks for those borrowing forecasts as we get onto the more contentious growth projections from 2011-12 onwards, which are way above City expectations.  And everything will get much worse if borrowing costs rise - Mike Denham has explored the frightening possibilities in a blog for the TPA. We had a proud boast that Britain has "the fastest deficit reduction plan of any G7 country", a massive Brownie.

Patrick Nolan

This budget penalises employment

From our UK edition

Supporting jobs and small businesses - "the backbone of future economic growth", in Alistair Darling's words - was seen as a priority in today's Budget. In his statement the Chancellor highlighted the following measures: •         Extending the young person's guarantee for one year after March 2011 (providing a job, training or work experience for young people who cannot find work). •         Extending the time to pay scheme, which allows businesses to spread tax payments over a timetable they can afford, for the whole of the next Parliament. •         Cutting the business rates facing small businesses for one year from October.

James Forsyth

Another dangerous Quango in the offing

From our UK edition

This government’s love of quangos reached new heights in today’s Budget when Darling announced the creation of a ‘credit adjudicator service’. This will allow companies who feel they have been unfairly denied credit by their bank to appeal the decision to the credit adjudicator service which will have the legal power to order the bank to lend the money.    The Treasury is quick to stress that businesses will have to have claims referred to the credit adjudicator service by their regional business body. But this quango, which will cost five million pounds a year to run, strikes me as a quite absurd attempt to second guess commercial lending decisions. It is also unaccountable.

Fraser Nelson

A reassuringly dull budget

From our UK edition

This was a surprisingly subdued Budget, and for that Alistair Darling is to be commended. He must have resisted all manner of pressure from Brown to put in pre-election pyrotechnics. But the budget was what it should be: a punctuation mark on the sentence of the national economy. That sentence says "our finances are going to hell," and the Budget's high point is that we are doing so fractionally slower than we were expecting to last November. Personally, I forgive Darling all the partisan stuff in his speech - this is a pre-election Budget after all. There is no act of wanton vandalism, like the 50p tax. Stamp duty on properties over 1m is rising from 4 percent to 5 percent, but does anyone seriously think this would not have happened under the Tories?

Peter Hoskin

Darling’s phoney Budget doesn’t change anything

From our UK edition

Was that a Budget sufficient to the fiscal nightmare that we face?  Well, I think we all could have answered that question before Alistair Darling stood up at the dispatch box, but now we can at least be sure: no, it wasn't.  The government's overall spending plans remain roughly the same as they were in the PBR, there aren't many tax increases to raise much money for the Treasury, and we're meant to be all excited that borrowing is £11bn lower this year than previously forecast – at £167bn.  It's a shame that Darling increased alcohol duty, or we'd all be be out celebrating that particular success, I'm sure. If you're feeling charitable to the government, you could say that if might have been worse.

Lloyd Evans

Not the main event

From our UK edition

Cameron was scarcely trying at PMQs today. Show up, look a bit cross, slip in a joke or two, then sit down and wait for the Budget. That was his plan. When the PM offered his congratulations on BabyCam, the opposition leader quoted a text he’d received – ‘How do you find time for these things?’ Making this wisecrack seemed more important to him than attacking the PM. His tactics were odd, out of touch, retrospective. He asked about Brown’s attempts to conceal the evidence that, as chancellor, he flogged the nation’s gold too cheaply and blew vast sums in potential profits. Brown’s bungling over the bullion billions should be a promising issue.

Peter Hoskin

PMQs live blog | 24 March 2010

From our UK edition

Stay tuned for live coverage at 1200.  A Budget live blog will follow at 1230. 1201: And we're off.  Brown starts with condolences for the fallen.  The first question from Mike Penning is a punchy one: when did the PM realise he "mislead" the Chilcot Inquiry?  Before or after?  Brown responds by pointing out that defence spending has risen in real terms over the last 12 years, if not every year. 1203: A planted question gives Brown to opportunity to list Labour's "fairness measures".  He says they would never have been put forward by George Osborne. 1204: Cameron starts by saying that he'd "like to clear up a few issues".  Laughter from the Labour benches, for some reason.