Budget Day

SuperStu said:
Tanks parked on Labour's lawn. The corporation tax policy and the infrastructure investment bank are straight out of the Corbyn manifestos.

Hard to imagine a set of circumstances that lead to the tories losing power for a long time now.
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I think its going to be about how the Tories will try to move on from Covid and Brexit as if nothing has changed - straight back to hand-outs and back slaps for the businesses big and rich enough to hire the large accountancy firms to shore up their tax spend, while still doing next to nothing to assist with the people who have lost most financially during this crisis. They're still putting their faith in models that lead to people pocketing government cash without needing to deliver anything.

Another year of pay freeze for public sector workers pushes people into making decisions about whether working for the NHS is long term economically viable.

Pots of cash for business vanity projects, but nothing to ensure town and city councils can help the most vulnerable kids.

Labour have to call them out for their 18 months of mistakes since March 2020, and to highlight how they have refused to take an opportunity to seriously look at how people in the country need to do just to get by.
 
Piccadilly Day Tripper said:
Labour have to call them out for their 18 months of mistakes since March 2020
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Archiestephens_elbow said:
Apart from 130000 deaths?
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Fruitless, imho. There's a few reasons why.

1) "Captain Hindsight" response is already established. Many in the Labour party begged Starmer to challenge the mistakes at the time, when they could actually make a difference and save lives. He wouldn't. "We support the government" was all he'd say. It's an open secret that Long Bailey got sacked for being too close to the teaching unions. If he'd hammered the government at the time then he'd have a leg to stand on with this. But he wouldn't so he won't. Nobody is going to want to hear about the problems of 2020 going in to an election in 2024.

2) The tories have already convinced a majority that the general public not following the rules are mainly to blame. Starmer isn't going to convince many people that he'd have had significantly different results.

3) the 120,000 unnecessary deaths caused by austerity were well publicised in 2017 and 2019. It didn't make much difference then. Why would this be different?
 
SuperStu said:
Fruitless, imho. There's a few reasons why.

1) "Captain Hindsight" response is already established. Many in the Labour party begged Starmer to challenge the mistakes at the time, when they could actually make a difference and save lives. He wouldn't. "We support the government" was all he'd say. It's an open secret that Long Bailey got sacked for being too close to the teaching unions. If he'd hammered the government at the time then he'd have a leg to stand on with this. But he wouldn't so he won't. Nobody is going to want to hear about the problems of 2020 going in to an election in 2024.

2) The tories have already convinced a majority that the general public not following the rules are mainly to blame. Starmer isn't going to convince many people that he'd have had significantly different results.

3) the 120,000 unnecessary deaths caused by austerity were well publicised in 2017 and 2019. It didn't make much difference then. Why would this be different?
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1) Covid-19 and the pandemic response is going to dog the country for the next decade. It's not all done on 21st June. Businesses lost, services lost, a fight to reverse the wholesale (necessary at the time) infringement on civil liberties, commentators in the media now with an axe to grind. Let's see what happens when the restrictions and support recedes and lets see what's left.

2) Let's see the stats for that - but it also contradicts you're first point about the nobody in 2024 will care about what happened in 2020.

3) Because this has affected everyone regardless of wealth or location. Funerals over zoom, weddings cancelled, wives, husbands, fathers, mothers sons and daughters with no reason to worry about life having loved ones taken away in very cruel and lonely circumstances. Because our government didn't act quickly enough time and again.
 
95% of it had already been announced either directly (against parliamentary protocol) or by 'cabinet source', 'government source' etc as the no2 snake oil salesman's PR machine has been in overdrive
 
I don't agree it's a contradiction. It's probably a contributory thing - in that maybe if people had the government down as most to blame for covid then maybe they would care more about criticisms afterwards.

Maybe you'll turn out to be right. (y) I want the tories out as much as anyone.
 
Tories will ride this wave as we exit COVID. As we subsequently return to "normal" that is the test. At the moment they are playing Santa, here have a vaccination, furlough money? Yeah, here have some more! I wonder if they will decide to go to the country? Under normal circumstances you might just do that in the Autumn. But these are "fixed term" parliaments (except when they aren't).

It will be a different set of criteria that they are judged on in 2024. If Labour had opposed Government actions during the pandemic they would have been (possibly rightly) accused of playing politics during a crisis. Never a good look. All in it together remember? The "Captain Hindsight" soundbite is ludicrous and only repeated by halfwits, most of Starmer's calls have been carried out by the government weeks or months later, like the call for a short lockdown in September to halt spiralling infection rates.

The aftermath of this will be interesting. Will the money passed to chums and sponsors come back to haunt them in the courts? You can fool some of the people some of the time...
 
They've adopted the Labour proposals on Corporation Tax from the last election within 1%

Where are the doom merchants who said this would kill business?
 
Give away budget without any form of sustainable plan or structural reform. All the negatives kicked down the road, designed purely to aid brand Rishi Sunak and his PM aspirations.
 
Surprisingly generous budget for me from what has been announced so far. I would have frozen tax allowances completely and raised alcohol and fuel duty slightly. I haven't heard anything about Pension Reliefs or Capital Gains tax. I was expecting rate of Capital Tax to increase and reductions in Pension Tax reliefs.
 
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