A front page monstering for the Budget

Sally Chatterjee

It's ironic since half the measures were gimmicks designed for cheap headlines. But the media - hopefully the electorate - can see through the silly ploys and distractions to realise this is one of the worst budget speeches around.

A serious economic crisis is met by a lightweight Chancellor and a delusional PM. The whole country deserves better, no?

David Raynes

Alistair Darling (supported no doubt by the architect of much of the problem-Prime Minister Gordon Brown) has done the equivalent of the debtor who tears up the letter from the credit card company or leaves the bank statement unopened behind the clock. This is economic madness, designed to do one thing, delay fiscal prudence until after an election. McAwberism taken to new heights. Brown should be ashamed of what he has done and is doing.

Silent Hunter

So NOW can we have the bloody General Election?

David Boycott

And, for once, all our papers are guilty of understatement.

This government is adding insult to injury.

Nicholas

‘They’ve ruined Britain’

So true on so many levels and in so many ways. But there is more to come. The next 12-14 months are going to be filled with 1960's communist lunacy mixed with 2009 New Labour Political Correctness. Britain will be changed beyond recognition as the government governs to the benefit of a minority lunatic fringe and to the deteriment of a silent, suffering majority.

They have discovered they can lie, cheat and oppress with impunity. Brazen it out when caught in the most reprehensible scandals and never resign or say sorry. Delinquents.

Phillip Lawrence

They have lit the fuse and then passed the bomb to the Tories; fiscal political game playing at its worst. They have sold our children's future to save their political skins. It won't work.

Kelvin

I'd sort of hoped The Sun would go big on the 50 per cent tax rate. A picture of Darling and the headline 'Halfwit' might have done it...

Alex

I feel sick.

General Election - NOW

Jon

A vote of no confidence. Now!

What in the h@+) does it take?

Stewart

What a mess! It is going to take one hell of an almighty effort to turn this around within a decade. There are some upsides to all of this though, a massive recession will make it easier to justify getting rid of much of the fat of the client state. If and when the Conservatives get the chance to inherit this poisoned chalice there will be little option but to drastically cut back Labour's client state which will mean a lot of job losses but it can be argued that many of those jobs had no right to exist in the first place. When the conservatives are in power they should order all Con councils to slash non-vital services and follow most of the '100 ways to cut council spending' that was published on ConHome a few months ago. Also, if Scotland elects few or no Conservative MPs, stop the Barnett formula, what have they got to lose? Scottish public bodies would then have to slash spending. In some places in Scotland 40% of jobs are public sector. We'd soon see the council 'Street football coordinators' and all 'outreach officers' out of work. Furthermore, the next govt will have to look at withholding EU funding (rebate anyone?), cutting foreign aid to less important countries, abolishing entire central govt bodies such as DfID, Office of the Deputy PM and BERR. While we're at it drop the food standards agency, the environment agency, the regional assemblies, and the strategic health authorities. Police Community Support officers will have to go as will subsidies for Windfarms. Somehow I think people will begin to care less about these blights on the landscape when they find out how expensive the little electricity they produce really is. The next govt should also cut charity donations. It isn't charity if we are forced to pay it through taxation. Funding for the arts will have to be cut as well. Universities should be allowed to go private if they wish to. I dare say we could see a number of public buildings being sold off if anyone can be found to buy them. We could abandon the Olympics if we hadn't committed so much money to it already. Hopefully this will put the nail in the coffin of the national ID card scheme. Furthermore, it will be an excellent time to argue for the privatisation of the BBC. Who can justify a TV tax if things get as bad as the experts say it will. Instantly everyone is #100 better off each year and Labour's official mouthpiece has to compete on a level playing field and submit to the market like everyone else. Tax should be reduced on North Sea oil and gas production to stimulate an increase so that we can temporarily suppress the need for imports. I imagine VAT will have to rise back to 17.5% sooner rather than later as well. Wellfare will also need to take a big hit. If indeed we are experiencing deflation then it can be argued that the giros, child tax credits, etc can be cut as well. Give the police quotas for drug arrests and massively increase the fines for cannabis, cocaine and heroin posession - the music and fashion industries could be the sectors to save the economy. Likewise it would give the city boys a chance to redeem themselves as their ill gotten bonuses are plowed back into the Treasury to fund the police force. If all else fails, what remains of our Royal Navy could turn to piracy (it seems to be all the rage at the moment) and raise money for the state the old fashioned way.

TomTom

I very much doubt democracy can solve the problems up ahead. There is no deus ex machina like North Sea Oil to rescue this nation as energy shortages bite in the coming years, and the country is simply unattractive to live in or to work in.

To bring Consumption in line with economic output would be a huge collapse, but to amortise national debt means decades of living well below economic output and that means an end to the welfare state

Hawkeye

OK - my instant solution for solving the govt.s debt crisis.

The borrowing is set to be something like 12% of GDP so slash 12% from public sector budgets. That is 12% off the NHS, 12% off the police, 12% from local govt. 12% from the MoD, etc. You get the idea.

Since a lot of these bodies have been massively over funded in the last few years these should get them down to affordable levels pretty darn quick.

Over at LabourHome the lefties seem chuffed with the budget. Ironically over at LabourList they seem a bit more sanguine.

On the good news front, this is the budget that ensure Labour is unelectable.

TrevorsDen

Paxman was his usual useless self in interviewing Cooper et al.

Cooper tried to say that there were no cuts in Health and Education and there was a clear audible demurring by Hammond and Cable. But Paxman chose not to pursue this - rather he continued to varnish his own vanity.

Cooper also continued to blatantly misrepresent Tory position which is not to make any more cuts in spending than labour this year but to bring forward labours delayed cuts to next year.

Its clear that this line is labours last redoubt and why they are letting the economy to sink even further before implementing their cuts

Again Paxman was happy to waft over this. To my eye Hammond did make his point and also I thought made the good point that the way services are delivered will need to be addressed if we are to get value for are lower spending.

Forlornehope

The problem is not actually the total level of public debt. A decade of balanced budgets will cure that through a combination of growth and modest inflation. The problem is the structural defecit in government expenditure. At 12% of GDP this is enormous. A 6% increase in taxes would seem huge and accompanied by a 6% reduction in expenditure would be bruising. If taxes are not to rise, and they should not, then that is a 12% reduction in expenditure. To put this in context, that is six times the total defence budget. The reduction would be equivalent to zero growth in cash terms for five years with between 2 and 2.5% inflation. The golden rule will have to be to get to a balanced budget as soon as possible and to stay there with no exceptions.

john miller

Do not the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have a duty of public care?

I raise this because if any company director published a prospectus like this, they could end up in jail.

Most economists seem to think that, at best, the forecasts are wildly optimistic. Some think that they are unbelievable. Some have called them fiction.

Are the Prime Minister and the Chancellor not accountable for these statements they have made?

The country needs to borrow more money than it has ever done and the Chancellor has lied through his teeth on just about every item in the budget. How on earth will that encourage foreign investors?

The only plan I can see is that Labour have admitted defeat. They believe that if they project a rosy future occurring in the middle of the next Tory term, then when the Tories don't deliver, they can blame it on George Osborne.

Either that or it's the less subtle scorched earth policy.

Ken

Apologies if this has already been mentioned.

Willem Buiter devastatingly takes apart the appalling budget and offers his deeply gloomy view of the future, here:

http://blogs.ft.com/maverecon/2009/04/darling-is-doing-his-best-to-clean-up-browns-mess/

Worth a read.

Michael Booth

John Miller,

Totally agree with you - anybody else publishing figures like these would be facing criminal charges and yes, I do think the government have a duty of care (for this country) which they have failed to uphold. Now we have a relaunch of the old-style envy politics, tax the rich etc, when anybody with half a brain cell understands the country needs entrepreneurs, businessmen and investors. This government have forgotten they serve the nation - that's everybody - and not just those who vote Labour. It is a total disgrace.

seb

Jon
Correct. In January, Lord Healey said this to an interviewer: "[What] I learned as Chancellor [was] that the rich can nearly always find ways of avoiding tax that are legal, and in any case the amount raised is very small.
And it does encourage people to leave the country."
Healey also said this: "We've got far too many people working in the public sector. There's
probably twice as many people working in the public sector as is necessary."

TomTom
Roughly half of my uni friends from the early eighties emigrated. The had to to earn a crust. The country has suffered a massive drain of human resources within the last generation and will suffer an even greater loss in the next decade. The moral challenge that Cameron faces, should be become the Prime Minister, is to avoid the Casino Economy policies of both New Labour and the Thatcher and Major governments. The City generated money and it's gone. The construction of a real, rather than a Potemkin, economy is a tall order but in the very, very long term it is the only hope we have of becoming a bankrupt slum.

Ken

@TomTom
"an end to the welfare state"

Taking that further means, does it not, exporting hundreds of non-EU economic migrants, "asylum seekers" "human rights refugees" and the sub-continent's "bridal trains".

How is that going to play out I wonder.

Perhaps the Mayor of Calais has
a point.