Politics

25 April 2009

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

Small wonder that the shadow chancellor looked bilious as he listened to this horror story unfold. Because the tax bombshells which Mr Darling revealed in his armoury are primed to explode in the Tory years. As he knows, the ‘efficiency savings’ he forecast in his budget are illusory. Whitehall does not do ‘efficiency’. If Mr Brown had sought to design a budget to make life hell for the next Tory government, he could scarcely have done better. As Labour is likely to be out of power for the seven years mapped out in this Budget, the whole document can be seen as a straightforward booby trap for the Conservatives.

Such traps have, after all, worked for years. The weakness of the Cameron operation so far has been a curious willingness to navigate according to Labour’s economic lodestars, to play by Gordon’s rules. This is why, for example, Mr Brown will impose a pre-election 50p tax on the super-rich. Its purpose is not to raise revenue. Saddling Britain with the third highest top rate of tax on the planet will drive away highly mobile wealth creators, resulting in a net loss to the Exchequer during the Tory years. It is an act of sabotage — and Mr Brown calculates that David Cameron and George Osborne will not dare reverse this measure, being paranoid about their own wealthy backgrounds and being seen to help ‘the rich’.

Of course, such games will work only if the Tories follow the ‘hug-them-close’ strategy that Tony Blair adopted in the mid-1990s. Ken Clarke’s budgets plotted a path to such prosperity that it took Mr Brown almost a decade to ruin it. Labour budgets end in the near-bankruptcy of the nation, as was made painfully clear on Wednesday. The economic forecasts within them are fiction, figures plucked from the air to see the government through to the general election. The cost to the taxpayer of the banking crisis, for example, was declared to be barely a third of the £130 billion estimated by external observers.

As Mr Darling told the Commons: ‘in all these decisions, we have been guided by our core values.’ And this, ultimately, was the problem. The Budget marked the failure not just of short-term planning, but of Mr Brown’s entire world-view and his grand delusion that high state spending makes for a strong country. Intellectually, I suppose, the Prime Minister has done Britain a favour in one respect at least: he has tested Labour economic policies to destruction.

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Mike

April 23rd, 2009 2:45pm Report this comment

...and still 30% vote for these dummy's. It's enough to make you weep.

Fed Up with Labour governments

April 23rd, 2009 3:32pm Report this comment

Labour should be put on trial for what they have done to us.

End off.

Robbit

April 24th, 2009 11:40am Report this comment

Brilliant summary of the situation, Mr. Nelson!

Yes, Mike, 30% of our fellow citizens are quite happy to be marching in lock-step down the not so long road to serfdom.

And yes, Fed Up, if there were any justice in this world and any real leadership in this country this lot would be in the Tower of London awaiting the Axe.

PT

April 24th, 2009 12:40pm Report this comment

Labour should be thrown to electoral oblivion for all time for this. Their spendathon hasn't ended poverty, or made life easier for their constituency either - rather it's lined the pockets of various advocacy groups and members of the "state sector", which no longer includes anything that could be called productive industry. We despirately need to bring Gladstone back from the grave - his sort of economies are now needed more than ever. All funding for "social engineering", these ubiquitous NGO's which seem to be really ruling the country and other pet projects of the new left should all be forthwith abolished. The biggest step towards getting the budget back into the black.

Watervole

April 25th, 2009 11:57pm Report this comment

Thank you Fraser for telling it like it is. I don't envy Osborne his task. I do feel though that despite his detractors, he may well be one of the few men in the country smart enough to sort it out. For all our sakes, may the gods help him. Brown and his minions should be held up for treason. It is unsconscionable that they should be allowed to get away with cheap political tricks at the expense of the public good. They should be made to pay for this. It is deliberate malfeisance.

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