‘A Budget for Working People’. That’s the headline theme of this year’s Budget, says our former editor Matt d’Ancona in the Sunday Telegraph today. And his words are borne out by George Osborne’s interview with the Sun on Sunday. ‘We’ve got to help people into work, particularly young people,’ says the Chancellor, ‘We have to make this a competitive place in the world to set up in business and employ people.’ The measures being broadcast around this morning include a trial suspension of Sunday trading regulations, timed for during the Olypmic Games.
At once, this is both an unsurprising and genuinely risky venture from Osborne. Unsurprising, because the votes of the ‘grafting classes’ have always been his main political target. Indeed, the Chancellor’s Sun on Sunday interview is not the first time that he has made an appeal to ‘the person who leaves their house, maybe at seven in the morning. They are not paid a huge amount but they get out of bed and go to work to provide for their family.’ But risky because — in crafting the sort of economy where graft entails reward — some of Osborne’s likely measures, such as scrapping the 50p rate, are going to be unpopular with the very people he’s trying to win over.
The best advertisement for this Budget would be economic recovery. But, in the meantime, Osborne’s case would be strengthened by the support of everyday SME-owners and employers, of the sort gathered in a letter to the Telegraph a few weeks ago. The Lib Dems are doing their best, with an internet campaign, to highlight what raising the income tax threshhold to £10,000 will mean for people’s pocketbooks. The Chancellor could do with his own poster children too.
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