Have you noticed, CoffeeHousers, that our politicians are talking more and more about what they’d do after the next election? This has been happening, really, since last November, when George Osborne extended the forecasting horizon of his Budget to 2017. That had a hint of chicanery about it, ensuring that Osborne continued to meet his first fiscal rule — but it has still triggered a fashion for future gazing. Since then, both Labour and the Lib Dems have talked, in broad terms, about what they would offer for after 2015.
I mention this now because of a story in today’s Sunday Times (£). Osborne, apparently, is going to signal
a further reduction in corporation tax in this month’s Budget, but for ‘later,’ not for now:
There are very obvious political reasons for these sorts of long-term pledges. As memories of New Labour fade into the misty past, the coalition will need to speak increasingly about what it both has achieved and hopes to achieve for the country. It has to show that it has a programme for the future, and ideally one that instills confidence now.‘Osborne has already cut corporation tax. It was 28 per cent when he took power, is now 25 per cent, and will shrink to 23 per cent over this parliament. He is expected to set a new target of 20 per cent for later years.’
But this emphasis on policies-yet-to-come could also cause political strife for Osborne & Co. For starters, it will cause people to ask of the Lib Dems — as they have already — whether they will go into the next election campaigning for policy X or policy Y. If there is any then doubt about that, then it could incite talk of coalition divide.
And then there’s the way that Andrew Lansley has already staked a claim for ever-increasing health spending upon the post-2015 Budget. If other ministers join in with that landgrab, then Osborne may have to start fighting off spending demands years before he would have expected to. As ol’ Friedrich Nietzsche didn’t quite say: if you gaze for long into the future, the future gazes also into you.
Comments