Scant consolation
The loans available to small businesses are going to be increased. I suspect that small business owners would have preferred it if Brown hadn’t increased their taxes in Budget 2007.
Politics
Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
Wednesday
“Investment” not waste
Another Brown-style trick. Darling’s just waxing lyrical about the “record levels of investment” in public services. Never mind that we haven’t seen commensurate improvements in those services. Never mind all the waste. Like his boss, he’s also now talking about public service reform – “spending must be matched by reform” – shame they haven’t done that for the past decade.
Treasury Purple
Seeing Darling wearing a purple tie and Yvette Cooper a purple suit, one wonders whether some spin doctor has decided that purple best represents stability in a time of global uncertainty. The Prime Minister, however, is sporting a red tie.
The word of the day: stability
We’re only a few minutes in and Darling has already said stability at least three times. The phrase of the day is ‘global uncertainty’—which Darling and Brown think is their get out of jail free card.
Brownian emotion
It’s like Brown never left No.11. Alistair Darling started his Budget speech saying that it’s key purpose is “stability now and in the future”. I’ve already lost count of the times he’s said “stability”, and he’s only a couple of minutes in…
The table Darling doesn’t want you to see
As I suspect we’ll hear the claim today that the UK is somehow holding up well in the face of the global slowdown, here is a handy table showing why we the precise opposite is true and we are literally hit harder than any other OECD country. Real GDP growth 2007 Real GDP growth – 2008 Slowdown factor 1 United Kingdom 3.1 1.7 44.9% 2 Ireland 5.2 2.9 44.8% 3 New Zealand 3.4 1.9 43% 4 Spain 3.8 2.5 35% 5 Germany 2.6 1.8 34% 6 Finland 4.2 2.9 32% 7 Italy 1.8 1.3 30% 8 Austria 3.3 2.5 26% 9 Belgium 2.6 1.9 25% 10 Switzerland 2.7
Blast from the past | 12 March 2008
Pictures have just landed of Darling holding aloft the old Gladstone budget box – ditching the new one Brown’s constituents made for him in 1997. First time we’ve seen this since Ken Clarke’s 1997 budget. Darling will want this to be symbolic of a new era – no Brown-style deceptive budgets, no tricks this time, we’re told. Funny to see Darling distancing himself from Brown in this way. Let’s see if his Budget wafts the false scent we’ve become so accustomed to expecting.
Live Budget coverage
With Alistair Darling delivering his Budget speech at 12:30, Coffee House is shifting into live coverage mode. Expect frequent updates, as well as analysis from Matthew d’Ancona, Fraser Neslon, Martin Vander Weyer and others. Click here for our live coverage
The fictions have begun…
The Prime Minister’s Spokesman has just given the lobby a briefing – and repeating what Darling briefed the Cabinet. I hope Chancellor started his presentation with the words “once upon a time” because what followed was demonstrable fiction. Here are the main points:- 1) All the countries in the world are facing problems 2) Britain is well-placed to withstand these problems. 3) Inflation is low 4) Debt is low, by historical and international standards are low 5) Economic growth is resilient. My response: 1) There is a global credit crunch, but Britain will be amongst the worst hit by it (see point 5) 2) We would be well-placed had a
What’s the right response to boredom?
The spin ahead of the Budget is that it is going to be really quite dull, a chance for Darling to remind us of his ability to bore us all into submission. The Treasury keeps stressing that there are no rabbits to be pulled out of hats. Either this is an elaborate double-bluff or we are all going to need to heavily caffeinate ourselves to get through the speech, my money—the £1.79 for a coffee at Pret to be precise—is on the latter. If Darling plays it Boycott straight, it poses a challenge for David Cameron. Most of his backbenchers, and his grassroots, will be looking for a morale boosting,
Lest we forget | 12 March 2008
Lest we forget: in the midst of today’s Budget-mania, pause and consider that the Lisbon Treaty, a sweeping package of reforms to our relationship with the EU, cleared the Commons without a hitch last night. So much for Tony Blair’s promise in April 2004 to mount a definitive national debate on the original EU Constitutional Treaty (of which the present Treaty is a shame-faced near-replica). “Let the issue be put and let the battle be joined!” declared Blair in the Commons. Well, that pledge of a referendum was dumped on the spurious grounds that the new text is not “constitutional” – and so there will be no battle to join.
Tuesday
Budget 2008: Live coverage
Tune into Coffee House tomorrow for live coverage of Alistair Darling’s Budget speech from 12:30pm. Throughout the day, we’ll have anaylsis from Matthew d’Ancona, Fraser Neslon, Martin Vander Weyer and several guest contributors.
Budget 2008: What to expect
The Guardian’s politics blog has a great post outlining all the the latest “speculation, leaks and educated guesses” on tomorrow’s Budget. So far the most striking predictions are: 1) £5 billion of tax rises; 2) more cash for failing inner city schools and the Academies programme; 3) a tax on plastic bags, among a whole raft of green proposals; and 4) an above-inflation increase for the duty on beer, wine and spirits.
An unfashionable view
MPs will soon have to show receipts for all expenses claims over £25. After the Conway scandal, surely that’s a good thing? I think so. Yet the press release sent out by Martyn Jones MP – and highlighted over at Red Box – does make some persuasive points against. Here’s the key passage: “Monitoring an influx of allowance claim forms will require the Department of Finance and Administration to employ more staff for more hours. This department already costs £17,000,000 per year to run and has increased by over a third the amount of people it employs in the past twenty years. I am not trying to say that MPs are above scrutiny
Devolving responsibility
Three Line Whip are reporting that Paul Murphy, the current Welsh Secretary, is being lined up by Gordon Brown for a new Cabinet position – the Secretary of State for the UK’s devolved regions: Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. After Lord Goldsmith’s suggestions this morning, it looks like another effort to coordinate Britishness.
A poll conundrum
The latest Times / Populus poll places the Tories on 37 percent (down 3 on last month); Labour on 34 percent (up 3); and the Lib Dems on 19 percent (up 2). The poll was conducted at the weekend – after the vote for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty – making the Labour and Lib Dem gains counterintuitive. I’m aware that Europe doesn’t rank high among voters’ concerns. But other evidence strongly suggests that people care about a referendum, if only because it was a manifesto promise. How to read the poll findings, then? Do people not feel all that betrayed by Labour and the Lib Dems, or has the sentiment just not filtered through in this
Monday
Hammond puts his foot in it
Philip Hammond, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has just finished a pre-Budget lobby briefing, which I suspect will end in some troublesome headlines for him tomorrow for two reasons. First, non doms. Hammond asks us to believe that the Tory non-dom tax would scare away fewer millionaires than Labour’s policy. But the Tory figures claim they’d sting non-doms for £2.8bn, four times what Labour hope to sting the non doms for (Labour will only tax those who have been here for seven years). Hammond says the non-doms prefer certainty. Presumably for newly-arrived non doms that means the certainty of getting stung for £25k under the Tories versus the certainty of
Darling wins one
Over at Boulton and Co, Jonathan Levy reports that Alistair Darling has successfully faced down Gordon Brown over who should lead an inquiry into the economic effects of climate change. Darling wanted Adair Turner but Brown is still unhappy with Turner over his pension reform report which was too free thinking for Brown’s tastes. However, the puppet Chancellor has stood his ground and Turner will reportedly be announced as the head of this review later today. All this acts as further proof of Iain Martin’s thesis that after his nightmare start and the briefing against him, Darling is now determined to fight his corner.
Budget 2008: Sending out a message
As Dr Oliver Hartwich outlined on Coffee House yesterday, The Treasury doesn’t have much room for manoeuvre ahead of Wednesday’s Budget. In short: it’s down to our economy being taxed, spent and borrowed up to the hilt. Even shorter: it’s down to Gordon Brown’s decade as Chancellor. What, then, can Alistair Darling use the Budget for? He’d have found some inspiration at the pre-Budget event organised by the British Bankers’ Association (BBA) and the think-tank Reform this morning. As the chief executive of the BBA, Angela Knight, put it: this Budget shouldn’t be about tweaking, twitching or changing – there’s no space for that. Instead, it should be about “sending out a message”. A message which tells the
And the lion shall lie down with the lamb
The most surprising piece of news in the papers this morning is that Gordon Brown is sounding Peter Mandelson out about whether he would like to serve a second term as Britain’s European Commissioner. It is, as The Times notes, a rather drastic turn around since last March when Mandelson rather tartly declared: “I don’t know whether this is going to come as a disappointment to him, but he can’t actually fire me. So like it or not, I’m afraid he will have to accept me as commissioner until November 2009. But I will not be seeking a nomination for a further term.” It appears that the great Mandelson Brown
