All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
‘It is the determined policy of this government to keep Wallace and Gromit exactly where they are.’ So proclaimed George Osborne in his Budget speech yesterday, as he announced new tax credits for the video games, animation and televesion industries. But what prompted this? Had he been reading The Spectator? In an interview for the
Today’s front pages concentrate on the so-called ‘granny tax’, the surprise of the Budget. But the real test of this Budget is going to be whether it delivers growth. If it does, then it will make a Tory majority in 2015 more likely. If it doesn’t, then the decision to cut the 50p rate will
What was really in George Osborne’s Budget? Last night we held an event, in association with Aberdeen Asset Management, to discuss just that. Click here for a free pdf copy of the briefing paper produced for the event.
There was an element of bafflement in the early BBC coverage this morning of the welcome news that police have identified and surrounded the suspected killer of seven people, including Jewish children, in Toulouse. To some people’s surprise, the BBC correspondent remarked in the early reports, the suspect turned out to be a Muslim, Mohammed
George Osborne and David Cameron have just addressed the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers. They received the traditional desk banging reception and Tory MPs seemed in good spirits as they left the meeting. Interestingly, they were nearly all relaxed about the increase in the personal allowance, believing that they would get the credit just as
Ed Balls committed Labour to voting against the reduction in the 50p rate at his post-Budget briefing. But he wouldn’t say whether or not Labour would pledge to restore it in their manifesto; sticking to the classic opposition line that all decisions on tax will be made in the manifesto and not before. Balls, though,
With every Budget, the early Cameron emphasis on greenery and General Well Being not Gross Domestic Product seems a more distant memory. Today’s Budget showed that, to Osborne at least, growth now trumps these more abstract concerns. So, we saw an announcement that the planning rules would come into force pretty much as planned
It started like a bit of good old political knockabout. PMQs opened with a planted question from Mark Menzies (Con, Fylde) asking the PM about Britain’s sick-note culture. Cameron, looking suitably grave, declared that the fake-sniffle problem afflicts even senior management. Ed Miliband, he told us, had recently claimed he was too ill to attend
This Budget told us something interesting about the coalition: that there’s more juice left in it than some of us thought. Judging by recent coalition tensions, one might have expected the two parties to devote their time to blocking each other’s proposals. But, instead, they’ve struck a deal that suits both of their political priorities:
How significant was this Budget? On an economic level, not very. There’s no discernible impact on growth: all of the main forecasts have more or less stayed the same since the Autumn Statement. Borrowing is the tiniest bit lower, mainly thanks to a £23 billion accountancy trick with Royal Mail pensions. And even many of
Brother Jones and Fraser and Pete have already given you some of the useful charts from today’s budget. But the truth of this budget can be summarised quite simply: Everyone Pays More. Here’s the proof, culled from the Red Book: Conservative Home say this shoots Ed Miliband’s fox, proving that the rich will pay more
There’s much to applaud in this budget, but as ever we in Coffee House are focusing on things jumping out from the small print. Here are a few things I’ve noticed so far. 1. Don’t mention QE. In his Pre-Budget Report, Osborne was candid about his economic policy: ‘fiscal conservatism, but monetary activism’. That is
1. Growth. The OBR’s forecasts are essentially unchanged from the Autumn Statement, but nevertheless represent a much bleaker outlook than we were given a year ago: 2. Debt. Despite Osborne’s talk of ‘paying down the debt’, he’s actually adding to it — by 59 per cent over this parliament. He is, though, on course to
PMQs and Budget live blog
China’s rumour mill, hyperactive even in the calmest of times, has been in overdrive in the past two days. Monday evening and early Tuesday in Beijing, the country’s Twitter-like microblogs were abuzz with speculation there could have been a military coup, possibly linked with the recent demotion of Communist official Bo Xilai. There hasn’t been
It is not right to say that this is the last United Kingdom budget. Far from it. Nevertheless, the times they be changing. Due to an unfortunate coincidence of parliamentary timing (though doubtless some will see a conspiracy in this) the Scotland Bill will be agreed today. It will, naturally, be lost amidst the budget
The coalition has found the second year of co-habitation more difficult than the first and it will find the coming year even more difficult given that House of Lords reform is on the agenda. But today’s Budget is a reminder of the political benefits of coalition. When George Osborne stands up today and announces, for
Thanks to Budget purdah, we’re all in the dark about what will be in George Osborne’s Red Book today. Oh, sorry, that’s wrong, don’t know what I was thinking. Truth is that, unless the Chancellor has some monumental surprises lined up, we’ve actually heard about much of the Budget in advance. We know, for instance,
The big Budget news tonight is that the personal allowance will rise to £9,205. This is a larger increase than expected and, intriguingly, will be paid for — in part — by a couple of billion more of spending cuts. So, the Lib Dems see considerable progress on their main budget priority, raising the income
George Osborne’s plans for more tax transparency have been widely interpreted as a political masterstroke. People will be horrified to learn the cost of servicing Britain’s national debt, or paying our welfare bill, goes the argument. The move will create downward pressure on public spending, driven by the public itself — a classic example of
With the Coalition taking pre-Budget briefing to new levels you’d be excused for thinking there’s little we don’t know about tomorrow’s statement. But here are four questions we can’t yet answer, and that will be crucial to assessing whether this is a Budget for low-to-middle earners as the Chancellor claims: 1) Will the new increase
The Sunday Telegraph was sensible enough to publish a pleasing article by Brother Hoskin last weekend in which our man took the temperature of political speech-making in Britain today and, concluded, that it is, well, tepid. The speechwriters Pete talked to seem to agree. The decline of the political speech is, for sure, a minority
Why did Gordon Brown wait until the last few weeks of Labour’s thirteen-year reign to implement a 50p tax rate? Easy. Because it wasn’t so much a fiscal policy as a fiendish trap, designed to cut into a Tory government’s flesh. But now, it seems, the trap has snared another victim: Labour itself. The Telegraph’s
Congratulations to YouTube user Hugh Atkin for this mash-up. Nicely done.
According to Rachel Sylvester in The Times (£) today, George Osborne’s love of soaking the rich — from the non-dom levy to the tycoon tax – stems from the importance he puts on the ‘empathy’ described in Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. If so, he’d better start re-reading his Adam Smith. Certainly, the Chancellor
Today’s top Westminster read is James Kirkup’s article on the Treasury smart set. It builds a good foundation from which to argue that for all David Cameron and George Osbourne dislike being compared to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, there remain good grounds for making that kind of comparison. And already we can see, as
Baroness Ashton has managed a return to diplomatic form by comparing the murder yesterday of three children and a Rabbi at a Jewish school in Toulouse with ‘what is happening in Gaza.’ Plenty of people have already deplored her comments. But they present an opportunity to address one of the underlying and too infrequently asked
The Queen has just delivered her Diamond Jubilee address to Parliament, which you can watch below. CoffeeHousers will be terribly disappointed, I know, that the video doesn’t include John Bercow’s lengthy introductory remarks, which didn’t appear to impress David Cameron:
The Illinois primary is today and looks like handing good news to Mitt Romney and poor news to reporters and pundits desperately trying to rustle-up fresh interest in a contest that has been dying for weeks now and certainly since Rick Santorum failed to make an apreciable Super Tuesday impact on Romney’s lead in both
A dark, damp and freezing cellar beneath Waterloo station isn’t an obvious choice for launching a political campaign — but that’s where Team Ken officially kicked off their Mayoral bid last night. Various prominent lefties were brought into the Old Vic Tunnels to warm up for the man himself. Eddie Izzard was also present to
Fabulous stuff from Ken Livingstone, as reported in the Daily Telegraph. Labour’s mayoral candidate wishes to make London a ‘beacon for Islam’. He was speaking at the Finsbury Park mosque, once the redoubt of Islamist mentalists. According to Andrew Gilligan’s report, the idiot also pledged to ‘educate the mass of Londoners’ in Islam, saying: ‘That
When I spoke to the tax justice campaigner Richard Murphy about Ken Livingstone’s tax avoidance, he said that the practice of individuals pretending that they were companies caused ‘a massive leakage of tax revenue. They have all the tax advantages of a company without the obligation to tell the world what they are doing with
Transparency marches on, and what a joy it is. According to the newspapers today, George Osborne will tomorrow turn Ben Gummer MP’s call for tax transparency into government policy. And so we will all get statements detailing just what our tax pounds are spent on. To use the example being bandied around this morning, a
The Chancellor didn’t even bother to hide the thick end of the wedge as he inserted the thin end into the Sunday trading laws. He declared yesterday that restrictions on Sunday trading would be lifted for the duration of the Olympics and Paralympics on the basis that ‘It would be a great shame if the
