Abandon hope all ye who enter here. While we mostly knew what to expect from Darling’s PBR, it’s still surprising just how uninspiring, how thin and how insufficient it is in the flesh. It’s pretty much a bad news budget for anyone you could mention. Bad news, of course, for the bankers who will be
Stay tuned for live coverage of Alistair Darling’s statement from 1230. 1231, PH: PMQs is still going on. Tune into David’s live blog of that here. 1233, PH: Here’s Darling. One sentence in and he’s already refering to the global crisis and “unprecedented action”. He adds: “The task today is to ensure the recovery and
As you can probably imagine, plenty of Labour folk are getting excited about the PBR today. They regard it as a chance for their party to harden their rise in the polls, and hasten the Tories’ descent. But Danny Finkelstein strikes a necessary note of calm over at Comment Central. As he puts it, a
Coffee House will be live-blogging Alistair Darling’s PBR statement from 1230 on. In the meantime, here’s a brief video reminder of George Osborne’s PBR response from last year – probably the Shadow Chancellor’s finest moment at the Dispatch Box. You imagine his address today will be similar in tone, at least:
Just watching Newsnight, and the show’s economics editor, Paul Mason, has said we can expect several budgets to be ringfenced from spending cuts in tomorrow’s PBR – hospitals, schools and perhaps even the social security budget. If so, it’s another sign of how political the document is set to be. Ringfenced budgets are the other
As publicity stunts go, the debt clock the Tories beamed onto Battersea Power Station this evening is quite a decent idea. Their thinking’s pretty clear – get some coverage in tomorrow’s papers, and increase the likelihood that the horrendous state of the public finances becomes the story of the PBR – but it’s probably no
Ok, so tomorrow’s Pre-Budget Report is shaping up to be a horrendously political affair. But, rest assured, it could have been so much worse. In what is, by now, a familiar Budget-time story, Alistair Darling is fighting the good fight against some of Brown’s most inharmonious fiscal brainwaves. According to Rachel Sylvester’s column today, here
There are a couple of noteworthy snippets in today’s FT interview with George Osborne: the claim that the Tories may not take corporation tax as low as it is in Ireland; the outline of a “five-year road map” on business tax policy, etc. But, I must admit, it’s this passage which jumped out at me:
As Anthony Wells says over at his UK Polling Report, there are plenty of reasons to doubt whether Labour could convert a third of Lib Dem voters over to their cause. But the article in today’s Times on Labour’s new strategy will still give Team Clegg pause for thought. The problem for the Lib Dems
Ok, so all Brown Budgets are political – but signs are that this week’s PBR could be his most blatantly partisan yet. I mean, just look at his speech this morning on improving efficiency in the public sector. Some of its measures are welcome – for instance, pledging to cut the pay of senior servants,
This video, which some UKIPers have put together in honour of their former leader Nigel Farage, is comedy gold. Problem is, I suspect it’s unintentionally so… Hat-tip: ConservativeHome
Brace yourselves. According to today’s Daily Express, Alistair Darling is under pressure to introduce a new 70 percent tax rate for high-earners in next week’s Pre-Budget Report. I repeat: s-e-v-e-n-t-y percent. To be honest, I can’t see the Chancellor doing it. Leaping from 50p to 70p would be regarded as far too incendiary, not to
If you’d like a step-by-step preview of Labour’s next election campaign, then do read Alastair Campbell’s latest blog post. All of Brown’s attacks from PMQs are in there, and then some: “tax cuts for the rich”; a lack of “policy heavy lifting” on Cameron’s part; the Tories “haven’t really changed”, etc. etc. The spinmeister has
Here’s a neat little graph from PoliticsHome, which plots the three main parties’ opinion poll ratings alongside their “party morale rating” from the PHI100 tracker. As PolHome put it, it kind of tells us what we know already: that party morale more or less correlates with poll position. But, given how so many politicians deny
A quick tour around the political blogoshpere, and it seems everyone is saying Brown came out on top in today’s PMQs. For what it’s worth, I’d agree with them – but only to a point. On the one hand, Cameron was unusually clumsy, which allowed Brown to land some pretty decent blows. But, on the
Oh dear. The Labour leadership speculation is back in full effect, thanks to Paul Waugh’s scoop in the Standard. According to Paul, Andy Burnham is “prepared to throw his hat into the ring” to succeed Gordon Brown, should it all go wrong for Labour in the next election. Apparently, he’s even lined up Tessa Jowell
If you’re still scratching your head over the latest opinion polls, then I’d recommend you read Anthony Wells’ latest post over at UK Polling report. In it, he outlines four potential reasons for the diminishing gap between the Tories and Labour: Cameron’s “reverse” over the Lisbon Treaty; increased economic optimism; Labour performing better; and the
Another one for the Brown as Nixon folder, courtesy of Rachel Sylvester’s column today: “‘It’s about style of government,’ says one senior figure due to give evidence [to the Iraq Inquiry]. ‘Blair would have a war Cabinet, but a small caucus would meet beforehand. The civil servants were frustrated. Gordon is just as bad. He
When I visited Israel last year, various sources there were convinced – adamant, even – that Iran was within a year or two of creating an atomic bomb. That may or may not have been the case, but it’s still ominous that that hypothetical timeline is nearly up. We can all too easily forget that,
So there we have it. Gordon Brown has confirmed what we all expected: that 500 more British troops will be sent to Afghanistan, bringing the total UK presence up to around 10,000. The “surge” will be rounded off when Obama announces something like 35,000 extra US troops tomorrow. Although greater manpower is A Good Thing
