You wouldn’t have known it from Theresa May’s laughs and Chancellor Philip Hammond’s boasts, but the Budget this week failed to address the key issues and underlining problems facing the British economy. This Tory complacency in terms of economic policies and planning, alongside their ideological commitment to austerity makes a toxic mix that will damage […]
Posts Tagged ‘Budget’
Osborne’s budget is not dissimilar to 2010 – it will have the same effects
Jul 10th, 2015 by Michael Burke.Most media coverage of the Budget is predictably sycophantic and wrong. An objective assessment is that the amount of fiscal tightening planned in this Budget is exactly the same as outlined in the June 2010 Budget. The June 2010 Budget planned tightening of £40bn, but £3bn of this was the projected fall in interest payments. […]
Would a Rachel Reeves budget yesterday have been much different?
Jul 9th, 2015 by James Elliott.Ahead of yesterday’s budget, in which George Osborne laid out £12bn of welfare cuts, a continued squeeze on public sector pay, the abolition of student maintenance grants and higher tuition fees, Labour’s ‘opposition’ front benchers went out of their way to agree with Osborne’s narrative of austerity. Still reeling from the General Election, or now […]
Tory budget announces higher tuition fees and the scrapping of maintenance grants
Jul 9th, 2015 by James Elliott.George Osborne announced the Tories’ latest attack on higher education in today’s budget, announcing that for some institutions fees will rise in line with inflation, and also that grants will be abolished for the poorest students. Osborne’s budget document states measures will, “include allowing institutions offering high teaching quality to increase their tuition fees in line […]
Child poverty could be Tories’ Achilles heel
Jun 30th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.The Tories’ relief that the child poverty figures just published in the official Households Below Average Income (HBAI) statistics didn’t show an increase was palpable. But that conceals the real story. The Tories have form on this issue. Child poverty tripled under Thatcher from 1 in 9 children to 1 in 3, but then fell […]
Pre-budget memo to Osborne: records show austerity won’t cut deficit
Jun 29th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.Osborne’s 8 July budget will be forced through in the teeth of all economic experience. The history of the last 70 years demonstrates one conclusion irrefutably: austerity is the wrong way to cut deficits. After the second world war had dramatically drained Britain’s wealth and left the country with colossal debts amounting to 260% of […]
The magnitude of Osborne’s failure
Mar 21st, 2014 by Michael Meacher.Blinded by the cascade of populist trivia in the budget, the sheer scale of destructiveness of Osborne’s economic policies over the last 4 years has been hidden. It is immense. The economy is still after 4 years of austerity 1.4% smaller than in 2008, while the US economy is 5% larger than before the crisis. […]
Today’s Budget and the crisis in Ukraine
Mar 19th, 2014 by Ann Pettifor.This year’s Budget takes place at a time of high international tension. The issue of energy security has once again shot to the top of the political agenda. The crisis in Ukraine demonstrates once again the extent to which Britain is exposed to political and economic risks beyond our control. The fact is Britain’s dependency […]
Osborne’s recovery: fiction triumphant over fact
Mar 18th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.Osborne’s central pitch in Wednesday’s budget will be that the recovery is strengthening, the economy is coming along nicely, so don’t hand back the keys to the people who caused the mess in the first place. Each of those statements is questionable or wrong. But Labour have boxed themselves in by supporting the austerity line […]
Osborne’s last fling
Mar 22nd, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Osborne had a choice. Faced with the unrelentingly grim news on the economy, he could admit that plan A had failed and change course. Or he could brazen it out and focus on choice titbits for the 2015 election whilst giving minor tweaks to the economics where he could. He decisively chose the latter by highlighting a […]