Posts Tagged ‘Budget’

The Tory budget fails to address any of Britain’s economic woes

by Matt Willgress.

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 […]

Osborne’s budget is not dissimilar to 2010 – it will have the same effects

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 […]

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