The FT notes this morning that:
George Osborne is looking at relaxing the Treasury’s assumption of deep austerity over the next five years in next week’s Budget, countering Labour’s claim that his “extreme” policies would take state spending back to the levels of the 1930s.
Of course he is.
How else could there be a rabbit in his hat next week.
Expect a tax cut for better off voters, in England, if possible.
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We expect him to raise Personal Allowances don’t we?
The part of me that is a cartoonist with a cruel sense of humour draws him with a magician’s top hat and a wand, drawing out a dead and visibly decomposing rabbit to the cheers of bankers, billionaires and fellow-politicians – who bear something of a resemblance to the rabbit.
If that last comment of mine seems somewhat bitter, consider this: I am certain that the ‘rabbit’ will cause lasting economic damage. Even though a relaxation of Austerity, however misdirected, ought to have some benefit.
There is no end to Osborne’s ingenuity and he is capable of favouring his voters with a policy far worse than, say, pensioner bonds and first-time buyer subsidies.
It is, I fear, to easy – and to much of a compliment! – to draw our Chancellor as a stage magician or a circus mountebank.
Hmmm.
As a chancellor, I see him as a dilettante. He is not really interested in the job at all because he’s made loads of money already (more than a lifetime of being paid as Chancellor). He does not take the post seriously.
As a modern neo-lib politician however, he is consummate in his ability to play games and misrepresent what he is doing. I’ve said before and I’ll say it again – he is vandal, with no empathy whatsoever for the bulk of real people in this country whom he is meant to help.
If he is ingenious, then so is ebola.
I think HSBC and HMRC have made the case for an OTR better than I could ever have done
You do know that the Osborne family business is setting up offshore trusts for ‘managing tax liabilities’?
Osborne is many things, but he is not a dilettante: his performance as Chancellor has been the work of a thoroughly professional politician.
His performance is also the work of a highly effective economic agent – perhaps the most effective Chancellor there has ever been – if you believe, as I do, that his objective is to accelerate the concentration of wealth.
Yet another example of our warped and broken political system: the ability of the party (parties) in government to call a budget only weeks before an election after which they may not be in power; where any promise/commitments made can be overturned by an incoming government; and where the content has nothing to do with the needs and requirements of the country and everything to do with the electioneering of said political party/parties.
Rabbit? Perhaps a skunk with dyed fur.