Having listened to the budget with the main intention of talking about it on Radio 2 immediately after the Chancellor sat down, and having since been for a coffee instead of pouring over the budget detail, this first budget summary is inevitably going to be broad brush in approach.
That said I can be quite clear as to my concerns. This was a dismal budget where almost everything but the big issues that we face were addressed. At one point I thought Hunt might get down to discussing the postage stamp budget in the DWP, so nitpickingly small were many of the annoucements.
As I predicted, what was not said was more important than what was in the speech. There was nothing on interest rates. Nothing too on quantitative tightening. And nothing on the need for more QE. Nothing too on solving pay disputes. On every big issues there was, then, total silence.
Nor was there mention of contagion in European banks as Credit Suisse appears to be tottering on the brink of collapse.
What there was, slipped out quietly, was a 1% spending cap on departmental budgets. If defence, the NHS and childcare get more that means this is going to be even tighter in some cases. Austerity is here to stay in the Tory vision of the future.
So what of what was said?
The energy support is another bung to big energy companies who will continue to laugh their way to the bank.
The childcare support is almost wholly for the middle classes.
The fuel duty cap is another £6 billion subsidy to motorists.
Calling nuclear power environmentally sustainable energy is a slap in the face for common sense.
The supposed tax give away to encourage investment by big business does nothing for small businesses who actually drive most economic growth and who will be getting a real tax increase.
Freeports are now investment zones, and get a bung when letting universities back into Horizon 2020 EU research projects would have been vastly more productive.
There are very real tax increases for almost everyone as rate bands and allowances are frozen. Households will have less to spend then, which is the most bizarre way to drive growth ever invented.
And technically avoiding recession is meaningless when around 7 million households are struggling to pay bills: they are in recession even if the wealthy and big business are not. Distribution matters, and Hunt showed no awareness of this.
But he will be repairing potholes, which is all this government is up to doing.
This was a budget for tinkering as the economy sinks. It was a deeply depressing fiasco. And if banks are in trouble, he could be back at the Despatch Book very soon.
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In the Conservative leadership campaign we heard a lot about the ‘small state’.
They are keeping their word. If departments get only 1% ,they will have to cut even more.
The best way to encourage growth IMHO would have been to pay public sector workers a real terms increase which would have been spent into the economy and bought real goods and services thus counteracting the deflationary effects of higher rents, interest rates, energy, fuel and food bills which leaves less money for other purchases.
And , secondly, aim to rejoin the single market which would help exports of goods and financial services, ease labour shortages and do away with red and green lanes in Northern Ireland.
Forget nuclear being a slap in the face for environmental common sense, it’s a slap in the face for economic sense. The cost of renewables has been falling for the past decade or more, and is likely to continue to fall yet. If they’ve money to spend on nuclear, they could have instead spent it on battery & network upgrades. That way all the renewables we are currently planning, building and using don’t go to waste and get turned off the moment there’s too strong a wind.
Nearly a quarter of a billion £ lost as a result of this last year – https://news.sky.com/story/britons-paying-hundreds-of-millions-to-turn-off-wind-turbines-as-network-cant-handle-the-power-they-make-on-the-windiest-days-12822156
I’ve just bought you a coffee for enduring that but also because for the carping I’ve been doing on your glossary which is well intentioned I promise.
‘Just been into town to get some medical supplies because my left leg is prone to venous ulcers every now and then and one has cropped up.
The ‘wound clinic’ I attend can’t see me until the end of this month!! In the good old days I just used to pop in! Job done.
So, as I was contemplating this obvious failure of the NHS, what do I see on the Daily Mail front page!!
Fiona Bruce being defended and compared to Gary Lineker!! That apparently to this national socialist rag is what counts as newsworthy for the front page!!
What a fucked up country we are eh?
Even more so after Hunt
And thanks for the coffee. I had it with a bun after Radio 2
The last thing you need is a bun fatso..
Trolling reaches a new high ……
I should think so too!
Isn’t that trolling reaching a new width?
Ha ha
Mr Hearn,
What an unwarranted attack on the private sector bun industry, in very difficult times. Do you realise Gregg’s closed 56 stores in 2021?
Are you now, or have you ever been a communist?
Whilst the imbecile Hunt primps & poses SVB’s Uk operations needed to be saved:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/mar/15/svb-collapse-slow-rolling-crisis-blackrock-boss-larry-fink
extract: “On Monday, the UK government helped strike a deal for HSBC to buy SVB’s UK operations, saving thousands of British tech startups and investors from big losses.
“We’ve put close to £2bn of liquidity into SVB UK and we’re ready to deploy more cash and more liquidity, as needed,” said the memo, signed by HSBC’s group CEO Noel Quinn.”
Begging the question: why does the UK not have a UK-based bank that can offer sericves to “thousands of British tech startups”. Answer, because the tories are not interested in industry of any sort (even the IT and biotech industries), only commodities such as oil & gas and in as much as they can be regarded as a commodity UK serfs & peasants provided they can be used and abused.
“The energy support is another bung to big energy companies who will continue to laugh their way to the bank.”
It is interesting that Hunt did not pay it direct to the consumer as with the support up to March, but by-passes the mere consumer (or is that connedsumer?) with the bill (from an invoicer in a fake Govenrment “market”) but pays the bung direct to the company making the excess profits. Which all means that there will still be a hit taken by consumers in April invoices. In addition, if poor people have reduced their use of energy, and suffered adverse cold conditions, or eaten cold food to minimise their bills, and reduced spend below the cap; the hit they take in April, I suspect may be a proportionally higher hit than the better off consumers (I confess I have not been able to establish this with certainty, and would be interested if someone here is better informed) . That does not seem fair or equitable for the effort made to reduce energy usage, and indeed Britains import bill (we have a balance of payments deficit).
You are right
It seems to me, that if the consumer is by-passed and the £67 goes straight to the energy supplier (I am not even sure if its is the ‘supplier’ or ‘network provider’ that receives the bung – a huge difference); this means that the amount on the face of the invoice received by the consumer, and to be paid, is entirely in the hands of energy supplier. Remebering also that this is not a pure quasi-cash transaction; most consumers will have outstanding balances (credit or debit), which is in the hands of the supplier (in the first instance) to determine when and how to accrue, to pay or to demand.
My point is that Hunt has delivered the money into the hands of the supplier, effectively ‘de facto’ to determine distribution, in first instance; and are we supposed to infer that they will not first determine the timing to suit their own cashflow best, before the consumer (millions of small accounts and with little direct leverage over the supplier, who exercises total control); and potentially leave the consumer to chase after his money. It is not as if there is no history here of foot dragging utilities.
In addition, if poor people have reduced their use of energy, and suffered adverse cold conditions, or eaten cold food to minimise their bills, and reduced spend below the cap; the hit they take in April, I suspect may be a proportionally higher hit than the better off consumers (I confess I have not been able to establish this with certainty, and would be interested if someone here is better informed) .
Martin Lewis is saying that is exactly what will happen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAgOKMRCiXI
Neoliberalism is nothing more than an economic death cult and it seems we are reaching the stage of drinking the poisoned Kool Aid. Sadly New New Labour are true believers and will no doubt walk willingly into Hunt’s trap of pledging to match the 1% limit on departmental increases with all the damage that will entail.
The other thing that struck me from your tweets was the pledge to run an economically illiterate (and impossible) surplus by 2028, reminiscent of the mythical late Brezhnev era Five Year Plans and about as achievable. Though no doubt another elephant trap for Labour, and another they will gladly embrace
NIESR are not too keen:
The OBR have projected that the Chancellor will meet his fiscal targets for 2027-28. But, NIESR has long argued that this focus on arbitrary targets is not what should determine fiscal policy; rather we need a new framework where the emphasis is on improving outcomes for UK households and different policies are independently examined
The Chancellor announced increases in spending in some areas, but it was disappointing that he failed to address public-sector pay, or announce more public investment, at a time of falling output and high inflation.
While three-quarters of UK households will see their disposable incomes increase in 2023-24 compared with 2022-23, the bottom half of the income distribution – some 14 million households – will have lower living standards than two years ago. Instead of a general subsidy to everyone, policy needs to be targeted at the half of the population who need it most; NIESR proposes to use a Variable Price Cap will achieve this.
https://www.niesr.ac.uk/publications/niesrs-response-chancellors-spring-budget?type=budget-fiscal-event-comment
They are right to criticise
Well at least one person will be pleased – Anna Bailey of ECDC who will no longer be on the receiving end of my complaints about the number of potholes on ECDC car parks. Of course I acknowledge this is a rather frivolous comment by me , I cannot be serious al the time. It was obvious that this Tory budget would not address the real issues of the day. We are surely nearing the end days of this extreme form of capitalism. I fear what will come next, I hope it will not be fascism
I hope not too
But this was a budget fir a government out of ideas
This is just sick and cruel.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/budget-2023-free-childcare-student-nurses-excluded-unpaid-placements-jeremy-hunt/
He didn’t say this in his budget speech.
I know there are bigger issues here but, as a cyclist, I am not even optimistic about the potholes, since the “£500 million already allocated” is clearly having no effect. A hopeless budget.
In the 1950s when I was in the 6th form one thing I pondered was – to what extent do those in power do things mainly for the common good or do they do things for petty personal interests? It does seem to be ever more the latter.
Agreed