1.00 I will be back later....off to talk to Jeremy Vine now.
12.58 "Borrowing, borrowing, borrowing" keeps being repeated when in reality the government does not borrow.
12.56 Reeves announces fantasy figures for deficits to come - none of which bear any relationship to anything that will actually happen.
12.55 Reeves is still claiming £1 in £10 is used to pay debt interest, ignoring the fact that a big slug comes back straight back to the Treasury.
12.55 Abusing people from the Dispatch Box makes Reeves look like a very small person.
12.54. The obligatory reference to Liz Truss has been made.
12.54. Wales and Scotland get their statutorily required mentions on issues that their own governments should decide.
12.52 Reeves is making announcements about how she will spend next year's petty cash Budget right now - the sums involved are so small. I am surprised she has not talked about the organisation of the Treasury Christmas party, so irrelevant is most of this (much of which has been preannounced).
12.50 Reeves does ISA reform to push money into the failing City of London. This is how to fail the savers of the UK.
12.49 I am now told I will be on BBC Radio 2 from 1.00 as we already have enough to talk about.
12.45. For the second time in ten minutes, Reeves praises entrepreneurs as if they are the only people who matter in the UK.
12.43. Reeves claims growth is up. But that is only for this year. For every other year in the Office for Budget Responsibility projection, it is down by about 0.5% per annum to about 1.5% a year. Failing productivity is the cause. Neoliberalism is not working.
12.40 Debt is going to fall by a percentage so small no one will notice - and that is only if the world works exactly as Reeves predicts.
12.38 The claim is no cuts, stability in public finances and growth - and a balanced Budget, of course: the household analogy is alive and well with Rachel Reeves.
12.34 Reeves blames the OBR for leaking the Budget. Time to abolish it?
12.32 The Deputy Speaker admonishes the Chancellor and the OBR before Reeves starts for failing to uphold parliamentary standards. This is going well before Reeves has even stood up.
12.30 The Office for Budget Responsibility has leaked the Budget. This is the FT's summary:
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Richard,
I listened to the latter half of the Jeremy Vine broadcast. Do you not get fed up with the constant talk on all sides of the household analogy and the country being bankrupt? This is the real problem. Everyone seems to be under a spell, following a story, not reality. Progress can’t be made for as long as this continues. There needs to be a fundamental change in how funding is viewed by all sides of the spectrum. The other speaker, forget his name, did not accept that the national debt is not an issue? The debt outlook is so entrenched it is not even recognised as being a story
Mark Littelwood was the other speaker.
Jeremy is obsessed with the debt.
Littlewood is from the IEA Institute of Economic Affairs. A think tank which does not reveal its funding. But we can work it out. The funding is from ‘Antisocial’ sources ( to use the term from the other day ) dedicated to preserving the privileges of the wealthy.
Was from …. is no longer
Well, at least we’ve seen the end of the two-child cap. Everything else seems mildly depressing, a missed opportunity or just plain fantasy. I don’t think she announced NHS PFI, unless I missed it, which is at least postponing that bad news.
a rather good critique of ALL budgets:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cQIr0wefas
“the budget is not policy – it’s performance” yup.
Ok the 2 child cap has gone. Did anything else actually happen that will have any good effect on the lives of those struggling?
In fac did anything actually happen?
Very little
And quite a lot might be worse
Investors are generally content with the budget and that is all that matters with LINO. With a large population brainwashed against the welfare state (until they need it), the battle line of taxpayers paying for those who do not work will dominate the news. The Canary rightly mentioned that the housing crisis was not mentioned in the speech, which is the biggest financial issue for most people, as part of the cost of living survival.
The mails I am getting suggest they are very unhappy, which is absurd.