I will be doing the Budget commentary on Radio 2 on Wednesday this week, beginning at about 13.30 on wherever you usually listen to Jeremy Vine. I've been doing this for more than a decade now - and suspect that's more than 20 broadcasts given how many budgets and similar statements we have had in some years. I have, invariably, been accompanied by Mark Littlewood of the Institute for Economic Affairs in more recent years. As far as I can recall we have never agreed yet on anything of substance.
The pressure to deliver credible commentary to an audience of about 7 million minutes after the Chancellor has sat down without having a chance to see any of the documentation that's published at that moment is high. As a result in the week or so before the budget I do inevitably look for clues as to what will happen.
We know about national insurance increases, of course. Bizarrely, Sunak claimed this was progressive yesterday, which is utter nonsense.
We know that at present this is going to the NHS - where it is inadequate to meet need. We know social care should get funds, but will not as yet. So there is the first fail.
We also know there are other new small spending plans. There is a half-hearted relaunch of SureStart. The last training scheme from the Tories is being relaunched, although the last one failed. The green saving account is a decided damp squib because of the rate and terms. Environment spend is inconsequential in proportion to the problem.
There is at least £7 billion of spending on public transport. However, we now know that £5.5 billion of this had been previously announced. All we really know that is very new is who is to get the money.
Add it all up and £26 billion of supposed spending - much of it not new - does not come to much when set against need.
No one is speaking of tax cuts. If there are to be any it will be in areas that will excite Tories. My outside bet is on inheritance tax. Maybe a cut to 35% with a promise of more to come? That's always a crowd pleaser and boosts Tory support when nothing else can - as George Osborne found to Ed Miliband's cost.
None of this, however, seems like the real story to me. What seems like the real story has I think emerged from my thinking on past budgets that I have commented on. The one I am most especially rethinking of was on March 11 2020. Sunak - then fresh in office - stood up and said he was going to spend £60 billion (as I recall) to tackle the coronavirus crisis. Jeremy Vine's opening question to me suggested that I must surely be happy with that spending plan and my reply was that Sunak had massively underestimated the scale of the crisis that we were facing and his reaction was far too small.
That is how I feel now. The overwhelming message from this government is of denial. Covid is being denied for the third time - unforgivably. As was the case on March 11 2020, wise people know now that the situation is much worse than the government pretends it to be. Sunak claimed yesterday that the available data does not require government action. Very clearly medics and epidemiologists disagree, almost unanimously this time.
If action had been taken when required during the last few weeks - and the time for that has probably passed - we could have avoided another lock down. As it is the likelihood that lockdown will be needed - probably over Christmas, but starting earlier - now seems to be very high. The refusal to support mask wearing, socially distance and work from home will have come at a massive price.
I don't think we are talking about an economy coming out of Covid any more. I think we are going to be talking about one right in another wave now.
I think furlough will have to be back on the cards.
And so too will business support be required, again. Unless, that is, substantial numbers of insolvencies are going to be as tolerated as deaths now are by this government.
As for recovery and an overheating economy, the exact opposite is going to be true. Recession is more likely than anything else at present. Retail sales declines are already suggesting it. The Bank of England should be keeping rates firmly nailed to the floor. And reversing QE will just be a dream: I now anticipate more happening instead.
This was not necessary if course. The case of our European partners shows that. But there protective measures stayed in place. Here they did not. Boosterism held sway.
It took just 12 days for Sunak to have to return to the Dispatch BoX in March 2020. I am not sure it will be quite that quick this time. But equality, it may not be a lot longer. We're heading for crisis yet again and the Budget we're about to get will offer no hint of that. That means it will be a fantasy budget for a situation that does not exist and likely never will. The real show will be later as the Covid crisis becomes very real, again.
Can a Chancellor survive seeing his budget collapse yet again? I am really not sure, but for one thing, that is. That one thing is Labour's continuing failure to oppose this government.
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It is a pity that you are not a betting man.
There are probably good odd on there being a second budget or a Christmas corona budget this year. Just as we’re getting ready to give presents to people we care about the government will come along and say that you can’t do it in person: this is thought quite unlikely by the ring.
I agree with this analysis. I have also come to the conclusion that Starmer is an establishment plant designed to destroy the Labour Party. His links to MI5 and his past actions re Assange all point to this. I can see no other reason for him to be there. They are now, after purging tens of thousands of members, organising a fire sale of assets owned around various CLPs. The swift destruction of the Party is astonishing.
He’s planning this which seems like tax breaks for rich ship owners https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/24/ships-fly-union-jack-could-get-tax-break-brexit-freedom-plans/
Ridiculous
But part of tax haven UK
What is the BrexShit chancellor, who is the drunken cowboy seemingly unable to shoot at the side of a barn going to do different to last year?
Nada. Zilch. Not a blessed thing.
I expect further Singapore on Thames, anti EU, pro Banker, un-level playing field and escape from regulations and legal oversight by the CJEU and more Russia/China baiting legislation.
I really can’t disagree with anything here at all.
Hmmm……….
To ‘disagree’ is to do something isn’t it and put an alternative at best?
But on this blog (and a lot of what Richard says) – I find no justification to do that ‘something’ and disagree as it – as usual – is well argued.
So I cannot disagree. I can’t even add anything. It’s all there.
That’s all I was stating.
Or if you like, I support what Richard says about Sunak’s stupidity on this issue.
The Government’s attitude to Covid and the collateral damage to our society is – it’s as if they’ve got stuck on level crossing, but are only prepared to exert themselves off it when they see the train actually bearing down on them.
It’s ridiculous quite frankly. Because it’s too late.
This sentence doesn’t make any sense.
Which sentence?
If you smooth out the double negative and put it plainly as “I really can agree with anything here at all” does not make sense. What he meant to say was he agreed with everything that Rochard said about the budget on Wednesday.
I also agree that Sunak will have to make a U-turn very soon as the pandemic gets worse.
It makes perfect sense to me.
This is not the place for grammar pedantry, but smoothing out the negatives also requires turning around “anything” to “everything”.
Ignoring “really” and “at all” as redundant intensifiers, “I can’t disagree with anything here” (that is, there is no part of this passage that I find it possible to disagree with) => “I agree with all of it”.
Agree, lets not nit-pick over the pedantry and stick to the economics.
If you would like a preview of what approach Mark Littlewood will take (should you be paired with him again) he was paired up on the radio with Deepti Gurdasani last week (from about 00:08:37)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0010pf7
Gurdasani was excellent as always.
Littlewood kept talking about how the cavalry has already arrived and there isn’t going to be another arrival of the cavalry so there isn’t anything we can do about COVID-19 so we should just accept it and move on, as in the vaccines were the major intervention (the cavalry) and there isn’t anything that could make anywhere near the difference the vaccines did (there isn’t going to be another cavalry) so there isn’t any point with any interventions and we should just accept a certain number of cases and deaths so everyone else can get back to normal.
He gave the impression that in his view there are only two options, which are do nothing (after a vaccination programme) or severe restrictions, and severe restrictions are an assault on liberty so we should do nothing. He didn’t appear to comprehend that there isn’t a clear divide of countries either doing nothing other than vaccines or having severe restrictions, but a continuum of countries with varying levels of different interventions and consequent different levels of cases. Because he didn’t appear to comprehend this he gave the impression that he didn’t recognise that there is not a clear dualistic split in outcomes but a continuum, with some countries doing very badly (Brazil, UK, US, etc at one end) and some doing very well (New Zealand, Taiwan, China, etc at the other end), with everyone else somewhere in between, and we can choose to do more to decrease cases. He appeared to believe that as no intervention will be anywhere near as effective as vaccines there isn’t any point in doing them. He didn’t appear to comprehend that vaccines + interventions might be much more effective than vaccines alone.
He was obsessed with masks, and kept asking what would it take for us to be able stop wearing masks? If it isn’t going to get much better than it is now then we may as well stop wearing masks now, as masks are an insult to his libertarian views. We can’t go on wearing masks forever and things aren’t going to get much better than they are now (there won’t be another arrival of the cavalry) so if we are going to have to stop wearing masks at some point and it doesn’t matter whether that is now or later then it might as well be now because things aren’t going to get much better. Personally the idea that I might have to carry on wearing masks for the rest of my life, even if that is decades longer, doesn’t particularly bother me, but for some people it appears that it is a terrible burden.
In short, if you are paired with Littlewood then I would expect his view to be that we have the vaccines and nothing else will make much difference so we should accept a certain number of deaths and move on, and so he will be looking for the Chancellor to have a budget that recognises this and starts to get the economy “back to normal”, which I suppose will involve opening up the economy and putting some money towards helping open up the economy and moving away from restrictions.
What I don’t understand about these self-styled “libertarians” is they recognise the freedoms to do things (like not wearing masks) but they appear to not be able comprehend freedoms from things (like freedom from breathing in potentially infectious air from people without masks). It’s a view that considers fragmentary individuals whose decisions don’t affect others rather than seeing an interconnected whole where individual decisions affect others and everyone’s freedoms are interlinked such that we need to consider the overall liberty and how to maximise this (if liberty is the priority) rather than just the liberty of the isolated individual.
I don’t see Littlewood as a libertarian because in my view, if liberty is the priority, then the way to maximise overall liberty is to get cases as low as possible, i.e. wearing masks increases the overall liberty by reducing the overall harm, allowing more people to do more things, in part because people who are not dead or afflicted by long Covid have much more liberty than people who are. However, Littlewood doesn’t appear to comprehend that there is such a thing as overall interconnected liberty, he has a Randian view that sees his liberty in a bubble and presumably the “invisible hand” of everyone looking out for their own liberty will somehow maximise the overall liberty.
He also took a very short-term view and was against spending large amounts of money to improve indoor ventilation because we have to consider the cost. He didn’t appear to consider that even if we spent billions on a programme of mechanical ventilation for all workplaces and public indoor spaces and educational facilities across the country then aside from the health benefits this would in the long term save massive amounts of money because all the people not afflicted with death or long Covid would be able work and would not put pressure (i.e. costs) on the NHS and other public services and so it wouldn’t take long to “pay back” the ventilation costs due to the reduction in not just COVID-19 but flu and various other airborne-carried illnesses.
One more thing, there was one radio appearance that you did last year and the other person, which may have been Littlewood (I can’t remember) said something along the lines of how you have these left wing views about how the state should do everything and you said something like how you believe in the private sector alongside the public sector and unlike this person you have personally worked to help set up and run numerous businesses. I thought that was one of your best lines from when I’ve heard you on the radio as I imagine people listening who have no idea who you are and they might see you as someone with left-wing ideas that won’t work in the real world but if they hear that you have a lot of experience running businesses then they might have more respect for your views. Just my opinion, but I think during brief radio appearances it is helpful where relevant to briefly mention your experience running businesses.
Thanks
Appreciated and noted