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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » In the LAB leadership race Osbo’s budget looks set to help
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » In the LAB leadership race Osbo’s budget looks set to help Yvette more than Andy, Jeremy or Liz
A big problem for all contenders is that there have been precious few opportunities since the general election defeat for them to get coverage away from the leadership campaign itself.
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Buf it straIght out of Browns playbook, with no insight into how bloated welfare spending had become and no serious suggestion of how to balance the budget.
Cooper would be a gift to the Tories. Wooden style and vacuous approach to policy.
Morning all.
Ms Cooper was certainly first out of the blocks regarding the budget and appears to have left the other contenders standing at the start line. Her presence at Harperson's right arm yesterday will also be interpreted as significant imho. - No doubt her robust response will appeal to some within the party and may even strike accord with the intended gender target. Not sure however, that this will be enough to overcome her obvious problems, but then it certainly will not have done her chances any harm.
(Typo, - bit of a double negative, fourth paragraph concerning Kendal)
But yes - narry a thought for the people who otherwise would be paying for these cuts - all the way back to the penury of 2008.......
More generally, headlines are one thing, but it is the practical effects of the budget that will actually matter. For many families, the working tax credit cuts will have a greater impact than the tax cuts; while the very welcome acceptance of the need for a Living Wage seems to have manifested itself in something that is more akin to a rebranding and rebooting of the minimum wage.
As I said last night, Osborne's stroll into Labour territory and his conversion to Labour policies that Tories very recently derided should be a gift for a half decent opposition. That is the real test for the leadership candidates and, much more important, for the person who ends up winning.
But that does not matter. Osborne has decided to adopt a number of Labour policies and Labour has to deal with it. There are plenty of major opportunities here for a smart opposition.
http://hopisen.com/2015/osbornes-gift-to-labour/
Cooper cannot shout, because she has a husband who has had a fat redundancy cheque and how much did they both make from switching properties - odd that has not been brought up - unless all candidates are guilty of that 'offence'.
Stocks in Corbyn's leadership bid are set to rise no doubt…
But it doesn't matter - you look stupid if you try to oppose it, and neutered if you agree with it.
Getting all outraged and nitpicking highly marginal examples doesn't get you anywhere either. Just roll with it and concentrate on having something new to say. Fighting that battle is pointless unless it all goes horribly wrong [Gordon adopting Tory spending plans then dropping them].
I have ovaries. Vote for me, or be denounced as a woman-hating neanderthal!
If women had twice as good a deal as men, would anyone care? I have yet to see Cooper shrieking about the far higher rates of male suicide. Or the far better rates of mothers winning custody proceedings. Or getting cushy divorce settlements.
https://twitter.com/SocialismIsDead/status/619034586891329536
Bloody good idea. It's about time that we, the People, had some form of representatives whom we could select somehow to govern this nation.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/19/problems-charity-sector-executive-pay-bosses
I don't like the tear jerking adverts charities are currently running on tv either.
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting if sometimes rather caustic take on events:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/fear-grows-in-greece-as-decisive-hour-nears-1436399935
The Washington Post, hardly noted as a bastion of the radical right, is rather more scathing and seems to sign up to divers conspiracy theories about how and why this is happening:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/07/08/why-the-greece-crisis-could-be-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-europe-as-we-know-it/
And of course the most vitriolic of them all, something that any admirer of Nigel Farage will enjoy:
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will070915.php3
Osborne has done the same as Brown used to do to the Tories. By appearing to move to the centre ground he leaves them very few places to go and with a tendency to go to the extremes simply to differentiate themselves.
This is the challenge that the Labour leadership contenders face and it is not an easy one. I am not sure that playing the gender card is a great angle but at least Cooper has found one and been heard. What angle are the others going to find?
At the election and even in March Osborne was adamant that in the great rebalancing we had already had the large tax increases (principally through VAT and the more aggressive charges on higher tax payers) and it was time for spending to bear the strain. What is slightly odd about yesterday is that he seems to have changed his mind. There will be considerably more taxes in this Parliament, about £45bn more, and more spending too.
The additional spending largely arises because the changes to welfare have been slowed down considerably with the current entitlements for existing children, for example, largely protected. It is very difficult for the Labour party to effectively attack more spending.
Labour also want to get away from Ed's anti business agenda which so damaged them in the election. Nevertheless, if I was advising Kendall in particular I would go after the CT cuts. Is it right that big corporations should be able to make so many profits out of this country and pay so little tax on it? Is it right that tax should be reduced when working benefits for their poorly paid employees are being cut? Being perceived to be on the right of Labour I think she could be more credible and get a better hearing on this, especially since she will be more straightforward about welcoming some of the measures than, say, Burnham.
But its not easy.
[Well, there's that, and stealing bits of Welsh to use in a forthcoming fantasy novel which everyone really ought to buy when it's eventually released].
I think they got the idea from Lloyd George in Paris in 1919. He knew his phone line was being tapped, so told London to put his Harlech-born private secretary on the line, and they talked for an hour in Welsh, secure in the knowledge that no one from any of the other powers would understand them. Apparently there were a lot of very annoyed-looking attachés wandering around that day!
Of course I may adjust my position between now and the vote
Corbyn would surely be exempt too, as a London MP not eligible for allowances?
GOICWNBPM
They would do better to attack it as showing that George Osborne didn't understand what was good about these ideas, taking measures designed to help the poor and reducing their living standards, all in the name of a mad obsession with a low tax economy. Describing someone as stupid is much more lethal than describing them as wicked.
@SquareRoot Great minds!
I dislike much of this budget, but I'm in awe of George Osborne's shamelessness and sheer low cunning. It was politics at its most ruthless, with the Chancellor bayoneting the seriously wounded on the Labour benches.
FYI Taiwan is 17%, as is Singapore and China is 20%.
Many companies did put their HQs in Ireland for CT reasons as do others in Lichtenstein 12.5% ad Switzerland 17.92%.
I think you're overthinking this in terms of what's likely to hit the mark with Joe Public.
This wasn't a low tax budget and one of the things that George Osborne was most shameless about was abandoning his differentiator on spending plans (no one will care now). But there is no chance of Joe Public listening to that sort of analysis.
I also agree that this was not a low tax budget, quite the reverse in fact, so the attack on Osborne of trying to shrink the State back to the 30s (always spurious of course) is dead too.
Osborne's political genius is the way that he shapes the agenda to discussion points that give his opponents nowhere obvious to go but his economic policies have been far more pragmatic.
He responded to the slow down in the EZ by effectively adopting spending plans that were within spitting distance of what Balls had advocated. He used the Lib Dems as cover for not being more radical on spending. Even without that cover he has done the same again and used the rhetoric to cover his tracks.
Brown did something similar of course but his policies were always much worse than he was in fact claiming. Osborne has a substantially better record.
The solution to that could in theory be universal credit, but I don't see that becoming the norm any time soon.
Just look at this little list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_of_Ireland
Where you are right is that once you are working sufficient hours to obtain in work benefits the incentive to work more hours is diminished and it is hard to break free of a certain standard of living without working massively more hours and moving beyond benefit altogether. The marginal rates for those on in work benefits are severe. Whether Universal Credit will be able to solve that problem I have my doubts about.
In a competitive world we need absolutely to attract businesses and investment and lowering CT is a good thing in and of itself.
The presumed purpose of this is to get to Universal Credit, precisely to prevent the kind of problems you mention.
Many changes are leading into this, for example the requirement that employers now submit PAYE figures electronically every month, so that records for each individual are always up to date.
The budget addressed the two critical perception issues: nastiness & incompetence.
GO, regardless of the worked examples, has taken a giant leap towards detoxification with the living wage. Lab, meanwhile, remains in the catch-22 situation of being considered economically incompetent and therefore of not being given the opportunity to prove otherwise.
It will mean, events notwithstanding and of course there are always those, that Lab will have to wait until the Cons tire or sleaze themselves out, round about 2025-ish, before they can regain power and implement this infrastructure spending programme or that further tax reform.
Greek media are also reporting that Greece’s reform plan could include €12bn of cuts and tax rises - several billion euros more than previously expected. And that’s because of the deterioration in the Greek economy, which plunged back into recession this year.
But with so much of our economy now in foreign ownership this is something we have to be constantly vigilant about. Hence the complicated stuff about foreign owned property yesterday.
Of course, as in most things economic, the Chancellor is far less powerful than he appears and has to ensure that the UK is internationally competitive, hence the cuts in CT (I have given up trying to explain to Financier that this was not my view, simply a possible line for a Labour candidate to take). But what we ultimately give to international business is access to the fourth or fifth largest economy in the world. There does need to be a price on the door, especially for profit earned on the way out.
Journey from North London into Central was brilliant this morning, 20 mins longer than the usual tube route, but the sun was shining
Going back to the topic of the thread what lines can Labour candidates take? As Mike has pointed out Yvette has played the woman card, where else has Osborne left Labour to play?
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150707/06204631571/argentina-rewards-programmer-who-exposed-e-voting-vulnerabilities-with-complimentary-home-police-raid.shtml
"Yes, they were a disaster, and needed to be fixed, but I am politically motivated to criticise this particular fix..."
a) Doesn't cut welfare back far enough - still too much going to rich pensioners
b) Higher minimum wage will attract even more immigrants
c) Higher minimum wage will push immigrants into working in the black market
d) Education being neglected for pensioners - we are the party of the future.
etc..
If we want acceptable levels of public services we need to find a way to tax the profits they make in this country and hide in these complicated corporate structures. Because the shareholders and indeed the senior management don't live here or pay taxes here.
When taken in the context of the opportunity he had, it's an absolute stinker.