So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
She hasn't lied to anyone. She said the forecast deteriorated. It did, albeit not as dramatically as initially thought.
She chose to increase her headroom - very sensible. She was widely criticised for only having £10bn last year and decided £20bn was a more sensible amount. The bond markets apparently agree.
This Labour govt isnt delivering austerity - they are increasing public spending.
What time are we expecting Reeves' resignation letter?
She isn’t going for this.
There’s just about enough plausible deniability, and it gives the Tories far too much of a big scalp. Plus jeopardises Starmer’s position.
The damage regarding the public perception of Reeves was done a very long time ago; and this budget won’t have helped it one bit. That’s pretty much the long and short of it. She is now very toxic, but it’s hard to see a way that allows her to go without causing damage to Starmer, so they will keep her lashed to the wheel.
Yes, it was a sin of omission rather than commission and she'll get away with it. It's a bit like me not telling Mrs PtP about that fifty I had on an 8/1 winner. It's dishonest but you like to hold a bit back for tougher times if you can.
I wouldn't overegg the toxicity. The budget was generally well received and the markets reacted well. Her stock rose briefly as a consequence. Perhaps that explains the hysteria over a bit of fibbing. The Usual Suspects had to nail her for something. What she did wasn't right, but the parliamentary dishonesty bar was set pretty high a few PMs back so I don't see her falling on her sword any time soon.
Re the start of the second paragraph, the budget may have been received OK by the markets. But my point wasn’t around how the markets view Reeves - it was how the public view her. She is polling at the worst approval figures for any chancellor on record - hence, toxic. The public reaction to the budget isn’t great. It’s hard to see this dishonesty row helping to salvage her reputation among the electorate.
We may yet be some way off writing the political obituary of this Chancellor (the jury is out), but it’s hard to deny she is particularly poorly regarded by the voters, right now.
Which voters - those that follow politics or those that follow the media?
She's being demonised. It's what you would expect of a Labour Chancellor, especially one that appears to have done ok in the eyes of the markets, and even some of the more sentient commentators on politics and economics.
The main trouble with Starmer/Reeves is that don't seem very good at presentation. The budget fib is a good example. They may get better, and of course that matters, but on the whole the substance matters more.
Can’t be all bad; I’ve had my £10 Christmas bonus this morning!
And me. £4 net. What to spend it on? So I've just booked ten days in Martinique over Xmas.
Can't quite buy a bottle of cheap gin with my £10, I'll have to steal from WFA before they claw it back, and after that it's the grandchildren's piggy banks.
The right wing propaganda sheets are certainly having a lot of fun... the problem is that their own lies and journalistic failings has reduced their power dramatically. Reeves is more intensely hated by those who were going to hate her anyway, but despite her own ethical questions, the majority will simply shrug and go "she would, wouldn't she". The dead tree press has cried wolf so often, that they can't even parse a sentence without apocalyptic manufactured outrage.
Quite. It's the Tory press. Who cares? Except Tories?
The BBC? Kuenssberg clearly uses Tory press as justification to stick the boot into Labour.
Reeves would be in trouble if she'd given a rosier account of the nation's finances than the OBR in advance of the budget. The fact that she gave a gloomier account than the OBR means she, and Starmer, will ride this out easily.
She should, however, learn from this by shutting the fuck up in advance of her next budget. The 'leaks' did her no favours, not did the early morning speech a few weeks ago.
So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
She hasn't lied to anyone. She said the forecast deteriorated. It did, albeit not as dramatically as initially thought.
She chose to increase her headroom - very sensible. She was widely criticised for only having £10bn last year and decided £20bn was a more sensible amount. The bond markets apparently agree.
This Labour govt isnt delivering austerity - they are increasing public spending.
I said that increasing her headroom was sensible but the truth is that she has done this on paper not in pounds and pence. The tax increases are back loaded to the end of the Parliament where fiscal drift will really start to hurt. In the meantime she is inevitably increasing borrowing to fund the additional spending.
What time are we expecting Reeves' resignation letter?
She isn’t going for this.
There’s just about enough plausible deniability, and it gives the Tories far too much of a big scalp. Plus jeopardises Starmer’s position.
The damage regarding the public perception of Reeves was done a very long time ago; and this budget won’t have helped it one bit. That’s pretty much the long and short of it. She is now very toxic, but it’s hard to see a way that allows her to go without causing damage to Starmer, so they will keep her lashed to the wheel.
Yes, it was a sin of omission rather than commission and she'll get away with it. It's a bit like me not telling Mrs PtP about that fifty I had on an 8/1 winner. It's dishonest but you like to hold a bit back for tougher times if you can.
I wouldn't overegg the toxicity. The budget was generally well received and the markets reacted well. Her stock rose briefly as a consequence. Perhaps that explains the hysteria over a bit of fibbing. The Usual Suspects had to nail her for something. What she did wasn't right, but the parliamentary dishonesty bar was set pretty high a few PMs back so I don't see her falling on her sword any time soon.
Re the start of the second paragraph, the budget may have been received OK by the markets. But my point wasn’t around how the markets view Reeves - it was how the public view her. She is polling at the worst approval figures for any chancellor on record - hence, toxic. The public reaction to the budget isn’t great. It’s hard to see this dishonesty row helping to salvage her reputation among the electorate.
We may yet be some way off writing the political obituary of this Chancellor (the jury is out), but it’s hard to deny she is particularly poorly regarded by the voters, right now.
Which voters - those that follow politics or those that follow the media?
She's being demonised. It's what you would expect of a Labour Chancellor, especially one that appears to have done ok in the eyes of the markets, and even some of the more sentient commentators on politics and economics.
The main trouble with Starmer/Reeves is that don't seem very good at presentation. The budget fib is a good example. They may get better, and of course that matters, but on the whole the substance matters more.
I am looking at the polling evidence. It’s all we have to go off for measuring perception. We can argue about the substance as a separate measure, but the point I am making stands that she (along with Labour) is being very poorly received/regarded by the electorate right now.
I think Reeves gets away with it on a technicality; there was a significant downgrade in growth/productivity assumptions by the OBR which is what she was alluding to - but there was also a significant increase in expected tax receipts. Not really the whole truth, but enough.
Otoh, if Labour ministers are looking for an excuse to bin Reeves then this is a good one. Overall, that this is the main headline after the budget isn't too bad in the grand scheme of things. It's not WFP levels of outrage.
Labour ministers might want to bin Reeves, but the Labour PM certainly doesn't.
O/T but I see we have an entire new Black Company series, A Pitiless Rain, coming out. The first book has just been published, and the next comes out in February. There will be five. George Martin should take note (Glen Cook is four years older).
Funny you should mention that, Port of Shadows is on my Christmas list and I did see there was a new one too. I've got all the others. One of the few fiction series I'm going to keep getting in physical form.
If a basic rate tax payer gets a 5% pay rise - say on £3,000 a month would be worth £150 - would pay 20% tax 8% NI and 4% (net) pension (under Automatic Enrolment) so net increase in take home pay would be £102 an increase of 4.3% on the take home pay. Do think will not notice the increase in tax. They have undersold this budget!
Annual inflation is 3.6% per year, so that's only a 0.7% pay rise on the incredibly generous assumption they're actually getting a 5% pay rise.
If they're getting say a 3.6% pay rise, supposedly meeting inflation, then that would be on your figures worth £108 per month.
But of those £108: Tax £21.60 NIC £8.64 Auto-enrolment £4.32 Graduate Tax if applicable £9.72 Total deductions £34.56 (non-graduates) or £44.28 (graduates)
That's a very significant real terms take home pay cut, even on an inflation-matching pay rise.
forgive a short anecdote but it feels relevant to those who expect the polls to shift every time Rachel sneezes.
I was at a meeting in Vienna with production company ad agency P&G (client) and several of their marketing managers and product managers. We were there to talk about a commercial I was shooting for one of their shampoos. .
After my bit was finished we (the production company) stayed on and they started talking about the marketing. It was getting massive airtime and they were putting millions behind it. If all went according to plan they were hoping to increase their market share by .5%. From 16 to 16.5%!
The moral of the story is people don't change their habits because of a couple of headlines.
Can’t be all bad; I’ve had my £10 Christmas bonus this morning!
And me. £4 net. What to spend it on? So I've just booked ten days in Martinique over Xmas.
Can't even buy a pint for £4 nowadays. Not round here anyway; £4.50's about the cheapest.
At the same time its possible to buy beer very cheaply in supermarkets. Is it any wonder pubs are dying?
In 1972, when I started drinking in London pubs beer was 14p a pint. Not a figure you forget. With inflation that is now about £1.68. IIRC there was not then a huge gulf between pub and off sales prices. The gulf is now gigantic. This all explains a lot about what is happening in the pub and hospitality sector.
Can’t be all bad; I’ve had my £10 Christmas bonus this morning!
And me. £4 net. What to spend it on? So I've just booked ten days in Martinique over Xmas.
Can't even buy a pint for £4 nowadays. Not round here anyway; £4.50's about the cheapest.
At the same time its possible to buy beer very cheaply in supermarkets. Is it any wonder pubs are dying?
In 1972, when I started drinking in London pubs beer was 14p a pint. Not a figure you forget. With inflation that is now about £1.68. IIRC there was not then a huge gulf between pub and off sales prices. The gulf is now gigantic. This all explains a lot about what is happening in the pub and hospitality sector.
I would be curious to compare the overheads such as business rates pubs faced then and now, other taxes, energy bills, and wage bills.
I will signpost this thread the next time someone challenges the fact that Liberal Democrats are this government's biggest supporters.
I'm not really seeing it. You're just upset they haven't forgiven the Tories.
To be fair I can see the "LDs" being pbs biggest defenders of the government, but they are not supporters. They just respond to fairly regular hyperbolic criticism. The government have hardly any active supporters here or in the media. Most of those who vote for them do so under better than the alternatives rather than support.
"LDs" being code for any centrists.
LDs also opposed the mansion tax I see and income tax freeze and they also previously opposed the family farm and family business tax and rise in NI for employers and winter fuel allowance cut. The LDs are more also anti Brexit than Labour and want to rejoin a CU and ultimately the EEA https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/news/mansion-tax-lib-dems-sir-ed-davey-rachel-reeves/
I thought the LD's wanted to rejoin the EU.
There's a recognition, I think, within the Party that isn't going to happen any time soon whether the UK wants it or not. The atttitude of the EU and their demands would be the key - I very much doubt we could go back on membership terms we rejected so it would have to be an even more semi detached membership and I don't believe the EU would want to go through all that again and we wouldn't accept Schengen and the Euro under any circumstances.
We can't for example rejoin the Single Market because that would mean accepting Freedom of Movement and while there may be an economic argument for allowing uncontrolled immigration, we all know there's not a hope in the proverbial of selling that politically at any level.
An improved trading relationship is probably the aim and no one seriously objects to free trade of goods and services (the old "Common Market" which we happily supported joining in another referendum) though as always the regulatory angle will be a problem but not insurmountable given goodwill on all sides.
Spot on Stodge.
Even rabid Europhiles like me wouldn't support a policy of rejoining. Even if they would have us (they probably wouldn't) it would be politically destabilising for us, and of course you are right that we would never be offered the terms which we gave up when we left.
Can’t be all bad; I’ve had my £10 Christmas bonus this morning!
And me. £4 net. What to spend it on? So I've just booked ten days in Martinique over Xmas.
Can't even buy a pint for £4 nowadays. Not round here anyway; £4.50's about the cheapest.
At the same time its possible to buy beer very cheaply in supermarkets. Is it any wonder pubs are dying?
In 1972, when I started drinking in London pubs beer was 14p a pint. Not a figure you forget. With inflation that is now about £1.68. IIRC there was not then a huge gulf between pub and off sales prices. The gulf is now gigantic. This all explains a lot about what is happening in the pub and hospitality sector.
When I was a student in Sunderland late in the 50's there was one pub where one could get half-a pint at lunchtime for 6d.
So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
Good morning
Austerity is living within your means
Labour have no idea how to achieve that
Neither, in all fairness, did the Conservatives when in Government.
No one has come up with a coherent and politically practical approach to getting borrowing down substantially - all we can do in the short term is slow the train. Talk of cutting £100 billion from benefits, as espoused by one or two on here, isn't going to happen even with Kemi Badenoch in charge.
I'd love to hear an alternative approach which makes sense but, as with the "small boats" (remember them?), there isn't an easy answer.
You need to do it gradually. It took Osborne 9 years to eliminate the huge structural deficit that he inherited. He managed to keep the economy growing, somewhat slowly, throughout that period by carefully calibrating the reduction each year. After Covid and Ukraine things are nearly as bad as they were in 2010 and we are starting with more than double the debt we had then as a share of GDP. It will take time, patience and skill, some things we seem to lack. A budget that actually increased borrowing for the next 3 years was a seriously bad step in the wrong direction. More debt is the last thing we need.
If you're going to cut spending, you need to compensate with pro-growth measures. And Labour have thus far failed almost completely on that score.
Moreover, you can't really expect a Labour government to deliver austerity, since it would bring down the PM. You're effectively saying we should have a different government, which is fair enough ... but that simply isn't going to happen for several years.
The government of the day can make choices within the envelope. So, it was a government choice to retain the triple lock rather than focusing available funds on pensioners actually in need. It was their choice to leave a ridiculously generous pension tax relief scheme largely untouched to the very considerable benefit of the better off. These choices meant that there really was not the money for ending the 2 child benefit cap although the argument that this will be by far the most effective way of lifting hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty is, in my view, unanswerable and probably the best £3bn she spent.
But pretending the envelope simply doesn't exist or that there are no consequences for your decisions is the road to ruin.
I think I've made it pretty clear I am not a fan of this government. I'm actually more annoyed by their failure on regulatory reform than their fiscal policy (which is predictably Labour).
The right wing propaganda sheets are certainly having a lot of fun... the problem is that their own lies and journalistic failings has reduced their power dramatically. Reeves is more intensely hated by those who were going to hate her anyway, but despite her own ethical questions, the majority will simply shrug and go "she would, wouldn't she". The dead tree press has cried wolf so often, that they can't even parse a sentence without apocalyptic manufactured outrage.
Quite. It's the Tory press. Who cares? Except Tories?
The BBC? Kuenssberg clearly uses Tory press as justification to stick the boot into Labour.
As the vast majority of our press is at least Tory, that's no surprise. Sky is the same.
I'm sure Starmer or Reeves must have shat in Beth rigbys handbag the amount of vitriol she keeps delivering.
Can’t be all bad; I’ve had my £10 Christmas bonus this morning!
And me. £4 net. What to spend it on? So I've just booked ten days in Martinique over Xmas.
Can't even buy a pint for £4 nowadays. Not round here anyway; £4.50's about the cheapest.
At the same time its possible to buy beer very cheaply in supermarkets. Is it any wonder pubs are dying?
In 1972, when I started drinking in London pubs beer was 14p a pint. Not a figure you forget. With inflation that is now about £1.68. IIRC there was not then a huge gulf between pub and off sales prices. The gulf is now gigantic. This all explains a lot about what is happening in the pub and hospitality sector.
You're a few years older than me - I remember beer at 35p a pint, three pints for a quid at the Student Union Bar in 1980.
Mrs Stodge frequently remarks on this - there is a serious problem with alcoholism which is understated in this country. The availability of cheap alcohol is a problem - I have personal experience of the impacts of alcoholism within a family and it's appallingly destructive.
Oddly enough, it's a problem which crosses all social classes and creeds - I've seen Indian drunks, Romanian drunks, Bengali drunks, Afro-Caribbean drunks and White British drunks - it's a great unifier of sorts.
Can’t be all bad; I’ve had my £10 Christmas bonus this morning!
And me. £4 net. What to spend it on? So I've just booked ten days in Martinique over Xmas.
Can't even buy a pint for £4 nowadays. Not round here anyway; £4.50's about the cheapest.
At the same time its possible to buy beer very cheaply in supermarkets. Is it any wonder pubs are dying?
In 1972, when I started drinking in London pubs beer was 14p a pint. Not a figure you forget. With inflation that is now about £1.68. IIRC there was not then a huge gulf between pub and off sales prices. The gulf is now gigantic. This all explains a lot about what is happening in the pub and hospitality sector.
I would be curious to compare the overheads such as business rates pubs faced then and now, other taxes, energy bills, and wage bills.
Can’t be all bad; I’ve had my £10 Christmas bonus this morning!
And me. £4 net. What to spend it on? So I've just booked ten days in Martinique over Xmas.
Can't even buy a pint for £4 nowadays. Not round here anyway; £4.50's about the cheapest.
At the same time its possible to buy beer very cheaply in supermarkets. Is it any wonder pubs are dying?
In 1972, when I started drinking in London pubs beer was 14p a pint. Not a figure you forget. With inflation that is now about £1.68. IIRC there was not then a huge gulf between pub and off sales prices. The gulf is now gigantic. This all explains a lot about what is happening in the pub and hospitality sector.
When I was a student in Sunderland late in the 50's there was one pub where one could get half-a pint at lunchtime for 6d.
When I went off to Uni in Brum in 1985, it was typically 60p a pint. 65p in some places. However, one of the 65p outlets did a lunchtime deal where it was 35p a pint. This matched the price of a bag of chips.
So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
Good morning
Austerity is living within your means
Labour have no idea how to achieve that
Neither, in all fairness, did the Conservatives when in Government.
No one has come up with a coherent and politically practical approach to getting borrowing down substantially - all we can do in the short term is slow the train. Talk of cutting £100 billion from benefits, as espoused by one or two on here, isn't going to happen even with Kemi Badenoch in charge.
I'd love to hear an alternative approach which makes sense but, as with the "small boats" (remember them?), there isn't an easy answer.
You need to do it gradually. It took Osborne 9 years to eliminate the huge structural deficit that he inherited. He managed to keep the economy growing, somewhat slowly, throughout that period by carefully calibrating the reduction each year. After Covid and Ukraine things are nearly as bad as they were in 2010 and we are starting with more than double the debt we had then as a share of GDP. It will take time, patience and skill, some things we seem to lack. A budget that actually increased borrowing for the next 3 years was a seriously bad step in the wrong direction. More debt is the last thing we need.
He added £555bn to the national debt, and lied about 'paying down the debt'.
Well, as I said you need to reduce a deficit gradually. If you try to do it all at once the economy collapses. This is why the Reform platform is an absurd joke. That gradualism meant that the borrowing did not stop in 2010, it continued all the way to 2019. And, when you think about it, if you are right about your £555bn, that is an average of £61bn a year. Reeves would give her eye teeth for that as would Sunak have.
Just because it's worse now, doesn't mean it was excusable then. If anything, it was less excusable, as despite the financial crash, we were still in far better shape back then than we are now.
I think Kemi has it right - cuts to the state, and spend the savings half on economy-boosting tax cuts, half on national debt payments.
What I don't know is how our national debt is structured (can you pay off the debt or are you just paying the interest before you get to it?), and whether our global creditors actually want to be paid off - presumably, like most lenders, they would prefer us to remain heavily indebted, but manageably so. Will they respond to a credible plan to pay them off by reducing our interest rate? I don't know, but something does tell me no.
I will signpost this thread the next time someone challenges the fact that Liberal Democrats are this government's biggest supporters.
I'm not really seeing it. You're just upset they haven't forgiven the Tories.
To be fair I can see the "LDs" being pbs biggest defenders of the government, but they are not supporters. They just respond to fairly regular hyperbolic criticism. The government have hardly any active supporters here or in the media. Most of those who vote for them do so under better than the alternatives rather than support.
"LDs" being code for any centrists.
LDs also opposed the mansion tax I see and income tax freeze and they also previously opposed the family farm and family business tax and rise in NI for employers and winter fuel allowance cut. The LDs are more also anti Brexit than Labour and want to rejoin a CU and ultimately the EEA https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/news/mansion-tax-lib-dems-sir-ed-davey-rachel-reeves/
I thought the LD's wanted to rejoin the EU.
There's a recognition, I think, within the Party that isn't going to happen any time soon whether the UK wants it or not. The atttitude of the EU and their demands would be the key - I very much doubt we could go back on membership terms we rejected so it would have to be an even more semi detached membership and I don't believe the EU would want to go through all that again and we wouldn't accept Schengen and the Euro under any circumstances.
We can't for example rejoin the Single Market because that would mean accepting Freedom of Movement and while there may be an economic argument for allowing uncontrolled immigration, we all know there's not a hope in the proverbial of selling that politically at any level.
An improved trading relationship is probably the aim and no one seriously objects to free trade of goods and services (the old "Common Market" which we happily supported joining in another referendum) though as always the regulatory angle will be a problem but not insurmountable given goodwill on all sides.
Spot on Stodge.
Even rabid Europhiles like me wouldn't support a policy of rejoining. Even if they would have us (they probably wouldn't) it would be politically destabilising for us, and of course you are right that we would never be offered the terms which we gave up when we left.
Labour are polling at 18%, they need to do something politically destabilizing.
The right wing propaganda sheets are certainly having a lot of fun... the problem is that their own lies and journalistic failings has reduced their power dramatically. Reeves is more intensely hated by those who were going to hate her anyway, but despite her own ethical questions, the majority will simply shrug and go "she would, wouldn't she". The dead tree press has cried wolf so often, that they can't even parse a sentence without apocalyptic manufactured outrage.
Quite. It's the Tory press. Who cares? Except Tories?
The BBC? Kuenssberg clearly uses Tory press as justification to stick the boot into Labour.
As the vast majority of our press is at least Tory, that's no surprise. Sky is the same.
I'm sure Starmer or Reeves must have shat in Beth rigbys handbag the amount of vitriol she keeps delivering.
The media also gave the Tories a rough ride before the GE (deservedly so in some cases, though I thought it veered into failing to provide balance at times too). I think this has also been a problem for the new government. I would concede that there is far less emphasis on the things that are going well.
So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
Good morning
Austerity is living within your means
Labour have no idea how to achieve that
Neither, in all fairness, did the Conservatives when in Government.
No one has come up with a coherent and politically practical approach to getting borrowing down substantially - all we can do in the short term is slow the train. Talk of cutting £100 billion from benefits, as espoused by one or two on here, isn't going to happen even with Kemi Badenoch in charge.
I'd love to hear an alternative approach which makes sense but, as with the "small boats" (remember them?), there isn't an easy answer.
You need to do it gradually. It took Osborne 9 years to eliminate the huge structural deficit that he inherited. He managed to keep the economy growing, somewhat slowly, throughout that period by carefully calibrating the reduction each year. After Covid and Ukraine things are nearly as bad as they were in 2010 and we are starting with more than double the debt we had then as a share of GDP. It will take time, patience and skill, some things we seem to lack. A budget that actually increased borrowing for the next 3 years was a seriously bad step in the wrong direction. More debt is the last thing we need.
He added £555bn to the national debt, and lied about 'paying down the debt'.
Well, as I said you need to reduce a deficit gradually. If you try to do it all at once the economy collapses. This is why the Reform platform is an absurd joke. That gradualism meant that the borrowing did not stop in 2010, it continued all the way to 2019. And, when you think about it, if you are right about your £555bn, that is an average of £61bn a year. Reeves would give her eye teeth for that as would Sunak have.
Just because it's worse now, doesn't mean it was excusable then. If anything, it was less excusable, as despite the financial crash, we were still in far better shape back then than we are now.
I think Kemi has it right - cuts to the state, and spend the savings half on economy-boosting tax cuts, half on national debt payments.
What I don't know is how our national debt is structured (can you pay off the debt or are you just paying the interest before you get to it?), and whether our global creditors actually want to be paid off - presumably, like most lenders, they would prefer us to remain heavily indebted, but manageably so. Will they respond to a credible plan to pay them off by reducing our interest rate? I don't know, but something does tell me no.
If there was a credible plan to pay them off, then it would reduce the risk premium we are currently paying, so yes our interest rates would fall.
And since interest is one of our biggest costs, that would improve our budget balance further.
Can’t be all bad; I’ve had my £10 Christmas bonus this morning!
And me. £4 net. What to spend it on? So I've just booked ten days in Martinique over Xmas.
Can't even buy a pint for £4 nowadays. Not round here anyway; £4.50's about the cheapest.
At the same time its possible to buy beer very cheaply in supermarkets. Is it any wonder pubs are dying?
In 1972, when I started drinking in London pubs beer was 14p a pint. Not a figure you forget. With inflation that is now about £1.68. IIRC there was not then a huge gulf between pub and off sales prices. The gulf is now gigantic. This all explains a lot about what is happening in the pub and hospitality sector.
Here:
Greene King IPA, Tesco, 99p. Greene King IPA, Spoons, £1.89. Greene King IPA, Non-spoons, £4.40.
(Assume, for a moment, that Greene King IPA counts as beer.)
Two more Conservative MP rejects hop over to Reform UK. Jonathan Gullis and Lia Nici.
More and more, Reform UK looks simply as if the Tories ran off stage, then came back on two minutes later, wearing a comedy moustache-and-glasses disguise. ~AA
Can’t be all bad; I’ve had my £10 Christmas bonus this morning!
And me. £4 net. What to spend it on? So I've just booked ten days in Martinique over Xmas.
Can't even buy a pint for £4 nowadays. Not round here anyway; £4.50's about the cheapest.
At the same time its possible to buy beer very cheaply in supermarkets. Is it any wonder pubs are dying?
In 1972, when I started drinking in London pubs beer was 14p a pint. Not a figure you forget. With inflation that is now about £1.68. IIRC there was not then a huge gulf between pub and off sales prices. The gulf is now gigantic. This all explains a lot about what is happening in the pub and hospitality sector.
I would be curious to compare the overheads such as business rates pubs faced then and now, other taxes, energy bills, and wage bills.
A quick google suggests bar staff at the time would have been on around £15 a week, so approx 100 pints a week. Not that dissimilar now, if you take £5 pint and £500 a week.
Reeves said the glass was half empty, to justify a course of action. Others said the glass was half full, to justify a different course of action. That's to be expected, and I really cannot get excited about it.
The issue is that she said that the official machinery of government gave a different analysis to what it actually did.
That’s not a question of interpretation or half full/empty. It undermines confidence in the machinery
Another reality check for the 'why can't we all just get along' tendency.
Putin signed a decree this week escalating efforts to erase all traces of Ukrainian language, culture, and national identity in areas currently under Russian occupation. Hopes for a compromise peace are delusional. Putin is determined to destroy Ukraine https://x.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1995069657066463459
ISW's comments on Putin's position - essentially he is all in as failure would be terminal for him. The WH will know this from their own sources so any peace plan is doomed. Continued support for Ukraine is the route to peace but at the cost of regime change. Perhaps the fear is what happens (again) to all those nukes when there is regime change and there is no central government looking after them.
Putin fears the risks and challenges associated with reintegrating veterans into Russian society and economy and thus remains unlikely to demobilize fully or rapidly — even in the event of a negotiated settlement to its war in Ukraine
It is hard to see any acceptable alternative to the continuation and enhancement of support for Ukraine to resist and if possible push back the Russian occupation. I seems such a horrible waste of life but there just seems to be no other way to do it. It is vital that the West gives sufficient support to Ukraine to allow them to prevent any further Russian advances.
Yes, even the Dim-Wit plan is unacceptable to Putin. Ukraine has to be almost completely disarmed, and reduced to a satellite. It is completely pointless, displacement activity, coming up with peace plans.
I think this is why my Eastern Ukraine idea has merits. Russia will simply not be bordered by a well-armed NATO-protected Ukraine. One can see that as a constant thread in their entire loopy strategy.
So offer to create a buffer state, that is not Ukraine, and not Russia. At the very least, that will smoke out whether Russia does just want a Russia-aligned state on its border, or whether it really just wants an ever bigger Russia.
Can’t be all bad; I’ve had my £10 Christmas bonus this morning!
And me. £4 net. What to spend it on? So I've just booked ten days in Martinique over Xmas.
Can't even buy a pint for £4 nowadays. Not round here anyway; £4.50's about the cheapest.
At the same time its possible to buy beer very cheaply in supermarkets. Is it any wonder pubs are dying?
In 1972, when I started drinking in London pubs beer was 14p a pint. Not a figure you forget. With inflation that is now about £1.68. IIRC there was not then a huge gulf between pub and off sales prices. The gulf is now gigantic. This all explains a lot about what is happening in the pub and hospitality sector.
This reminds me of a conversation with a teacher who was talking to some of the senior boys at my school c. 1975. He commented that the best thing to drink in pubs was beer - better quality in pubs, and pricing ok; in contrast wine was worse and more expensive in pubs than at home.
But those were the days when CAMRA was something funny like sandals and beards that LDs went in for, and beer at home was Tennents Lager, McEwan's Export, Watney Red Barrel, and so on.
So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
Good morning
Austerity is living within your means
Labour have no idea how to achieve that
Neither, in all fairness, did the Conservatives when in Government.
No one has come up with a coherent and politically practical approach to getting borrowing down substantially - all we can do in the short term is slow the train. Talk of cutting £100 billion from benefits, as espoused by one or two on here, isn't going to happen even with Kemi Badenoch in charge.
I'd love to hear an alternative approach which makes sense but, as with the "small boats" (remember them?), there isn't an easy answer.
You need to do it gradually. It took Osborne 9 years to eliminate the huge structural deficit that he inherited. He managed to keep the economy growing, somewhat slowly, throughout that period by carefully calibrating the reduction each year. After Covid and Ukraine things are nearly as bad as they were in 2010 and we are starting with more than double the debt we had then as a share of GDP. It will take time, patience and skill, some things we seem to lack. A budget that actually increased borrowing for the next 3 years was a seriously bad step in the wrong direction. More debt is the last thing we need.
He added £555bn to the national debt, and lied about 'paying down the debt'.
Well, as I said you need to reduce a deficit gradually. If you try to do it all at once the economy collapses. This is why the Reform platform is an absurd joke. That gradualism meant that the borrowing did not stop in 2010, it continued all the way to 2019. And, when you think about it, if you are right about your £555bn, that is an average of £61bn a year. Reeves would give her eye teeth for that as would Sunak have.
Just because it's worse now, doesn't mean it was excusable then. If anything, it was less excusable, as despite the financial crash, we were still in far better shape back then than we are now.
I think Kemi has it right - cuts to the state, and spend the savings half on economy-boosting tax cuts, half on national debt payments.
What I don't know is how our national debt is structured (can you pay off the debt or are you just paying the interest before you get to it?), and whether our global creditors actually want to be paid off - presumably, like most lenders, they would prefer us to remain heavily indebted, but manageably so. Will they respond to a credible plan to pay them off by reducing our interest rate? I don't know, but something does tell me no.
If there was a credible plan to pay them off, then it would reduce the risk premium we are currently paying, so yes our interest rates would fall.
And since interest is one of our biggest costs, that would improve our budget balance further.
What actually happened
Investors responded to Osborne’s steady reductions in the deficit by accepting lower and lower rates on the debt.
AI update: bots currently spamming route advice into popular walking/mountaineering forums, sending people over cliffs, across rivers impassable in spate, and up crags with a history of rockfall.
Not sure what the motivation is, some proper weirdos out there looking for internet points most likely.
Can’t be all bad; I’ve had my £10 Christmas bonus this morning!
What's the bonus for? Surviving another year under this communist government?
Oooh someone's not happy! If you think this government is 'communist' you must be very naive. Or very young!
The 'winter bonus' is a little something that's been given to all OAP's since Brown was Chancellor. It's lost a lot of it's value since then, of course, thanks to the likes of George Osborne and Rishi Sunak.
Honestly though, people ask how can you cut government spending.
It’s trifles like this: probably £130m. For no appreciable benefit. Either people are too rich to notice, or they should be helped through more targeted benefits.
Can’t be all bad; I’ve had my £10 Christmas bonus this morning!
And me. £4 net. What to spend it on? So I've just booked ten days in Martinique over Xmas.
Can't even buy a pint for £4 nowadays. Not round here anyway; £4.50's about the cheapest.
At the same time its possible to buy beer very cheaply in supermarkets. Is it any wonder pubs are dying?
In 1972, when I started drinking in London pubs beer was 14p a pint. Not a figure you forget. With inflation that is now about £1.68. IIRC there was not then a huge gulf between pub and off sales prices. The gulf is now gigantic. This all explains a lot about what is happening in the pub and hospitality sector.
This reminds me of a conversation with a teacher who was talking to some of the senior boys at my school c. 1975. He commented that the best thing to drink in pubs was beer - better quality in pubs, and pricing ok; in contrast wine was worse and more expensive in pubs than at home.
But those were the days when CAMRA was something funny like sandals and beards that LDs went in for, and beer at home was Tennents Lager, McEwan's Export, Watney Red Barrel, and so on.
I do like a decent bottled beer - the range and variety is huge and there are some excellent products. That said, its still different form a decent cask ale in the pub.
The pricing differential is crippling. I know its at a major sporting event, but I buy a pint and half of beer at the Rec (to watch Bath Rugby) and its 10 quid even with season ticket discount. Madness.
AI update: bots currently spamming route advice into popular walking/mountaineering forums, sending people over cliffs, across rivers impassable in spate, and up crags with a history of rockfall.
Not sure what the motivation is, some proper weirdos out there looking for internet points most likely.
Just wait till they get going on NC500 motorhome parking advice.
I'm myself noticing piles of shite books being published in a popular history field I know about. Not just a poor quality monkey-written book with an AI pic of a decidedly dodgy female leering at the viewer, but the actual text itself - the most amazing tripe.
It can't be long before they start feeding on each other in an explosion of shite, rather like a literary (if that is the word) Kessler syndrome.
Maybe this is what's happening, rather than anything malicious?
So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
Good morning
Austerity is living within your means
Labour have no idea how to achieve that
Neither, in all fairness, did the Conservatives when in Government.
No one has come up with a coherent and politically practical approach to getting borrowing down substantially - all we can do in the short term is slow the train. Talk of cutting £100 billion from benefits, as espoused by one or two on here, isn't going to happen even with Kemi Badenoch in charge.
I'd love to hear an alternative approach which makes sense but, as with the "small boats" (remember them?), there isn't an easy answer.
You need to do it gradually. It took Osborne 9 years to eliminate the huge structural deficit that he inherited. He managed to keep the economy growing, somewhat slowly, throughout that period by carefully calibrating the reduction each year. After Covid and Ukraine things are nearly as bad as they were in 2010 and we are starting with more than double the debt we had then as a share of GDP. It will take time, patience and skill, some things we seem to lack. A budget that actually increased borrowing for the next 3 years was a seriously bad step in the wrong direction. More debt is the last thing we need.
He added £555bn to the national debt, and lied about 'paying down the debt'.
Well, as I said you need to reduce a deficit gradually. If you try to do it all at once the economy collapses. This is why the Reform platform is an absurd joke. That gradualism meant that the borrowing did not stop in 2010, it continued all the way to 2019. And, when you think about it, if you are right about your £555bn, that is an average of £61bn a year. Reeves would give her eye teeth for that as would Sunak have.
Just because it's worse now, doesn't mean it was excusable then. If anything, it was less excusable, as despite the financial crash, we were still in far better shape back then than we are now.
I think Kemi has it right - cuts to the state, and spend the savings half on economy-boosting tax cuts, half on national debt payments.
What I don't know is how our national debt is structured (can you pay off the debt or are you just paying the interest before you get to it?), and whether our global creditors actually want to be paid off - presumably, like most lenders, they would prefer us to remain heavily indebted, but manageably so. Will they respond to a credible plan to pay them off by reducing our interest rate? I don't know, but something does tell me no.
If there was a credible plan to pay them off, then it would reduce the risk premium we are currently paying, so yes our interest rates would fall.
And since interest is one of our biggest costs, that would improve our budget balance further.
What actually happened
Investors responded to Osborne’s steady reductions in the deficit by accepting lower and lower rates on the debt.
Honestly, after COVID and Putin being a knob, that doesn't look too bad.
If we'd had a windfall tax on high earners during the COVID period - as we usually do during a period of national crisis - we'd have been fine. Our savings rate soared from 5% to 25%, so there was plenty of cash to plug the gap, and we'd have a much lower debt to service.
Can’t be all bad; I’ve had my £10 Christmas bonus this morning!
And me. £4 net. What to spend it on? So I've just booked ten days in Martinique over Xmas.
Can't even buy a pint for £4 nowadays. Not round here anyway; £4.50's about the cheapest.
At the same time its possible to buy beer very cheaply in supermarkets. Is it any wonder pubs are dying?
In 1972, when I started drinking in London pubs beer was 14p a pint. Not a figure you forget. With inflation that is now about £1.68. IIRC there was not then a huge gulf between pub and off sales prices. The gulf is now gigantic. This all explains a lot about what is happening in the pub and hospitality sector.
This reminds me of a conversation with a teacher who was talking to some of the senior boys at my school c. 1975. He commented that the best thing to drink in pubs was beer - better quality in pubs, and pricing ok; in contrast wine was worse and more expensive in pubs than at home.
But those were the days when CAMRA was something funny like sandals and beards that LDs went in for, and beer at home was Tennents Lager, McEwan's Export, Watney Red Barrel, and so on.
I do like a decent bottled beer - the range and variety is huge and there are some excellent products. That said, its still different form a decent cask ale in the pub.
The pricing differential is crippling. I know its at a major sporting event, but I buy a pint and half of beer at the Rec (to watch Bath Rugby) and its 10 quid even with season ticket discount. Madness.
I wouldn't pay to watch Beth Rigby. Oh, sorry - you said Bath Rugby.
Kemi made a good point regarding Labour’s criticism of her attack on Reeves for getting too personal - Starmer named a strain of Covid after Boris; it is hard to go lower than that
Can’t be all bad; I’ve had my £10 Christmas bonus this morning!
And me. £4 net. What to spend it on? So I've just booked ten days in Martinique over Xmas.
Can't even buy a pint for £4 nowadays. Not round here anyway; £4.50's about the cheapest.
At the same time its possible to buy beer very cheaply in supermarkets. Is it any wonder pubs are dying?
In 1972, when I started drinking in London pubs beer was 14p a pint. Not a figure you forget. With inflation that is now about £1.68. IIRC there was not then a huge gulf between pub and off sales prices. The gulf is now gigantic. This all explains a lot about what is happening in the pub and hospitality sector.
This reminds me of a conversation with a teacher who was talking to some of the senior boys at my school c. 1975. He commented that the best thing to drink in pubs was beer - better quality in pubs, and pricing ok; in contrast wine was worse and more expensive in pubs than at home.
But those were the days when CAMRA was something funny like sandals and beards that LDs went in for, and beer at home was Tennents Lager, McEwan's Export, Watney Red Barrel, and so on.
I do like a decent bottled beer - the range and variety is huge and there are some excellent products. That said, its still different form a decent cask ale in the pub.
The pricing differential is crippling. I know its at a major sporting event, but I buy a pint and half of beer at the Rec (to watch Bath Rugby) and its 10 quid even with season ticket discount. Madness.
Oh, yes. There's that too. The bottled and canned beers are vastly better now than they were c. 1975-85 when I started drinking. I must admit it was a time when some but not all pubs had proper cask beer so one of my group always had a CAMRA guide as well as the usual archaeological and heritage guides for our explorations of Lothian, Wiltshire, etc. etc.
Kemi made a good point regarding Labour’s criticism of her attack on Reeves for getting too personal - Starmer named a strain of Covid after Boris; it is hard to go lower than that
Can’t be all bad; I’ve had my £10 Christmas bonus this morning!
What's the bonus for? Surviving another year under this communist government?
Oooh someone's not happy! If you think this government is 'communist' you must be very naive. Or very young!
The 'winter bonus' is a little something that's been given to all OAP's since Brown was Chancellor. It's lost a lot of it's value since then, of course, thanks to the likes of George Osborne and Rishi Sunak.
Honestly though, people ask how can you cut government spending.
It’s trifles like this: probably £130m. For no appreciable benefit. Either people are too rich to notice, or they should be helped through more targeted benefits.
Yep. It is nonsense. It was apparently worth about £100 in today's money when introduced so at least worthwhile then, although still a gimmick as it wasn't targeted as you say. But £10 today is pretty useless. It is a waste of money to give it to anyone who is not poor and a bit of an insult to those who are poor. When I first got it, I got bumph sent to me in the post telling me all about it. It probably cost £10 to tell me they were giving me £10.
For me it just means my bank statement seems to be out by £10 the following month, before I cotton on.
So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
Good morning
Austerity is living within your means
Labour have no idea how to achieve that
Neither, in all fairness, did the Conservatives when in Government.
No one has come up with a coherent and politically practical approach to getting borrowing down substantially - all we can do in the short term is slow the train. Talk of cutting £100 billion from benefits, as espoused by one or two on here, isn't going to happen even with Kemi Badenoch in charge.
I'd love to hear an alternative approach which makes sense but, as with the "small boats" (remember them?), there isn't an easy answer.
You need to do it gradually. It took Osborne 9 years to eliminate the huge structural deficit that he inherited. He managed to keep the economy growing, somewhat slowly, throughout that period by carefully calibrating the reduction each year. After Covid and Ukraine things are nearly as bad as they were in 2010 and we are starting with more than double the debt we had then as a share of GDP. It will take time, patience and skill, some things we seem to lack. A budget that actually increased borrowing for the next 3 years was a seriously bad step in the wrong direction. More debt is the last thing we need.
He added £555bn to the national debt, and lied about 'paying down the debt'.
Well, as I said you need to reduce a deficit gradually. If you try to do it all at once the economy collapses. This is why the Reform platform is an absurd joke. That gradualism meant that the borrowing did not stop in 2010, it continued all the way to 2019. And, when you think about it, if you are right about your £555bn, that is an average of £61bn a year. Reeves would give her eye teeth for that as would Sunak have.
Just because it's worse now, doesn't mean it was excusable then. If anything, it was less excusable, as despite the financial crash, we were still in far better shape back then than we are now.
I think Kemi has it right - cuts to the state, and spend the savings half on economy-boosting tax cuts, half on national debt payments.
What I don't know is how our national debt is structured (can you pay off the debt or are you just paying the interest before you get to it?), and whether our global creditors actually want to be paid off - presumably, like most lenders, they would prefer us to remain heavily indebted, but manageably so. Will they respond to a credible plan to pay them off by reducing our interest rate? I don't know, but something does tell me no.
If there was a credible plan to pay them off, then it would reduce the risk premium we are currently paying, so yes our interest rates would fall.
And since interest is one of our biggest costs, that would improve our budget balance further.
What actually happened
Investors responded to Osborne’s steady reductions in the deficit by accepting lower and lower rates on the debt.
The graph clearly shows where Gordon Brown's profligate overspending in the run-up to the GFC took borrowing up to unsustainable levels of, erm, less than it had been under the Tories.
Can’t be all bad; I’ve had my £10 Christmas bonus this morning!
And me. £4 net. What to spend it on? So I've just booked ten days in Martinique over Xmas.
Can't even buy a pint for £4 nowadays. Not round here anyway; £4.50's about the cheapest.
At the same time its possible to buy beer very cheaply in supermarkets. Is it any wonder pubs are dying?
In 1972, when I started drinking in London pubs beer was 14p a pint. Not a figure you forget. With inflation that is now about £1.68. IIRC there was not then a huge gulf between pub and off sales prices. The gulf is now gigantic. This all explains a lot about what is happening in the pub and hospitality sector.
At about that time petrol was 35p per gallon.
So the ratio is not *that* different.
I think petrol has faired better, which is perhaps down to fuel duty being flat in cash terms since 2011.
So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
Good morning
Austerity is living within your means
Labour have no idea how to achieve that
Neither, in all fairness, did the Conservatives when in Government.
No one has come up with a coherent and politically practical approach to getting borrowing down substantially - all we can do in the short term is slow the train. Talk of cutting £100 billion from benefits, as espoused by one or two on here, isn't going to happen even with Kemi Badenoch in charge.
I'd love to hear an alternative approach which makes sense but, as with the "small boats" (remember them?), there isn't an easy answer.
You need to do it gradually. It took Osborne 9 years to eliminate the huge structural deficit that he inherited. He managed to keep the economy growing, somewhat slowly, throughout that period by carefully calibrating the reduction each year. After Covid and Ukraine things are nearly as bad as they were in 2010 and we are starting with more than double the debt we had then as a share of GDP. It will take time, patience and skill, some things we seem to lack. A budget that actually increased borrowing for the next 3 years was a seriously bad step in the wrong direction. More debt is the last thing we need.
He added £555bn to the national debt, and lied about 'paying down the debt'.
Well, as I said you need to reduce a deficit gradually. If you try to do it all at once the economy collapses. This is why the Reform platform is an absurd joke. That gradualism meant that the borrowing did not stop in 2010, it continued all the way to 2019. And, when you think about it, if you are right about your £555bn, that is an average of £61bn a year. Reeves would give her eye teeth for that as would Sunak have.
Just because it's worse now, doesn't mean it was excusable then. If anything, it was less excusable, as despite the financial crash, we were still in far better shape back then than we are now.
I think Kemi has it right - cuts to the state, and spend the savings half on economy-boosting tax cuts, half on national debt payments.
What I don't know is how our national debt is structured (can you pay off the debt or are you just paying the interest before you get to it?), and whether our global creditors actually want to be paid off - presumably, like most lenders, they would prefer us to remain heavily indebted, but manageably so. Will they respond to a credible plan to pay them off by reducing our interest rate? I don't know, but something does tell me no.
If there was a credible plan to pay them off, then it would reduce the risk premium we are currently paying, so yes our interest rates would fall.
And since interest is one of our biggest costs, that would improve our budget balance further.
What actually happened
Investors responded to Osborne’s steady reductions in the deficit by accepting lower and lower rates on the debt.
The graph clearly shows where Gordon Brown's profligate overspending in the run-up to the GFC took borrowing up to unsustainable levels of, erm, less than it had been under the Tories.
Remember, IIRC those numbers do not include all the off balance sheet arrangements pursued by Brown to the tunes of £50bn or so.
So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
Good morning
Austerity is living within your means
Labour have no idea how to achieve that
Neither, in all fairness, did the Conservatives when in Government.
No one has come up with a coherent and politically practical approach to getting borrowing down substantially - all we can do in the short term is slow the train. Talk of cutting £100 billion from benefits, as espoused by one or two on here, isn't going to happen even with Kemi Badenoch in charge.
I'd love to hear an alternative approach which makes sense but, as with the "small boats" (remember them?), there isn't an easy answer.
You need to do it gradually. It took Osborne 9 years to eliminate the huge structural deficit that he inherited. He managed to keep the economy growing, somewhat slowly, throughout that period by carefully calibrating the reduction each year. After Covid and Ukraine things are nearly as bad as they were in 2010 and we are starting with more than double the debt we had then as a share of GDP. It will take time, patience and skill, some things we seem to lack. A budget that actually increased borrowing for the next 3 years was a seriously bad step in the wrong direction. More debt is the last thing we need.
He added £555bn to the national debt, and lied about 'paying down the debt'.
Well, as I said you need to reduce a deficit gradually. If you try to do it all at once the economy collapses. This is why the Reform platform is an absurd joke. That gradualism meant that the borrowing did not stop in 2010, it continued all the way to 2019. And, when you think about it, if you are right about your £555bn, that is an average of £61bn a year. Reeves would give her eye teeth for that as would Sunak have.
Just because it's worse now, doesn't mean it was excusable then. If anything, it was less excusable, as despite the financial crash, we were still in far better shape back then than we are now.
I think Kemi has it right - cuts to the state, and spend the savings half on economy-boosting tax cuts, half on national debt payments.
What I don't know is how our national debt is structured (can you pay off the debt or are you just paying the interest before you get to it?), and whether our global creditors actually want to be paid off - presumably, like most lenders, they would prefer us to remain heavily indebted, but manageably so. Will they respond to a credible plan to pay them off by reducing our interest rate? I don't know, but something does tell me no.
If there was a credible plan to pay them off, then it would reduce the risk premium we are currently paying, so yes our interest rates would fall.
And since interest is one of our biggest costs, that would improve our budget balance further.
What actually happened
Investors responded to Osborne’s steady reductions in the deficit by accepting lower and lower rates on the debt.
Osborne - so he said - thought he would become the most unpopular figure in Britain when he became chancellor and that the Govt would have zero chance of re-election. And yet, while he was hardly popular, by careful management and messaging, Cameron and Osborne actually won a majority in 2015. The fact is, even if they don't like it, the public is prepared to tolerate "austerity" if it is couched in terms that they can identify with, such as household financing. Mrs T, of course, majored on that kind of messaging when in office: simple, but effective.
This can be done, but obvs, very difficult for a Labour Govt, as left-of-centre political culture is not particularly comfortable with notions of savings and efficiency, despite Tony Blair's best efforts.
A start might be made with the terminology used:
For "bond markets", how about "the people who led the government money"?
So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
Good morning
Austerity is living within your means
Labour have no idea how to achieve that
Neither, in all fairness, did the Conservatives when in Government.
No one has come up with a coherent and politically practical approach to getting borrowing down substantially - all we can do in the short term is slow the train. Talk of cutting £100 billion from benefits, as espoused by one or two on here, isn't going to happen even with Kemi Badenoch in charge.
I'd love to hear an alternative approach which makes sense but, as with the "small boats" (remember them?), there isn't an easy answer.
You need to do it gradually. It took Osborne 9 years to eliminate the huge structural deficit that he inherited. He managed to keep the economy growing, somewhat slowly, throughout that period by carefully calibrating the reduction each year. After Covid and Ukraine things are nearly as bad as they were in 2010 and we are starting with more than double the debt we had then as a share of GDP. It will take time, patience and skill, some things we seem to lack. A budget that actually increased borrowing for the next 3 years was a seriously bad step in the wrong direction. More debt is the last thing we need.
He added £555bn to the national debt, and lied about 'paying down the debt'.
Well, as I said you need to reduce a deficit gradually. If you try to do it all at once the economy collapses. This is why the Reform platform is an absurd joke. That gradualism meant that the borrowing did not stop in 2010, it continued all the way to 2019. And, when you think about it, if you are right about your £555bn, that is an average of £61bn a year. Reeves would give her eye teeth for that as would Sunak have.
Just because it's worse now, doesn't mean it was excusable then. If anything, it was less excusable, as despite the financial crash, we were still in far better shape back then than we are now.
I think Kemi has it right - cuts to the state, and spend the savings half on economy-boosting tax cuts, half on national debt payments.
What I don't know is how our national debt is structured (can you pay off the debt or are you just paying the interest before you get to it?), and whether our global creditors actually want to be paid off - presumably, like most lenders, they would prefer us to remain heavily indebted, but manageably so. Will they respond to a credible plan to pay them off by reducing our interest rate? I don't know, but something does tell me no.
If there was a credible plan to pay them off, then it would reduce the risk premium we are currently paying, so yes our interest rates would fall.
And since interest is one of our biggest costs, that would improve our budget balance further.
What actually happened
Investors responded to Osborne’s steady reductions in the deficit by accepting lower and lower rates on the debt.
The graph clearly shows where Gordon Brown's profligate overspending in the run-up to the GFC took borrowing up to unsustainable levels of, erm, less than it had been under the Tories.
Remember, IIRC those numbers do not include all the off balance sheet arrangements pursued by Brown to the tunes of £50bn or so.
So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
Good morning
Austerity is living within your means
Labour have no idea how to achieve that
Neither, in all fairness, did the Conservatives when in Government.
No one has come up with a coherent and politically practical approach to getting borrowing down substantially - all we can do in the short term is slow the train. Talk of cutting £100 billion from benefits, as espoused by one or two on here, isn't going to happen even with Kemi Badenoch in charge.
I'd love to hear an alternative approach which makes sense but, as with the "small boats" (remember them?), there isn't an easy answer.
You need to do it gradually. It took Osborne 9 years to eliminate the huge structural deficit that he inherited. He managed to keep the economy growing, somewhat slowly, throughout that period by carefully calibrating the reduction each year. After Covid and Ukraine things are nearly as bad as they were in 2010 and we are starting with more than double the debt we had then as a share of GDP. It will take time, patience and skill, some things we seem to lack. A budget that actually increased borrowing for the next 3 years was a seriously bad step in the wrong direction. More debt is the last thing we need.
He added £555bn to the national debt, and lied about 'paying down the debt'.
Well, as I said you need to reduce a deficit gradually. If you try to do it all at once the economy collapses. This is why the Reform platform is an absurd joke. That gradualism meant that the borrowing did not stop in 2010, it continued all the way to 2019. And, when you think about it, if you are right about your £555bn, that is an average of £61bn a year. Reeves would give her eye teeth for that as would Sunak have.
Just because it's worse now, doesn't mean it was excusable then. If anything, it was less excusable, as despite the financial crash, we were still in far better shape back then than we are now.
I think Kemi has it right - cuts to the state, and spend the savings half on economy-boosting tax cuts, half on national debt payments.
What I don't know is how our national debt is structured (can you pay off the debt or are you just paying the interest before you get to it?), and whether our global creditors actually want to be paid off - presumably, like most lenders, they would prefer us to remain heavily indebted, but manageably so. Will they respond to a credible plan to pay them off by reducing our interest rate? I don't know, but something does tell me no.
If there was a credible plan to pay them off, then it would reduce the risk premium we are currently paying, so yes our interest rates would fall.
And since interest is one of our biggest costs, that would improve our budget balance further.
What actually happened
Investors responded to Osborne’s steady reductions in the deficit by accepting lower and lower rates on the debt.
Honestly, after COVID and Putin being a knob, that doesn't look too bad.
If we'd had a windfall tax on high earners during the COVID period - as we usually do during a period of national crisis - we'd have been fine. Our savings rate soared from 5% to 25%, so there was plenty of cash to plug the gap, and we'd have a much lower debt to service.
Maybe the inquiry will eventually say something useful.
So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
Good morning
Austerity is living within your means
Labour have no idea how to achieve that
Neither, in all fairness, did the Conservatives when in Government.
No one has come up with a coherent and politically practical approach to getting borrowing down substantially - all we can do in the short term is slow the train. Talk of cutting £100 billion from benefits, as espoused by one or two on here, isn't going to happen even with Kemi Badenoch in charge.
I'd love to hear an alternative approach which makes sense but, as with the "small boats" (remember them?), there isn't an easy answer.
You need to do it gradually. It took Osborne 9 years to eliminate the huge structural deficit that he inherited. He managed to keep the economy growing, somewhat slowly, throughout that period by carefully calibrating the reduction each year. After Covid and Ukraine things are nearly as bad as they were in 2010 and we are starting with more than double the debt we had then as a share of GDP. It will take time, patience and skill, some things we seem to lack. A budget that actually increased borrowing for the next 3 years was a seriously bad step in the wrong direction. More debt is the last thing we need.
He added £555bn to the national debt, and lied about 'paying down the debt'.
Well, as I said you need to reduce a deficit gradually. If you try to do it all at once the economy collapses. This is why the Reform platform is an absurd joke. That gradualism meant that the borrowing did not stop in 2010, it continued all the way to 2019. And, when you think about it, if you are right about your £555bn, that is an average of £61bn a year. Reeves would give her eye teeth for that as would Sunak have.
Just because it's worse now, doesn't mean it was excusable then. If anything, it was less excusable, as despite the financial crash, we were still in far better shape back then than we are now.
I think Kemi has it right - cuts to the state, and spend the savings half on economy-boosting tax cuts, half on national debt payments.
What I don't know is how our national debt is structured (can you pay off the debt or are you just paying the interest before you get to it?), and whether our global creditors actually want to be paid off - presumably, like most lenders, they would prefer us to remain heavily indebted, but manageably so. Will they respond to a credible plan to pay them off by reducing our interest rate? I don't know, but something does tell me no.
If there was a credible plan to pay them off, then it would reduce the risk premium we are currently paying, so yes our interest rates would fall.
And since interest is one of our biggest costs, that would improve our budget balance further.
What actually happened
Investors responded to Osborne’s steady reductions in the deficit by accepting lower and lower rates on the debt.
Honestly, after COVID and Putin being a knob, that doesn't look too bad.
If we'd had a windfall tax on high earners during the COVID period - as we usually do during a period of national crisis - we'd have been fine. Our savings rate soared from 5% to 25%, so there was plenty of cash to plug the gap, and we'd have a much lower debt to service.
Spot on.
Earlier, Big_G said "Austerity is living within your means". That's plainly not true: I live within my means but I don't live austerely. I also know people who live very austerely but not within their means. Living within your means is clearly a good thing but it doesn't necessarily require austerity.
We could easily live within our fiscal means so long as tax revenue >= public spending. Either cutting spending or increasing taxation can achieve that. The issue is that cutting public spending takes money out of the economy; increasing taxation on the wealthy takes it out of savings.
So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
Good morning
Austerity is living within your means
Labour have no idea how to achieve that
Neither, in all fairness, did the Conservatives when in Government.
No one has come up with a coherent and politically practical approach to getting borrowing down substantially - all we can do in the short term is slow the train. Talk of cutting £100 billion from benefits, as espoused by one or two on here, isn't going to happen even with Kemi Badenoch in charge.
I'd love to hear an alternative approach which makes sense but, as with the "small boats" (remember them?), there isn't an easy answer.
You need to do it gradually. It took Osborne 9 years to eliminate the huge structural deficit that he inherited. He managed to keep the economy growing, somewhat slowly, throughout that period by carefully calibrating the reduction each year. After Covid and Ukraine things are nearly as bad as they were in 2010 and we are starting with more than double the debt we had then as a share of GDP. It will take time, patience and skill, some things we seem to lack. A budget that actually increased borrowing for the next 3 years was a seriously bad step in the wrong direction. More debt is the last thing we need.
He added £555bn to the national debt, and lied about 'paying down the debt'.
Well, as I said you need to reduce a deficit gradually. If you try to do it all at once the economy collapses. This is why the Reform platform is an absurd joke. That gradualism meant that the borrowing did not stop in 2010, it continued all the way to 2019. And, when you think about it, if you are right about your £555bn, that is an average of £61bn a year. Reeves would give her eye teeth for that as would Sunak have.
I’m not sure what the reform platform is now. They seem to have rowed back from their ludicrous manifesto promises.
AI update: bots currently spamming route advice into popular walking/mountaineering forums, sending people over cliffs, across rivers impassable in spate, and up crags with a history of rockfall.
Not sure what the motivation is, some proper weirdos out there looking for internet points most likely.
Maybe the internet, in its current open access form, will become unusable in the future owing to bad actors and AI slop. I remember some tech evangelist talking up digital money to me telling me that it offers the benefits of internet based money. My response was that the internet is the very last place I would trust my money to reside!
So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
Good morning
Austerity is living within your means
Labour have no idea how to achieve that
Neither, in all fairness, did the Conservatives when in Government.
No one has come up with a coherent and politically practical approach to getting borrowing down substantially - all we can do in the short term is slow the train. Talk of cutting £100 billion from benefits, as espoused by one or two on here, isn't going to happen even with Kemi Badenoch in charge.
I'd love to hear an alternative approach which makes sense but, as with the "small boats" (remember them?), there isn't an easy answer.
You need to do it gradually. It took Osborne 9 years to eliminate the huge structural deficit that he inherited. He managed to keep the economy growing, somewhat slowly, throughout that period by carefully calibrating the reduction each year. After Covid and Ukraine things are nearly as bad as they were in 2010 and we are starting with more than double the debt we had then as a share of GDP. It will take time, patience and skill, some things we seem to lack. A budget that actually increased borrowing for the next 3 years was a seriously bad step in the wrong direction. More debt is the last thing we need.
He added £555bn to the national debt, and lied about 'paying down the debt'.
Well, as I said you need to reduce a deficit gradually. If you try to do it all at once the economy collapses. This is why the Reform platform is an absurd joke. That gradualism meant that the borrowing did not stop in 2010, it continued all the way to 2019. And, when you think about it, if you are right about your £555bn, that is an average of £61bn a year. Reeves would give her eye teeth for that as would Sunak have.
I’m not sure what the reform platform is now. They seem to have rowed back from their ludicrous manifesto promises.
Tactically to get elected they should a Starmer and make very limited promises, just focus on Labour aren't working and we can fix migration.
If they want to actually govern well, rather than just get elected, they will be disappointed regardless, so may as well just focus on getting elected.
Can’t be all bad; I’ve had my £10 Christmas bonus this morning!
And me. £4 net. What to spend it on? So I've just booked ten days in Martinique over Xmas.
Can't even buy a pint for £4 nowadays. Not round here anyway; £4.50's about the cheapest.
At the same time its possible to buy beer very cheaply in supermarkets. Is it any wonder pubs are dying?
In 1972, when I started drinking in London pubs beer was 14p a pint. Not a figure you forget. With inflation that is now about £1.68. IIRC there was not then a huge gulf between pub and off sales prices. The gulf is now gigantic. This all explains a lot about what is happening in the pub and hospitality sector.
Here:
Greene King IPA, Tesco, 99p. Greene King IPA, Spoons, £1.89. Greene King IPA, Non-spoons, £4.40.
(Assume, for a moment, that Greene King IPA counts as beer.)
So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
Good morning
Austerity is living within your means
Labour have no idea how to achieve that
Neither, in all fairness, did the Conservatives when in Government.
No one has come up with a coherent and politically practical approach to getting borrowing down substantially - all we can do in the short term is slow the train. Talk of cutting £100 billion from benefits, as espoused by one or two on here, isn't going to happen even with Kemi Badenoch in charge.
I'd love to hear an alternative approach which makes sense but, as with the "small boats" (remember them?), there isn't an easy answer.
You need to do it gradually. It took Osborne 9 years to eliminate the huge structural deficit that he inherited. He managed to keep the economy growing, somewhat slowly, throughout that period by carefully calibrating the reduction each year. After Covid and Ukraine things are nearly as bad as they were in 2010 and we are starting with more than double the debt we had then as a share of GDP. It will take time, patience and skill, some things we seem to lack. A budget that actually increased borrowing for the next 3 years was a seriously bad step in the wrong direction. More debt is the last thing we need.
He added £555bn to the national debt, and lied about 'paying down the debt'.
Well, as I said you need to reduce a deficit gradually. If you try to do it all at once the economy collapses. This is why the Reform platform is an absurd joke. That gradualism meant that the borrowing did not stop in 2010, it continued all the way to 2019. And, when you think about it, if you are right about your £555bn, that is an average of £61bn a year. Reeves would give her eye teeth for that as would Sunak have.
Just because it's worse now, doesn't mean it was excusable then. If anything, it was less excusable, as despite the financial crash, we were still in far better shape back then than we are now.
I think Kemi has it right - cuts to the state, and spend the savings half on economy-boosting tax cuts, half on national debt payments.
What I don't know is how our national debt is structured (can you pay off the debt or are you just paying the interest before you get to it?), and whether our global creditors actually want to be paid off - presumably, like most lenders, they would prefer us to remain heavily indebted, but manageably so. Will they respond to a credible plan to pay them off by reducing our interest rate? I don't know, but something does tell me no.
If there was a credible plan to pay them off, then it would reduce the risk premium we are currently paying, so yes our interest rates would fall.
And since interest is one of our biggest costs, that would improve our budget balance further.
What actually happened
Investors responded to Osborne’s steady reductions in the deficit by accepting lower and lower rates on the debt.
The graph clearly shows where Gordon Brown's profligate overspending in the run-up to the GFC took borrowing up to unsustainable levels of, erm, less than it had been under the Tories.
What Brown did was to try and normalise the tax receipts from a mad boom.
When this evaporated, we had a structural deficit of something like 8-10%
So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
Good morning
Austerity is living within your means
Labour have no idea how to achieve that
Neither, in all fairness, did the Conservatives when in Government.
No one has come up with a coherent and politically practical approach to getting borrowing down substantially - all we can do in the short term is slow the train. Talk of cutting £100 billion from benefits, as espoused by one or two on here, isn't going to happen even with Kemi Badenoch in charge.
I'd love to hear an alternative approach which makes sense but, as with the "small boats" (remember them?), there isn't an easy answer.
You need to do it gradually. It took Osborne 9 years to eliminate the huge structural deficit that he inherited. He managed to keep the economy growing, somewhat slowly, throughout that period by carefully calibrating the reduction each year. After Covid and Ukraine things are nearly as bad as they were in 2010 and we are starting with more than double the debt we had then as a share of GDP. It will take time, patience and skill, some things we seem to lack. A budget that actually increased borrowing for the next 3 years was a seriously bad step in the wrong direction. More debt is the last thing we need.
He added £555bn to the national debt, and lied about 'paying down the debt'.
Well, as I said you need to reduce a deficit gradually. If you try to do it all at once the economy collapses. This is why the Reform platform is an absurd joke. That gradualism meant that the borrowing did not stop in 2010, it continued all the way to 2019. And, when you think about it, if you are right about your £555bn, that is an average of £61bn a year. Reeves would give her eye teeth for that as would Sunak have.
I’m not sure what the reform platform is now. They seem to have rowed back from their ludicrous manifesto promises.
Tactically to get elected they should a Starmer and make very limited promises, just focus on Labour aren't working and we can fix migration.
If they want to actually govern well, rather than just get elected, they will be disappointed regardless, so may as well just focus on getting elected.
They tried the former with the local elections with mixed results so far. Some counties, like Kent, seem shambolic. They don’t seem to be too bad in Durham so far.
Another reality check for the 'why can't we all just get along' tendency.
Putin signed a decree this week escalating efforts to erase all traces of Ukrainian language, culture, and national identity in areas currently under Russian occupation. Hopes for a compromise peace are delusional. Putin is determined to destroy Ukraine https://x.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1995069657066463459
ISW's comments on Putin's position - essentially he is all in as failure would be terminal for him. The WH will know this from their own sources so any peace plan is doomed. Continued support for Ukraine is the route to peace but at the cost of regime change. Perhaps the fear is what happens (again) to all those nukes when there is regime change and there is no central government looking after them.
Putin fears the risks and challenges associated with reintegrating veterans into Russian society and economy and thus remains unlikely to demobilize fully or rapidly — even in the event of a negotiated settlement to its war in Ukraine
It is hard to see any acceptable alternative to the continuation and enhancement of support for Ukraine to resist and if possible push back the Russian occupation. I seems such a horrible waste of life but there just seems to be no other way to do it. It is vital that the West gives sufficient support to Ukraine to allow them to prevent any further Russian advances.
Yes, even the Dim-Wit plan is unacceptable to Putin. Ukraine has to be almost completely disarmed, and reduced to a satellite. It is completely pointless, displacement activity, coming up with peace plans.
I think this is why my Eastern Ukraine idea has merits. Russia will simply not be bordered by a well-armed NATO-protected Ukraine. One can see that as a constant thread in their entire loopy strategy.
So offer to create a buffer state, that is not Ukraine, and not Russia. At the very least, that will smoke out whether Russia does just want a Russia-aligned state on its border, or whether it really just wants an ever bigger Russia.
That might work with a different type of Russian leader, but I don't think Putin can walk away from this.
So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
Good morning
Austerity is living within your means
Labour have no idea how to achieve that
Neither, in all fairness, did the Conservatives when in Government.
No one has come up with a coherent and politically practical approach to getting borrowing down substantially - all we can do in the short term is slow the train. Talk of cutting £100 billion from benefits, as espoused by one or two on here, isn't going to happen even with Kemi Badenoch in charge.
I'd love to hear an alternative approach which makes sense but, as with the "small boats" (remember them?), there isn't an easy answer.
You need to do it gradually. It took Osborne 9 years to eliminate the huge structural deficit that he inherited. He managed to keep the economy growing, somewhat slowly, throughout that period by carefully calibrating the reduction each year. After Covid and Ukraine things are nearly as bad as they were in 2010 and we are starting with more than double the debt we had then as a share of GDP. It will take time, patience and skill, some things we seem to lack. A budget that actually increased borrowing for the next 3 years was a seriously bad step in the wrong direction. More debt is the last thing we need.
He added £555bn to the national debt, and lied about 'paying down the debt'.
Well, as I said you need to reduce a deficit gradually. If you try to do it all at once the economy collapses. This is why the Reform platform is an absurd joke. That gradualism meant that the borrowing did not stop in 2010, it continued all the way to 2019. And, when you think about it, if you are right about your £555bn, that is an average of £61bn a year. Reeves would give her eye teeth for that as would Sunak have.
Just because it's worse now, doesn't mean it was excusable then. If anything, it was less excusable, as despite the financial crash, we were still in far better shape back then than we are now.
I think Kemi has it right - cuts to the state, and spend the savings half on economy-boosting tax cuts, half on national debt payments.
What I don't know is how our national debt is structured (can you pay off the debt or are you just paying the interest before you get to it?), and whether our global creditors actually want to be paid off - presumably, like most lenders, they would prefer us to remain heavily indebted, but manageably so. Will they respond to a credible plan to pay them off by reducing our interest rate? I don't know, but something does tell me no.
If there was a credible plan to pay them off, then it would reduce the risk premium we are currently paying, so yes our interest rates would fall.
And since interest is one of our biggest costs, that would improve our budget balance further.
What actually happened
Investors responded to Osborne’s steady reductions in the deficit by accepting lower and lower rates on the debt.
Honestly, after COVID and Putin being a knob, that doesn't look too bad.
If we'd had a windfall tax on high earners during the COVID period - as we usually do during a period of national crisis - we'd have been fine. Our savings rate soared from 5% to 25%, so there was plenty of cash to plug the gap, and we'd have a much lower debt to service.
Spot on.
Earlier, Big_G said "Austerity is living within your means". That's plainly not true: I live within my means but I don't live austerely. I also know people who live very austerely but not within their means. Living within your means is clearly a good thing but it doesn't necessarily require austerity.
We could easily live within our fiscal means so long as tax revenue >= public spending. Either cutting spending or increasing taxation can achieve that. The issue is that cutting public spending takes money out of the economy; increasing taxation on the wealthy takes it out of savings.
Austerity, as implement by Osborne was reducing the *increase* in government spending, each year, to less than GDP growth.
So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
Good morning
Austerity is living within your means
Labour have no idea how to achieve that
Neither, in all fairness, did the Conservatives when in Government.
No one has come up with a coherent and politically practical approach to getting borrowing down substantially - all we can do in the short term is slow the train. Talk of cutting £100 billion from benefits, as espoused by one or two on here, isn't going to happen even with Kemi Badenoch in charge.
I'd love to hear an alternative approach which makes sense but, as with the "small boats" (remember them?), there isn't an easy answer.
You need to do it gradually. It took Osborne 9 years to eliminate the huge structural deficit that he inherited. He managed to keep the economy growing, somewhat slowly, throughout that period by carefully calibrating the reduction each year. After Covid and Ukraine things are nearly as bad as they were in 2010 and we are starting with more than double the debt we had then as a share of GDP. It will take time, patience and skill, some things we seem to lack. A budget that actually increased borrowing for the next 3 years was a seriously bad step in the wrong direction. More debt is the last thing we need.
He added £555bn to the national debt, and lied about 'paying down the debt'.
Well, as I said you need to reduce a deficit gradually. If you try to do it all at once the economy collapses. This is why the Reform platform is an absurd joke. That gradualism meant that the borrowing did not stop in 2010, it continued all the way to 2019. And, when you think about it, if you are right about your £555bn, that is an average of £61bn a year. Reeves would give her eye teeth for that as would Sunak have.
I’m not sure what the reform platform is now. They seem to have rowed back from their ludicrous manifesto promises.
The Reform platform is "tell forriners to go back to there own country" and not much else.
Another reality check for the 'why can't we all just get along' tendency.
Putin signed a decree this week escalating efforts to erase all traces of Ukrainian language, culture, and national identity in areas currently under Russian occupation. Hopes for a compromise peace are delusional. Putin is determined to destroy Ukraine https://x.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1995069657066463459
ISW's comments on Putin's position - essentially he is all in as failure would be terminal for him. The WH will know this from their own sources so any peace plan is doomed. Continued support for Ukraine is the route to peace but at the cost of regime change. Perhaps the fear is what happens (again) to all those nukes when there is regime change and there is no central government looking after them.
Putin fears the risks and challenges associated with reintegrating veterans into Russian society and economy and thus remains unlikely to demobilize fully or rapidly — even in the event of a negotiated settlement to its war in Ukraine
It is hard to see any acceptable alternative to the continuation and enhancement of support for Ukraine to resist and if possible push back the Russian occupation. I seems such a horrible waste of life but there just seems to be no other way to do it. It is vital that the West gives sufficient support to Ukraine to allow them to prevent any further Russian advances.
Yes, even the Dim-Wit plan is unacceptable to Putin. Ukraine has to be almost completely disarmed, and reduced to a satellite. It is completely pointless, displacement activity, coming up with peace plans.
I think this is why my Eastern Ukraine idea has merits. Russia will simply not be bordered by a well-armed NATO-protected Ukraine. One can see that as a constant thread in their entire loopy strategy.
So offer to create a buffer state, that is not Ukraine, and not Russia. At the very least, that will smoke out whether Russia does just want a Russia-aligned state on its border, or whether it really just wants an ever bigger Russia.
The Eastern Ukraine idea is not on the table. Ukraine is not offering it and Putin has absorbed the occupied areas into the Russian Federation directly: in Russian legal theory they are now Russian oblasts.
So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
Good morning
Austerity is living within your means
Labour have no idea how to achieve that
Neither, in all fairness, did the Conservatives when in Government.
No one has come up with a coherent and politically practical approach to getting borrowing down substantially - all we can do in the short term is slow the train. Talk of cutting £100 billion from benefits, as espoused by one or two on here, isn't going to happen even with Kemi Badenoch in charge.
I'd love to hear an alternative approach which makes sense but, as with the "small boats" (remember them?), there isn't an easy answer.
You need to do it gradually. It took Osborne 9 years to eliminate the huge structural deficit that he inherited. He managed to keep the economy growing, somewhat slowly, throughout that period by carefully calibrating the reduction each year. After Covid and Ukraine things are nearly as bad as they were in 2010 and we are starting with more than double the debt we had then as a share of GDP. It will take time, patience and skill, some things we seem to lack. A budget that actually increased borrowing for the next 3 years was a seriously bad step in the wrong direction. More debt is the last thing we need.
He added £555bn to the national debt, and lied about 'paying down the debt'.
Well, as I said you need to reduce a deficit gradually. If you try to do it all at once the economy collapses. This is why the Reform platform is an absurd joke. That gradualism meant that the borrowing did not stop in 2010, it continued all the way to 2019. And, when you think about it, if you are right about your £555bn, that is an average of £61bn a year. Reeves would give her eye teeth for that as would Sunak have.
Just because it's worse now, doesn't mean it was excusable then. If anything, it was less excusable, as despite the financial crash, we were still in far better shape back then than we are now.
I think Kemi has it right - cuts to the state, and spend the savings half on economy-boosting tax cuts, half on national debt payments.
What I don't know is how our national debt is structured (can you pay off the debt or are you just paying the interest before you get to it?), and whether our global creditors actually want to be paid off - presumably, like most lenders, they would prefer us to remain heavily indebted, but manageably so. Will they respond to a credible plan to pay them off by reducing our interest rate? I don't know, but something does tell me no.
If there was a credible plan to pay them off, then it would reduce the risk premium we are currently paying, so yes our interest rates would fall.
And since interest is one of our biggest costs, that would improve our budget balance further.
What actually happened
Investors responded to Osborne’s steady reductions in the deficit by accepting lower and lower rates on the debt.
Honestly, after COVID and Putin being a knob, that doesn't look too bad.
If we'd had a windfall tax on high earners during the COVID period - as we usually do during a period of national crisis - we'd have been fine. Our savings rate soared from 5% to 25%, so there was plenty of cash to plug the gap, and we'd have a much lower debt to service.
Spot on.
Earlier, Big_G said "Austerity is living within your means". That's plainly not true: I live within my means but I don't live austerely. I also know people who live very austerely but not within their means. Living within your means is clearly a good thing but it doesn't necessarily require austerity.
We could easily live within our fiscal means so long as tax revenue >= public spending. Either cutting spending or increasing taxation can achieve that. The issue is that cutting public spending takes money out of the economy; increasing taxation on the wealthy takes it out of savings.
Austerity, as implement by Osborne was reducing the *increase* in government spending, each year, to less than GDP growth.
That makes sense only if changes were evenly spread. They weren't. Leaving aside councils, the cuts to the criminal justice system from the so-called party of law and order are something we are struggling to deal with right now.
3 former Tory MPs, Jonathan Gullis, former MP for Stoke North, Lia Nici who was MP for Bolton West and Chris Green who represented Great Grimsby have defected to ReformUK. No connection at all to the fact they now think Reform are most likely to be able to beat Labour in the seats they lost in 2024 but won under Boris in 2019 I am sure https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15341443/Defection-Reform-Tories-MP-minister-Gullis-trust-voters.html
So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
Good morning
Austerity is living within your means
Labour have no idea how to achieve that
Neither, in all fairness, did the Conservatives when in Government.
No one has come up with a coherent and politically practical approach to getting borrowing down substantially - all we can do in the short term is slow the train. Talk of cutting £100 billion from benefits, as espoused by one or two on here, isn't going to happen even with Kemi Badenoch in charge.
I'd love to hear an alternative approach which makes sense but, as with the "small boats" (remember them?), there isn't an easy answer.
You need to do it gradually. It took Osborne 9 years to eliminate the huge structural deficit that he inherited. He managed to keep the economy growing, somewhat slowly, throughout that period by carefully calibrating the reduction each year. After Covid and Ukraine things are nearly as bad as they were in 2010 and we are starting with more than double the debt we had then as a share of GDP. It will take time, patience and skill, some things we seem to lack. A budget that actually increased borrowing for the next 3 years was a seriously bad step in the wrong direction. More debt is the last thing we need.
He added £555bn to the national debt, and lied about 'paying down the debt'.
Well, as I said you need to reduce a deficit gradually. If you try to do it all at once the economy collapses. This is why the Reform platform is an absurd joke. That gradualism meant that the borrowing did not stop in 2010, it continued all the way to 2019. And, when you think about it, if you are right about your £555bn, that is an average of £61bn a year. Reeves would give her eye teeth for that as would Sunak have.
Just because it's worse now, doesn't mean it was excusable then. If anything, it was less excusable, as despite the financial crash, we were still in far better shape back then than we are now.
I think Kemi has it right - cuts to the state, and spend the savings half on economy-boosting tax cuts, half on national debt payments.
What I don't know is how our national debt is structured (can you pay off the debt or are you just paying the interest before you get to it?), and whether our global creditors actually want to be paid off - presumably, like most lenders, they would prefer us to remain heavily indebted, but manageably so. Will they respond to a credible plan to pay them off by reducing our interest rate? I don't know, but something does tell me no.
If there was a credible plan to pay them off, then it would reduce the risk premium we are currently paying, so yes our interest rates would fall.
And since interest is one of our biggest costs, that would improve our budget balance further.
What actually happened
Investors responded to Osborne’s steady reductions in the deficit by accepting lower and lower rates on the debt.
The graph clearly shows where Gordon Brown's profligate overspending in the run-up to the GFC took borrowing up to unsustainable levels of, erm, less than it had been under the Tories.
What Brown did was to try and normalise the tax receipts from a mad boom.
When this evaporated, we had a structural deficit of something like 8-10%
The City was not really a boom as such. The problem was the economy had become unbalanced and increasingly dependent on just one sector to sustain it.
Another reality check for the 'why can't we all just get along' tendency.
Putin signed a decree this week escalating efforts to erase all traces of Ukrainian language, culture, and national identity in areas currently under Russian occupation. Hopes for a compromise peace are delusional. Putin is determined to destroy Ukraine https://x.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1995069657066463459
ISW's comments on Putin's position - essentially he is all in as failure would be terminal for him. The WH will know this from their own sources so any peace plan is doomed. Continued support for Ukraine is the route to peace but at the cost of regime change. Perhaps the fear is what happens (again) to all those nukes when there is regime change and there is no central government looking after them.
Putin fears the risks and challenges associated with reintegrating veterans into Russian society and economy and thus remains unlikely to demobilize fully or rapidly — even in the event of a negotiated settlement to its war in Ukraine
It is hard to see any acceptable alternative to the continuation and enhancement of support for Ukraine to resist and if possible push back the Russian occupation. I seems such a horrible waste of life but there just seems to be no other way to do it. It is vital that the West gives sufficient support to Ukraine to allow them to prevent any further Russian advances.
Yes, even the Dim-Wit plan is unacceptable to Putin. Ukraine has to be almost completely disarmed, and reduced to a satellite. It is completely pointless, displacement activity, coming up with peace plans.
I think this is why my Eastern Ukraine idea has merits. Russia will simply not be bordered by a well-armed NATO-protected Ukraine. One can see that as a constant thread in their entire loopy strategy.
So offer to create a buffer state, that is not Ukraine, and not Russia. At the very least, that will smoke out whether Russia does just want a Russia-aligned state on its border, or whether it really just wants an ever bigger Russia.
That might work with a different type of Russian leader, but I don't think Putin can walk away from this.
He's created a war economy which, in turn, has generated a kind of momentum which is hard to reverse or put on hold without some great culminating victory.
A basic problem - if you subscribe to the "demography is destiny" theorem - is that Russia is in the last chance saloon with declining birthrates exacerbated by all the casualties. If not now, when? And Putin isn't getting any younger either (73 now).
Trump, Witkoff seem to think this is a glorified property transaction. Not, I suspect, the way Putin sees it from the end of his long desk in the gilded halls of the Kremlin, with Peter the Great looking down on him.
So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
Good morning
Austerity is living within your means
Labour have no idea how to achieve that
Neither, in all fairness, did the Conservatives when in Government.
No one has come up with a coherent and politically practical approach to getting borrowing down substantially - all we can do in the short term is slow the train. Talk of cutting £100 billion from benefits, as espoused by one or two on here, isn't going to happen even with Kemi Badenoch in charge.
I'd love to hear an alternative approach which makes sense but, as with the "small boats" (remember them?), there isn't an easy answer.
You need to do it gradually. It took Osborne 9 years to eliminate the huge structural deficit that he inherited. He managed to keep the economy growing, somewhat slowly, throughout that period by carefully calibrating the reduction each year. After Covid and Ukraine things are nearly as bad as they were in 2010 and we are starting with more than double the debt we had then as a share of GDP. It will take time, patience and skill, some things we seem to lack. A budget that actually increased borrowing for the next 3 years was a seriously bad step in the wrong direction. More debt is the last thing we need.
He added £555bn to the national debt, and lied about 'paying down the debt'.
Well, as I said you need to reduce a deficit gradually. If you try to do it all at once the economy collapses. This is why the Reform platform is an absurd joke. That gradualism meant that the borrowing did not stop in 2010, it continued all the way to 2019. And, when you think about it, if you are right about your £555bn, that is an average of £61bn a year. Reeves would give her eye teeth for that as would Sunak have.
Just because it's worse now, doesn't mean it was excusable then. If anything, it was less excusable, as despite the financial crash, we were still in far better shape back then than we are now.
I think Kemi has it right - cuts to the state, and spend the savings half on economy-boosting tax cuts, half on national debt payments.
What I don't know is how our national debt is structured (can you pay off the debt or are you just paying the interest before you get to it?), and whether our global creditors actually want to be paid off - presumably, like most lenders, they would prefer us to remain heavily indebted, but manageably so. Will they respond to a credible plan to pay them off by reducing our interest rate? I don't know, but something does tell me no.
If there was a credible plan to pay them off, then it would reduce the risk premium we are currently paying, so yes our interest rates would fall.
And since interest is one of our biggest costs, that would improve our budget balance further.
What actually happened
Investors responded to Osborne’s steady reductions in the deficit by accepting lower and lower rates on the debt.
Osborne - so he said - thought he would become the most unpopular figure in Britain when he became chancellor and that the Govt would have zero chance of re-election. And yet, while he was hardly popular, by careful management and messaging, Cameron and Osborne actually won a majority in 2015. The fact is, even if they don't like it, the public is prepared to tolerate "austerity" if it is couched in terms that they can identify with, such as household financing. Mrs T, of course, majored on that kind of messaging when in office: simple, but effective.
This can be done, but obvs, very difficult for a Labour Govt, as left-of-centre political culture is not particularly comfortable with notions of savings and efficiency, despite Tony Blair's best efforts.
A start might be made with the terminology used:
For "bond markets", how about "the people who led the government money"?
And for "austerity", "living within our means"?
I don't think that necessarily works as a sell.
Like austerity, it sounds a bit Dickensian and patronising (I agree with living within our means, I just don't think the change in words necessarily sells it).
I think 'back from the brink' works better right about now, because that's what it is. Our economic settlement doesn't go anywhere good just now, in the short to medium term.
I also think what pain there is needs to be doled out equally. The Treasury must stop funding the BoE's QT programme - enough. And it must also stop paying interest on commercial banks' QE holdings. We cannot snatch money from the mouths of babes but quietly chuck tens of billions at the banking sector. ALL need to tighten their belts.
So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
Good morning
Austerity is living within your means
Labour have no idea how to achieve that
Neither, in all fairness, did the Conservatives when in Government.
No one has come up with a coherent and politically practical approach to getting borrowing down substantially - all we can do in the short term is slow the train. Talk of cutting £100 billion from benefits, as espoused by one or two on here, isn't going to happen even with Kemi Badenoch in charge.
I'd love to hear an alternative approach which makes sense but, as with the "small boats" (remember them?), there isn't an easy answer.
You need to do it gradually. It took Osborne 9 years to eliminate the huge structural deficit that he inherited. He managed to keep the economy growing, somewhat slowly, throughout that period by carefully calibrating the reduction each year. After Covid and Ukraine things are nearly as bad as they were in 2010 and we are starting with more than double the debt we had then as a share of GDP. It will take time, patience and skill, some things we seem to lack. A budget that actually increased borrowing for the next 3 years was a seriously bad step in the wrong direction. More debt is the last thing we need.
He added £555bn to the national debt, and lied about 'paying down the debt'.
Well, as I said you need to reduce a deficit gradually. If you try to do it all at once the economy collapses. This is why the Reform platform is an absurd joke. That gradualism meant that the borrowing did not stop in 2010, it continued all the way to 2019. And, when you think about it, if you are right about your £555bn, that is an average of £61bn a year. Reeves would give her eye teeth for that as would Sunak have.
Just because it's worse now, doesn't mean it was excusable then. If anything, it was less excusable, as despite the financial crash, we were still in far better shape back then than we are now.
I think Kemi has it right - cuts to the state, and spend the savings half on economy-boosting tax cuts, half on national debt payments.
What I don't know is how our national debt is structured (can you pay off the debt or are you just paying the interest before you get to it?), and whether our global creditors actually want to be paid off - presumably, like most lenders, they would prefer us to remain heavily indebted, but manageably so. Will they respond to a credible plan to pay them off by reducing our interest rate? I don't know, but something does tell me no.
If there was a credible plan to pay them off, then it would reduce the risk premium we are currently paying, so yes our interest rates would fall.
And since interest is one of our biggest costs, that would improve our budget balance further.
What actually happened
Investors responded to Osborne’s steady reductions in the deficit by accepting lower and lower rates on the debt.
The graph clearly shows where Gordon Brown's profligate overspending in the run-up to the GFC took borrowing up to unsustainable levels of, erm, less than it had been under the Tories.
What Brown did was to try and normalise the tax receipts from a mad boom.
When this evaporated, we had a structural deficit of something like 8-10%
The City was not really a boom as such. The problem was the economy had become unbalanced and increasingly dependent on just one sector to sustain it.
No.
There was a boom - financially unsustainable economic activity.
There was, quite definitely, a bust.
Brown was warned that derivatives were a bubble. A friend of mine, in the Bank Of England research unit, published a paper describing the problem and the probable end result. He was not the first.
Brown responded to such by sending out Ed Balls to demand that people “stop talking the country down”.
Another reality check for the 'why can't we all just get along' tendency.
Putin signed a decree this week escalating efforts to erase all traces of Ukrainian language, culture, and national identity in areas currently under Russian occupation. Hopes for a compromise peace are delusional. Putin is determined to destroy Ukraine https://x.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1995069657066463459
ISW's comments on Putin's position - essentially he is all in as failure would be terminal for him. The WH will know this from their own sources so any peace plan is doomed. Continued support for Ukraine is the route to peace but at the cost of regime change. Perhaps the fear is what happens (again) to all those nukes when there is regime change and there is no central government looking after them.
Putin fears the risks and challenges associated with reintegrating veterans into Russian society and economy and thus remains unlikely to demobilize fully or rapidly — even in the event of a negotiated settlement to its war in Ukraine
It is hard to see any acceptable alternative to the continuation and enhancement of support for Ukraine to resist and if possible push back the Russian occupation. I seems such a horrible waste of life but there just seems to be no other way to do it. It is vital that the West gives sufficient support to Ukraine to allow them to prevent any further Russian advances.
Yes, even the Dim-Wit plan is unacceptable to Putin. Ukraine has to be almost completely disarmed, and reduced to a satellite. It is completely pointless, displacement activity, coming up with peace plans.
I think this is why my Eastern Ukraine idea has merits. Russia will simply not be bordered by a well-armed NATO-protected Ukraine. One can see that as a constant thread in their entire loopy strategy.
So offer to create a buffer state, that is not Ukraine, and not Russia. At the very least, that will smoke out whether Russia does just want a Russia-aligned state on its border, or whether it really just wants an ever bigger Russia.
The Eastern Ukraine idea is not on the table. Ukraine is not offering it and Putin has absorbed the occupied areas into the Russian Federation directly: in Russian legal theory they are now Russian oblasts.
I didn't say it was on the table. I am not a top diplomat or a world leader. I say it should be on the table. If neither Ukraine or Russia likes the idea, I'd say its about right.
So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
Good morning
Austerity is living within your means
Labour have no idea how to achieve that
Neither, in all fairness, did the Conservatives when in Government.
No one has come up with a coherent and politically practical approach to getting borrowing down substantially - all we can do in the short term is slow the train. Talk of cutting £100 billion from benefits, as espoused by one or two on here, isn't going to happen even with Kemi Badenoch in charge.
I'd love to hear an alternative approach which makes sense but, as with the "small boats" (remember them?), there isn't an easy answer.
You need to do it gradually. It took Osborne 9 years to eliminate the huge structural deficit that he inherited. He managed to keep the economy growing, somewhat slowly, throughout that period by carefully calibrating the reduction each year. After Covid and Ukraine things are nearly as bad as they were in 2010 and we are starting with more than double the debt we had then as a share of GDP. It will take time, patience and skill, some things we seem to lack. A budget that actually increased borrowing for the next 3 years was a seriously bad step in the wrong direction. More debt is the last thing we need.
He added £555bn to the national debt, and lied about 'paying down the debt'.
Well, as I said you need to reduce a deficit gradually. If you try to do it all at once the economy collapses. This is why the Reform platform is an absurd joke. That gradualism meant that the borrowing did not stop in 2010, it continued all the way to 2019. And, when you think about it, if you are right about your £555bn, that is an average of £61bn a year. Reeves would give her eye teeth for that as would Sunak have.
I’m not sure what the reform platform is now. They seem to have rowed back from their ludicrous manifesto promises.
Tactically to get elected they should a Starmer and make very limited promises, just focus on Labour aren't working and we can fix migration.
If they want to actually govern well, rather than just get elected, they will be disappointed regardless, so may as well just focus on getting elected.
They tried the former with the local elections with mixed results so far. Some counties, like Kent, seem shambolic. They don’t seem to be too bad in Durham so far.
I haven't noticed any difference, although I am in one of the only non Reform wards and I'm not really paying any attention anyway.
3 former Tory MPs, Jonathan Gullis, former MP for Stoke North, Lia Nici who was MP for Bolton West and Chris Green who represented Great Grimsby have defected to ReformUK. No connection at all to the fact they now think Reform are most likely to be able to beat Labour in the seats they lost in 2024 but won under Boris in 2019 I am sure https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15341443/Defection-Reform-Tories-MP-minister-Gullis-trust-voters.html
Those weren't top MPs, but it's positive for Reform - gives them a little experience and 4 candidates who need minimal vetting.
I will signpost this thread the next time someone challenges the fact that Liberal Democrats are this government's biggest supporters.
I'm not really seeing it. You're just upset they haven't forgiven the Tories.
To be fair I can see the "LDs" being pbs biggest defenders of the government, but they are not supporters. They just respond to fairly regular hyperbolic criticism. The government have hardly any active supporters here or in the media. Most of those who vote for them do so under better than the alternatives rather than support.
"LDs" being code for any centrists.
LDs also opposed the mansion tax I see and income tax freeze and they also previously opposed the family farm and family business tax and rise in NI for employers and winter fuel allowance cut. The LDs are more also anti Brexit than Labour and want to rejoin a CU and ultimately the EEA https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/news/mansion-tax-lib-dems-sir-ed-davey-rachel-reeves/
I thought the LD's wanted to rejoin the EU.
There's a recognition, I think, within the Party that isn't going to happen any time soon whether the UK wants it or not. The atttitude of the EU and their demands would be the key - I very much doubt we could go back on membership terms we rejected so it would have to be an even more semi detached membership and I don't believe the EU would want to go through all that again and we wouldn't accept Schengen and the Euro under any circumstances.
We can't for example rejoin the Single Market because that would mean accepting Freedom of Movement and while there may be an economic argument for allowing uncontrolled immigration, we all know there's not a hope in the proverbial of selling that politically at any level.
An improved trading relationship is probably the aim and no one seriously objects to free trade of goods and services (the old "Common Market" which we happily supported joining in another referendum) though as always the regulatory angle will be a problem but not insurmountable given goodwill on all sides.
The only way to sell more immigration, is if it’s preceeded by more housebuilding.
So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
Good morning
Austerity is living within your means
Labour have no idea how to achieve that
Neither, in all fairness, did the Conservatives when in Government.
No one has come up with a coherent and politically practical approach to getting borrowing down substantially - all we can do in the short term is slow the train. Talk of cutting £100 billion from benefits, as espoused by one or two on here, isn't going to happen even with Kemi Badenoch in charge.
I'd love to hear an alternative approach which makes sense but, as with the "small boats" (remember them?), there isn't an easy answer.
You need to do it gradually. It took Osborne 9 years to eliminate the huge structural deficit that he inherited. He managed to keep the economy growing, somewhat slowly, throughout that period by carefully calibrating the reduction each year. After Covid and Ukraine things are nearly as bad as they were in 2010 and we are starting with more than double the debt we had then as a share of GDP. It will take time, patience and skill, some things we seem to lack. A budget that actually increased borrowing for the next 3 years was a seriously bad step in the wrong direction. More debt is the last thing we need.
He added £555bn to the national debt, and lied about 'paying down the debt'.
Well, as I said you need to reduce a deficit gradually. If you try to do it all at once the economy collapses. This is why the Reform platform is an absurd joke. That gradualism meant that the borrowing did not stop in 2010, it continued all the way to 2019. And, when you think about it, if you are right about your £555bn, that is an average of £61bn a year. Reeves would give her eye teeth for that as would Sunak have.
I’m not sure what the reform platform is now. They seem to have rowed back from their ludicrous manifesto promises.
Tactically to get elected they should a Starmer and make very limited promises, just focus on Labour aren't working and we can fix migration.
If they want to actually govern well, rather than just get elected, they will be disappointed regardless, so may as well just focus on getting elected.
They tried the former with the local elections with mixed results so far. Some counties, like Kent, seem shambolic. They don’t seem to be too bad in Durham so far.
I haven't noticed any difference, although I am in one of the only non Reform wards and I'm not really paying any attention anyway.
They have a very interesting airports policy.
Genuine question: is the Durham micro-congestion charge still in place?
Another reality check for the 'why can't we all just get along' tendency.
Putin signed a decree this week escalating efforts to erase all traces of Ukrainian language, culture, and national identity in areas currently under Russian occupation. Hopes for a compromise peace are delusional. Putin is determined to destroy Ukraine https://x.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1995069657066463459
ISW's comments on Putin's position - essentially he is all in as failure would be terminal for him. The WH will know this from their own sources so any peace plan is doomed. Continued support for Ukraine is the route to peace but at the cost of regime change. Perhaps the fear is what happens (again) to all those nukes when there is regime change and there is no central government looking after them.
Putin fears the risks and challenges associated with reintegrating veterans into Russian society and economy and thus remains unlikely to demobilize fully or rapidly — even in the event of a negotiated settlement to its war in Ukraine
It is hard to see any acceptable alternative to the continuation and enhancement of support for Ukraine to resist and if possible push back the Russian occupation. I seems such a horrible waste of life but there just seems to be no other way to do it. It is vital that the West gives sufficient support to Ukraine to allow them to prevent any further Russian advances.
Yes, even the Dim-Wit plan is unacceptable to Putin. Ukraine has to be almost completely disarmed, and reduced to a satellite. It is completely pointless, displacement activity, coming up with peace plans.
I think this is why my Eastern Ukraine idea has merits. Russia will simply not be bordered by a well-armed NATO-protected Ukraine. One can see that as a constant thread in their entire loopy strategy.
So offer to create a buffer state, that is not Ukraine, and not Russia. At the very least, that will smoke out whether Russia does just want a Russia-aligned state on its border, or whether it really just wants an ever bigger Russia.
The Eastern Ukraine idea is not on the table. Ukraine is not offering it and Putin has absorbed the occupied areas into the Russian Federation directly: in Russian legal theory they are now Russian oblasts.
I didn't say it was on the table. I am not a top diplomat or a world leader. I say it should be on the table. If neither Ukraine or Russia likes the idea, I'd say its about right.
It gives the invader a win "if we invade somewhere it becomes "neutral" ie Russian-influenced. They might then decide to go for, say, Estonia on the same basis
So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
Good morning
Austerity is living within your means
Labour have no idea how to achieve that
Neither, in all fairness, did the Conservatives when in Government.
No one has come up with a coherent and politically practical approach to getting borrowing down substantially - all we can do in the short term is slow the train. Talk of cutting £100 billion from benefits, as espoused by one or two on here, isn't going to happen even with Kemi Badenoch in charge.
I'd love to hear an alternative approach which makes sense but, as with the "small boats" (remember them?), there isn't an easy answer.
You need to do it gradually. It took Osborne 9 years to eliminate the huge structural deficit that he inherited. He managed to keep the economy growing, somewhat slowly, throughout that period by carefully calibrating the reduction each year. After Covid and Ukraine things are nearly as bad as they were in 2010 and we are starting with more than double the debt we had then as a share of GDP. It will take time, patience and skill, some things we seem to lack. A budget that actually increased borrowing for the next 3 years was a seriously bad step in the wrong direction. More debt is the last thing we need.
He added £555bn to the national debt, and lied about 'paying down the debt'.
Well, as I said you need to reduce a deficit gradually. If you try to do it all at once the economy collapses. This is why the Reform platform is an absurd joke. That gradualism meant that the borrowing did not stop in 2010, it continued all the way to 2019. And, when you think about it, if you are right about your £555bn, that is an average of £61bn a year. Reeves would give her eye teeth for that as would Sunak have.
I’m not sure what the reform platform is now. They seem to have rowed back from their ludicrous manifesto promises.
Reform don't have a fiscal policy but their implied policy is to cut taxes, increase expenditure and inflate, baby, inflate.
So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
Good morning
Austerity is living within your means
Labour have no idea how to achieve that
Neither, in all fairness, did the Conservatives when in Government.
No one has come up with a coherent and politically practical approach to getting borrowing down substantially - all we can do in the short term is slow the train. Talk of cutting £100 billion from benefits, as espoused by one or two on here, isn't going to happen even with Kemi Badenoch in charge.
I'd love to hear an alternative approach which makes sense but, as with the "small boats" (remember them?), there isn't an easy answer.
You need to do it gradually. It took Osborne 9 years to eliminate the huge structural deficit that he inherited. He managed to keep the economy growing, somewhat slowly, throughout that period by carefully calibrating the reduction each year. After Covid and Ukraine things are nearly as bad as they were in 2010 and we are starting with more than double the debt we had then as a share of GDP. It will take time, patience and skill, some things we seem to lack. A budget that actually increased borrowing for the next 3 years was a seriously bad step in the wrong direction. More debt is the last thing we need.
He added £555bn to the national debt, and lied about 'paying down the debt'.
Well, as I said you need to reduce a deficit gradually. If you try to do it all at once the economy collapses. This is why the Reform platform is an absurd joke. That gradualism meant that the borrowing did not stop in 2010, it continued all the way to 2019. And, when you think about it, if you are right about your £555bn, that is an average of £61bn a year. Reeves would give her eye teeth for that as would Sunak have.
I’m not sure what the reform platform is now. They seem to have rowed back from their ludicrous manifesto promises.
Reform don't have a fiscal policy but their implied policy is to cut taxes, increase expenditure and inflate, baby, inflate.
They want to cut spending on things like net zero but basically it is fiscal populism, yes
3 former Tory MPs, Jonathan Gullis, former MP for Stoke North, Lia Nici who was MP for Bolton West and Chris Green who represented Great Grimsby have defected to ReformUK. No connection at all to the fact they now think Reform are most likely to be able to beat Labour in the seats they lost in 2024 but won under Boris in 2019 I am sure https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15341443/Defection-Reform-Tories-MP-minister-Gullis-trust-voters.html
Those weren't top MPs, but it's positive for Reform - gives them a little experience and 4 candidates who need minimal vetting.
Indeed, all 3 seats are almost certainly going Reform anyway even if Farage fails to become PM after the next GE so having experienced ex MPs as candidates there helps Farage. All 3 had a higher Reform voteshare than the UK average at the 2024 GE
Another reality check for the 'why can't we all just get along' tendency.
Putin signed a decree this week escalating efforts to erase all traces of Ukrainian language, culture, and national identity in areas currently under Russian occupation. Hopes for a compromise peace are delusional. Putin is determined to destroy Ukraine https://x.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1995069657066463459
ISW's comments on Putin's position - essentially he is all in as failure would be terminal for him. The WH will know this from their own sources so any peace plan is doomed. Continued support for Ukraine is the route to peace but at the cost of regime change. Perhaps the fear is what happens (again) to all those nukes when there is regime change and there is no central government looking after them.
Putin fears the risks and challenges associated with reintegrating veterans into Russian society and economy and thus remains unlikely to demobilize fully or rapidly — even in the event of a negotiated settlement to its war in Ukraine
It is hard to see any acceptable alternative to the continuation and enhancement of support for Ukraine to resist and if possible push back the Russian occupation. I seems such a horrible waste of life but there just seems to be no other way to do it. It is vital that the West gives sufficient support to Ukraine to allow them to prevent any further Russian advances.
Yes, even the Dim-Wit plan is unacceptable to Putin. Ukraine has to be almost completely disarmed, and reduced to a satellite. It is completely pointless, displacement activity, coming up with peace plans.
I think this is why my Eastern Ukraine idea has merits. Russia will simply not be bordered by a well-armed NATO-protected Ukraine. One can see that as a constant thread in their entire loopy strategy.
So offer to create a buffer state, that is not Ukraine, and not Russia. At the very least, that will smoke out whether Russia does just want a Russia-aligned state on its border, or whether it really just wants an ever bigger Russia.
That might work with a different type of Russian leader, but I don't think Putin can walk away from this.
He's created a war economy which, in turn, has generated a kind of momentum which is hard to reverse or put on hold without some great culminating victory.
A basic problem - if you subscribe to the "demography is destiny" theorem - is that Russia is in the last chance saloon with declining birthrates exacerbated by all the casualties. If not now, when? And Putin isn't getting any younger either (73 now).
Trump, Witkoff seem to think this is a glorified property transaction. Not, I suspect, the way Putin sees it from the end of his long desk in the gilded halls of the Kremlin, with Peter the Great looking down on him.
Amongst other things, reintegration of veterans into a peaceful Russia will be very hard (especially as Russia treats its veterans like shit.) Russia is an example of a "sick society". There's a culture of inflicting violence on those who are beneath you, they then pass on their knocks to those who are beneath them, and those at the bottom inflict that violence on foreign civilians.
Another reality check for the 'why can't we all just get along' tendency.
Putin signed a decree this week escalating efforts to erase all traces of Ukrainian language, culture, and national identity in areas currently under Russian occupation. Hopes for a compromise peace are delusional. Putin is determined to destroy Ukraine https://x.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1995069657066463459
ISW's comments on Putin's position - essentially he is all in as failure would be terminal for him. The WH will know this from their own sources so any peace plan is doomed. Continued support for Ukraine is the route to peace but at the cost of regime change. Perhaps the fear is what happens (again) to all those nukes when there is regime change and there is no central government looking after them.
Putin fears the risks and challenges associated with reintegrating veterans into Russian society and economy and thus remains unlikely to demobilize fully or rapidly — even in the event of a negotiated settlement to its war in Ukraine
It is hard to see any acceptable alternative to the continuation and enhancement of support for Ukraine to resist and if possible push back the Russian occupation. I seems such a horrible waste of life but there just seems to be no other way to do it. It is vital that the West gives sufficient support to Ukraine to allow them to prevent any further Russian advances.
Yes, even the Dim-Wit plan is unacceptable to Putin. Ukraine has to be almost completely disarmed, and reduced to a satellite. It is completely pointless, displacement activity, coming up with peace plans.
I think this is why my Eastern Ukraine idea has merits. Russia will simply not be bordered by a well-armed NATO-protected Ukraine. One can see that as a constant thread in their entire loopy strategy.
So offer to create a buffer state, that is not Ukraine, and not Russia. At the very least, that will smoke out whether Russia does just want a Russia-aligned state on its border, or whether it really just wants an ever bigger Russia.
The Eastern Ukraine idea is not on the table. Ukraine is not offering it and Putin has absorbed the occupied areas into the Russian Federation directly: in Russian legal theory they are now Russian oblasts.
I didn't say it was on the table. I am not a top diplomat or a world leader. I say it should be on the table. If neither Ukraine or Russia likes the idea, I'd say its about right.
It gives the invader a win "if we invade somewhere it becomes "neutral" ie Russian-influenced. They might then decide to go for, say, Estonia on the same basis
It's a mental idea. Massively incentivises the Russians to buy and influence elections, make life miserable for anti-Russian activists, kill off journalists, the whole package. Then you're left with a pro-Russian region and in go the tanks to "liberate" them.
Its not just stupid - it's obviously malign because that's exactly what happened in Ukraine. In those oblasts that Russia now claims, they were 83% - 90% in favour of independence from Russia in 1991. People who advocate for this know precisely what they are doing and are beneath contempt.
Brian Taylor Cohen and Mark Elias on how some of Trump's Cabinet - notably Pete Hegseth and Kristi Noem - are becoming more vulnerable to qualifying for the high jump. And other commentary.
Hegseth has authorised his "kill 'em all, kill 'em all, kill 'em all; kill the long and the short and the tall" policy. And Noem has now essentially admitted to ignoring Court rulings - so Justice Boasberg is approaching.
I'd say they are bubbling up the defenestration list.
Can’t be all bad; I’ve had my £10 Christmas bonus this morning!
And me. £4 net. What to spend it on? So I've just booked ten days in Martinique over Xmas.
Can't even buy a pint for £4 nowadays. Not round here anyway; £4.50's about the cheapest.
At the same time its possible to buy beer very cheaply in supermarkets. Is it any wonder pubs are dying?
In 1972, when I started drinking in London pubs beer was 14p a pint. Not a figure you forget. With inflation that is now about £1.68. IIRC there was not then a huge gulf between pub and off sales prices. The gulf is now gigantic. This all explains a lot about what is happening in the pub and hospitality sector.
Here:
Greene King IPA, Tesco, 99p. Greene King IPA, Spoons, £1.89. Greene King IPA, Non-spoons, £4.40.
(Assume, for a moment, that Greene King IPA counts as beer.)
It’s that foul 3.4% piss, isn’t it ?
Yup. But so was much beer in 1972, I would guess.
Tesco have Bishop's Finger for £1.75, and MacEwans Special (7.3%!) for 1.99. Both better options.
3 former Tory MPs, Jonathan Gullis, former MP for Stoke North, Lia Nici who was MP for Bolton West and Chris Green who represented Great Grimsby have defected to ReformUK. No connection at all to the fact they now think Reform are most likely to be able to beat Labour in the seats they lost in 2024 but won under Boris in 2019 I am sure https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15341443/Defection-Reform-Tories-MP-minister-Gullis-trust-voters.html
Those weren't top MPs, but it's positive for Reform - gives them a little experience and 4 candidates who need minimal vetting.
Don't know about Nici or Green, but Jonathan Gullis had the reputation of being on the outer fringes so probably isn't a surprise. I've been a bit surprised at how few former Red Wall MPs have jumped so far.
Bolton W is a traditional bellwether while the other two seats would normally be considered beyond the Tories - Boris Red Wall specials - so in today's environment much better for Reform. No doubt, that was part of the calculation for those concerned.
The defining question from the Vietnam era was "how do you ask someone to be the last one to die for a mistake?" Similarly, how long will younger generations tolerate being poorer than they have to be for a mistake? I don't see Brexit being reversed in the next five years but I think support could snowball quickly after that. Why should people tolerate the status quo just because a different electorate voted for it a decade ago?
So why did she lie to her Cabinet colleagues and why did Starmer connive in that lie?
I think the answer is reasonably straightforward. She was trying to prevent a series of claims for more money from the Cabinet and the back benches. She was trying to find enough leverage to at least cut the rate of growth of spending, even if it was beyond her party to actually make cuts as were required. She also found the run up to this budget deeply frustrating with every month's figures threatening to knock her off course or back on again. She wanted a buffer in future budgets because it would make it look like she was more in control rather than being tossed around like an autumn leaf in a storm.
All of which is quite sensible, really. There are two problems, firstly a Labour party which still cannot accept the idea of austerity because they remain hooked on the fantasy that this was a Tory "choice" and secondly a top team of Chancellor and PM who are simply dishonest and cannot be trusted. There will be a price to pay for both.
Good morning
Austerity is living within your means
Labour have no idea how to achieve that
Neither, in all fairness, did the Conservatives when in Government.
No one has come up with a coherent and politically practical approach to getting borrowing down substantially - all we can do in the short term is slow the train. Talk of cutting £100 billion from benefits, as espoused by one or two on here, isn't going to happen even with Kemi Badenoch in charge.
I'd love to hear an alternative approach which makes sense but, as with the "small boats" (remember them?), there isn't an easy answer.
You need to do it gradually. It took Osborne 9 years to eliminate the huge structural deficit that he inherited. He managed to keep the economy growing, somewhat slowly, throughout that period by carefully calibrating the reduction each year. After Covid and Ukraine things are nearly as bad as they were in 2010 and we are starting with more than double the debt we had then as a share of GDP. It will take time, patience and skill, some things we seem to lack. A budget that actually increased borrowing for the next 3 years was a seriously bad step in the wrong direction. More debt is the last thing we need.
He added £555bn to the national debt, and lied about 'paying down the debt'.
Well, as I said you need to reduce a deficit gradually. If you try to do it all at once the economy collapses. This is why the Reform platform is an absurd joke. That gradualism meant that the borrowing did not stop in 2010, it continued all the way to 2019. And, when you think about it, if you are right about your £555bn, that is an average of £61bn a year. Reeves would give her eye teeth for that as would Sunak have.
Just because it's worse now, doesn't mean it was excusable then. If anything, it was less excusable, as despite the financial crash, we were still in far better shape back then than we are now.
I think Kemi has it right - cuts to the state, and spend the savings half on economy-boosting tax cuts, half on national debt payments.
What I don't know is how our national debt is structured (can you pay off the debt or are you just paying the interest before you get to it?), and whether our global creditors actually want to be paid off - presumably, like most lenders, they would prefer us to remain heavily indebted, but manageably so. Will they respond to a credible plan to pay them off by reducing our interest rate? I don't know, but something does tell me no.
If there was a credible plan to pay them off, then it would reduce the risk premium we are currently paying, so yes our interest rates would fall.
And since interest is one of our biggest costs, that would improve our budget balance further.
What actually happened
Investors responded to Osborne’s steady reductions in the deficit by accepting lower and lower rates on the debt.
Honestly, after COVID and Putin being a knob, that doesn't look too bad.
If we'd had a windfall tax on high earners during the COVID period - as we usually do during a period of national crisis - we'd have been fine. Our savings rate soared from 5% to 25%, so there was plenty of cash to plug the gap, and we'd have a much lower debt to service.
Spot on.
Earlier, Big_G said "Austerity is living within your means". That's plainly not true: I live within my means but I don't live austerely. I also know people who live very austerely but not within their means. Living within your means is clearly a good thing but it doesn't necessarily require austerity.
We could easily live within our fiscal means so long as tax revenue >= public spending. Either cutting spending or increasing taxation can achieve that. The issue is that cutting public spending takes money out of the economy; increasing taxation on the wealthy takes it out of savings.
Austerity, as implement by Osborne was reducing the *increase* in government spending, each year, to less than GDP growth.
With the effect that GDP growth per capita was constrained to 1.4% pa during the Osborne years versus 2.9% pa before 2008.
Taking money away from those on the breadline who generally pump it straight back into the economy... constrains the economy. Whoda think it, eh?
Another reality check for the 'why can't we all just get along' tendency.
Putin signed a decree this week escalating efforts to erase all traces of Ukrainian language, culture, and national identity in areas currently under Russian occupation. Hopes for a compromise peace are delusional. Putin is determined to destroy Ukraine https://x.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1995069657066463459
ISW's comments on Putin's position - essentially he is all in as failure would be terminal for him. The WH will know this from their own sources so any peace plan is doomed. Continued support for Ukraine is the route to peace but at the cost of regime change. Perhaps the fear is what happens (again) to all those nukes when there is regime change and there is no central government looking after them.
Putin fears the risks and challenges associated with reintegrating veterans into Russian society and economy and thus remains unlikely to demobilize fully or rapidly — even in the event of a negotiated settlement to its war in Ukraine
It is hard to see any acceptable alternative to the continuation and enhancement of support for Ukraine to resist and if possible push back the Russian occupation. I seems such a horrible waste of life but there just seems to be no other way to do it. It is vital that the West gives sufficient support to Ukraine to allow them to prevent any further Russian advances.
Yes, even the Dim-Wit plan is unacceptable to Putin. Ukraine has to be almost completely disarmed, and reduced to a satellite. It is completely pointless, displacement activity, coming up with peace plans.
I think this is why my Eastern Ukraine idea has merits. Russia will simply not be bordered by a well-armed NATO-protected Ukraine. One can see that as a constant thread in their entire loopy strategy.
So offer to create a buffer state, that is not Ukraine, and not Russia. At the very least, that will smoke out whether Russia does just want a Russia-aligned state on its border, or whether it really just wants an ever bigger Russia.
That might work with a different type of Russian leader, but I don't think Putin can walk away from this.
If Putin could walk away with the acceptance of Crimea as Russian (I don't think they'll ever give that up), and a Russian-aligned state stretching along the Russian border, he would have secured 'peace with honour'. He would be extremely unpopular with Dugin etc., but he would look serious about Russian security, and would get (I would hope) some small credit for ending the slaughter of Russian men, as well as a chance to repair the Russian economy.
Ukraine would walk away with a reduced but united country, no border with Russia or directly controlled Russian territory, and the freedom to join the EU and NATO, and re-arm with Poland as its model. That would secure Ukraine and the EU's border.
The citizens of Eastern Ukraine would have a Yanukovich style puppet Government, with certain guarantees as to their democratic rights (I concede these would be largely symbolical) and hopefully have Russia repair their devastated towns and cities as a model Russian satellite state in attempted rivalry of Ukraine proper.
3 former Tory MPs, Jonathan Gullis, former MP for Stoke North, Lia Nici who was MP for Bolton West and Chris Green who represented Great Grimsby have defected to ReformUK. No connection at all to the fact they now think Reform are most likely to be able to beat Labour in the seats they lost in 2024 but won under Boris in 2019 I am sure https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15341443/Defection-Reform-Tories-MP-minister-Gullis-trust-voters.html
Those weren't top MPs, but it's positive for Reform - gives them a little experience and 4 candidates who need minimal vetting.
I have only heard of Gullis but those who want to join Reform may well regret it in due course
3 former Tory MPs, Jonathan Gullis, former MP for Stoke North, Lia Nici who was MP for Bolton West and Chris Green who represented Great Grimsby have defected to ReformUK. No connection at all to the fact they now think Reform are most likely to be able to beat Labour in the seats they lost in 2024 but won under Boris in 2019 I am sure https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15341443/Defection-Reform-Tories-MP-minister-Gullis-trust-voters.html
Those weren't top MPs, but it's positive for Reform - gives them a little experience and 4 candidates who need minimal vetting.
I have only heard of Gullis but those who want to join Reform may well regret it in due course
I doubt it. There are some seats the Tories won't get again. I applaud the work Kemi is doing - she's carving out a good and credible position. But I don't think the party winning a parliamentary majority is a one term project.
The defining question from the Vietnam era was "how do you ask someone to be the last one to die for a mistake?" Similarly, how long will younger generations tolerate being poorer than they have to be for a mistake? I don't see Brexit being reversed in the next five years but I think support could snowball quickly after that. Why should people tolerate the status quo just because a different electorate voted for it a decade ago?
Why? Because they can feel the warm glow of 'sovereignty' flowing through their veins, no longer under the yoke of those evil Europeans; they can see its transformative effects every day in their daily lives...
Interesting, from this article one can deduce some important economic and political anaylsis:
Someone at the Telegraph has crunched the numbers and realised they are missing out on subscriptions from remainers......
The DT is becoming the Remainery partner in the DM stable? Like the Herald suddenly started issuing the National after its revenues crashed when they went from middle of the road balanced to hard unionist.
Comments
She chose to increase her headroom - very sensible. She was widely criticised for only having £10bn last year and decided £20bn was a more sensible amount. The bond markets apparently agree.
This Labour govt isnt delivering austerity - they are increasing public spending.
She's being demonised. It's what you would expect of a Labour Chancellor, especially one that appears to have done ok in the eyes of the markets, and even some of the more sentient commentators on politics and economics.
The main trouble with Starmer/Reeves is that don't seem very good at presentation. The budget fib is a good example. They may get better, and of course that matters, but on the whole the substance matters more.
She should, however, learn from this by shutting the fuck up in advance of her next budget. The 'leaks' did her no favours, not did the early morning speech a few weeks ago.
If they're getting say a 3.6% pay rise, supposedly meeting inflation, then that would be on your figures worth £108 per month.
But of those £108:
Tax £21.60
NIC £8.64
Auto-enrolment £4.32
Graduate Tax if applicable £9.72
Total deductions £34.56 (non-graduates) or £44.28 (graduates)
That's a very significant real terms take home pay cut, even on an inflation-matching pay rise.
I was at a meeting in Vienna with production company ad agency P&G (client) and several of their marketing managers and product managers. We were there to talk about a commercial I was shooting for one of their shampoos. .
After my bit was finished we (the production company) stayed on and they started talking about the marketing. It was getting massive airtime and they were putting millions behind it. If all went according to plan they were hoping to increase their market share by .5%. From 16 to 16.5%!
The moral of the story is people don't change their habits because of a couple of headlines.
I'm actually more annoyed by their failure on regulatory reform than their fiscal policy (which is predictably Labour).
I'm sure Starmer or Reeves must have shat in Beth rigbys handbag the amount of vitriol she keeps delivering.
Mrs Stodge frequently remarks on this - there is a serious problem with alcoholism which is understated in this country. The availability of cheap alcohol is a problem - I have personal experience of the impacts of alcoholism within a family and it's appallingly destructive.
Oddly enough, it's a problem which crosses all social classes and creeds - I've seen Indian drunks, Romanian drunks, Bengali drunks, Afro-Caribbean drunks and White British drunks - it's a great unifier of sorts.
So beer was, literally, as cheap as chips.
I think Kemi has it right - cuts to the state, and spend the savings half on economy-boosting tax cuts, half on national debt payments.
What I don't know is how our national debt is structured (can you pay off the debt or are you just paying the interest before you get to it?), and whether our global creditors actually want to be paid off - presumably, like most lenders, they would prefer us to remain heavily indebted, but manageably so. Will they respond to a credible plan to pay them off by reducing our interest rate? I don't know, but something does tell me no.
And since interest is one of our biggest costs, that would improve our budget balance further.
Greene King IPA, Tesco, 99p.
Greene King IPA, Spoons, £1.89.
Greene King IPA, Non-spoons, £4.40.
(Assume, for a moment, that Greene King IPA counts as beer.)
Two more Conservative MP rejects hop over to Reform UK. Jonathan Gullis and Lia Nici.
More and more, Reform UK looks simply as if the Tories ran off stage, then came back on two minutes later, wearing a comedy moustache-and-glasses disguise. ~AA
https://x.com/BestForBritain/status/1995431919161610616?s=20
That’s not a question of interpretation or half full/empty. It undermines confidence in the machinery
So offer to create a buffer state, that is not Ukraine, and not Russia. At the very least, that will smoke out whether Russia does just want a Russia-aligned state on its border, or whether it really just wants an ever bigger Russia.
But those were the days when CAMRA was something funny like sandals and beards that LDs went in for, and beer at home was Tennents Lager, McEwan's Export, Watney Red Barrel, and so on.
Investors responded to Osborne’s steady reductions in the deficit by accepting lower and lower rates on the debt.
Not sure what the motivation is, some proper weirdos out there looking for internet points most likely.
It’s trifles like this: probably £130m. For no appreciable benefit. Either people are too rich to notice, or they should be helped through more targeted benefits.
The pricing differential is crippling. I know its at a major sporting event, but I buy a pint and half of beer at the Rec (to watch Bath Rugby) and its 10 quid even with season ticket discount. Madness.
I'm myself noticing piles of shite books being published in a popular history field I know about. Not just a poor quality monkey-written book with an AI pic of a decidedly dodgy female leering at the viewer, but the actual text itself - the most amazing tripe.
It can't be long before they start feeding on each other in an explosion of shite, rather like a literary (if that is the word) Kessler syndrome.
Maybe this is what's happening, rather than anything malicious?
If we'd had a windfall tax on high earners during the COVID period - as we usually do during a period of national crisis - we'd have been fine. Our savings rate soared from 5% to 25%, so there was plenty of cash to plug the gap, and we'd have a much lower debt to service.
Oh, sorry - you said Bath Rugby.
For me it just means my bank statement seems to be out by £10 the following month, before I cotton on.
So the ratio is not *that* different.
I think petrol has faired better, which is perhaps down to fuel duty being flat in cash terms since 2011.
This can be done, but obvs, very difficult for a Labour Govt, as left-of-centre political culture is not particularly comfortable with notions of savings and efficiency, despite Tony Blair's best efforts.
A start might be made with the terminology used:
For "bond markets", how about "the people who led the government money"?
And for "austerity", "living within our means"?
Earlier, Big_G said "Austerity is living within your means". That's plainly not true: I live within my means but I don't live austerely. I also know people who live very austerely but not within their means. Living within your means is clearly a good thing but it doesn't necessarily require austerity.
We could easily live within our fiscal means so long as tax revenue >= public spending. Either cutting spending or increasing taxation can achieve that. The issue is that cutting public spending takes money out of the economy; increasing taxation on the wealthy takes it out of savings.
If they want to actually govern well, rather than just get elected, they will be disappointed regardless, so may as well just focus on getting elected.
When this evaporated, we had a structural deficit of something like 8-10%
They waited 15 years to conduct a review and only did that when Labour came to power .
Hunt would not have been able to blow a hole in the finances with his unaffordable NI cuts if the review had been undertaken earlier .
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15341443/Defection-Reform-Tories-MP-minister-Gullis-trust-voters.html
A basic problem - if you subscribe to the "demography is destiny" theorem - is that Russia is in the last chance saloon with declining birthrates exacerbated by all the casualties. If not now, when? And Putin isn't getting any younger either (73 now).
Trump, Witkoff seem to think this is a glorified property transaction. Not, I suspect, the way Putin sees it from the end of his long desk in the gilded halls of the Kremlin, with Peter the Great looking down on him.
Like austerity, it sounds a bit Dickensian and patronising (I agree with living within our means, I just don't think the change in words necessarily sells it).
I think 'back from the brink' works better right about now, because that's what it is. Our economic settlement doesn't go anywhere good just now, in the short to medium term.
I also think what pain there is needs to be doled out equally. The Treasury must stop funding the BoE's QT programme - enough. And it must also stop paying interest on commercial banks' QE holdings. We cannot snatch money from the mouths of babes but quietly chuck tens of billions at the banking sector. ALL need to tighten their belts.
There was a boom - financially unsustainable economic activity.
There was, quite definitely, a bust.
Brown was warned that derivatives were a bubble. A friend of mine, in the Bank Of England research unit, published a paper describing the problem and the probable end result. He was not the first.
Brown responded to such by sending out Ed Balls to demand that people “stop talking the country down”.
Time to admit the truth: Brexit has been an unmitigated economic failure
Leaving the EU has reduced Britain’s GDP by up to 8pc, according to a devastating US study
Full article link, just to help the PB blood pressure:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/721ba488bba63fd4
Genuine question: is the Durham micro-congestion charge still in place?
https://www.localgovernmentlawyer.co.uk/governance/396-governance-news/61545-reform-unveils-first-doge-led-cuts-targeting-net-zero-projects-and-office-move-at-kent
Its not just stupid - it's obviously malign because that's exactly what happened in Ukraine. In those oblasts that Russia now claims, they were 83% - 90% in favour of independence from Russia in 1991. People who advocate for this know precisely what they are doing and are beneath contempt.
Hegseth has authorised his "kill 'em all, kill 'em all, kill 'em all; kill the long and the short and the tall" policy. And Noem has now essentially admitted to ignoring Court rulings - so Justice Boasberg is approaching.
I'd say they are bubbling up the defenestration list.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTNuL1OMGkM
Tesco have Bishop's Finger for £1.75, and MacEwans Special (7.3%!) for 1.99. Both better options.
Bolton W is a traditional bellwether while the other two seats would normally be considered beyond the Tories - Boris Red Wall specials - so in today's environment much better for Reform. No doubt, that was part of the calculation for those concerned.
Taking money away from those on the breadline who generally pump it straight back into the economy... constrains the economy. Whoda think it, eh?
Ukraine would walk away with a reduced but united country, no border with Russia or directly controlled Russian territory, and the freedom to join the EU and NATO, and re-arm with Poland as its model. That would secure Ukraine and the EU's border.
The citizens of Eastern Ukraine would have a Yanukovich style puppet Government, with certain guarantees as to their democratic rights (I concede these would be largely symbolical) and hopefully have Russia repair their devastated towns and cities as a model Russian satellite state in attempted rivalry of Ukraine proper.
Who do I think this solution work for?
Europe
UK
USA
Ukraine
Russia
Who wouldn't it work for?
China
Saudi Arabia and other rival oil producers
That works for me.
Someone at the Telegraph has crunched the numbers and realised they are missing out on subscriptions from remainers......
Er... or maybe not.