To be honest I think he has done a good job as chancellor so far. He picked up a mess and quickly went back to fundamentals and calmed a lot of waters. His recent budget struck a good balance I thought. If you look at underlying economic indicators the cliff edge Truss put us at has been avoided, it seems. February would have looked another steady month but for the strikes. Not saying he is a politician of choice by any means, but he is a solid hand on the economy right now. As for IMF predictions, time will tell, but I would put a few quid on our country proving them wrong to be honest. Economic outlook globally looks tough over the next 2 or 3 years, but a recovery is underway I think. Note I am just an interested amateur.
It is a good question. As always hindsight is great, but it is important I think to consider things like this to learn from them. My own limited sense is some Austerity was absolutely needed when the tories came to power. Our national debt was way too high and was going to hamstring the country for years. There is a school if thought that states austerity should have been done sooner, and another that is should have been delayed. Whatever it was a brave decision to go down that route so quickly after coming in to power, but I tend to think we would have been worse off if they had kicked the can down the road. I do think it was arguably too aggressive and arguably went on longer than was needed. The impact was likely worse than was warranted. Some infrastructure seems to have fared really badly. I read a lot of economists, and really only understand a fraction of it. I do have scepticism over those who argue austerity was never needed at all. It feels a bit like saying there wasnt a problem to be solved when there clearly was. Like I say, I have the sense it was a necessary thing but they kept their foot on the gas too long. I suspect the answer is it stopped one economic bubble from bursting, but grew another one behind it.
At the time the financial crisis hit we were faced with two choices- austerity or Brown's looney sounding plan of spending even more money and kicking the can down the road. It was like going into the Ferrari garage and trying to buy one with the Ferrari you're trying to buy as proof that you had the money to buy one. We're still in danger of being the generation that left a financial time bomb to go off in our grandkid's faces because we couldn't put up with a bit of discomfort.
Browns 2010 election campaign was really daft. I remember thinking for a fella that had done a good job as chancellor, in my opinion, he had lost the plot. He said it was a choice between tory cuts or labour investment. At a point our budget deficit was the highest since the war. Apparently his own chancellor, and even Mandelson, were telling him he had to campaign on cuts but fairer ones. Labour front benchers were still blaming those Brown statements some years later for people not trusting them with the economy. I agree about not wanting to leave a financial mess for my kids and theirs. We need to take our own medicine in my opinion. Imagine the state we would be in re budget deficit if we hadnt tackled it before covid. We need to clear the decks more yet. It will mean some ugly choices, whoever is in charge, in my opinion anyway.
There is one theory of a general longer economic term, about governments spending during a downturn and holding back during a boom. The cons did the opposite of this, hindsight now tells us it made our economy worse, than it could have been. Especially the lower paid, whose real earnings plummeted. If you were better off and had assets, ie house(s), investments, land etc you prospered.
The late Paul O'Grady summed those policies up so very well. He said they brought in the pasty tax and the bedroom tax, but not the champagne tax or the polo pony tax. They knew exactly what they were doing. "**** The Plebs" as Bonko, Cameron, Osborne and their Bullingdon Club chums used to sing whilst smashing up Oxford restaurants.
If you want to raise a million in tax revenue , much easier to get 1000000 people to pay up , £1 each , than get 1 multi millionaire to pay up £1m
According to tax watch, in 2019, Google Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, ebay Adobe and Cisco avoided/evaded £1.5bn of tax. Probably could give the nurses a pay rise, or tax the lower paid less if HMIT got its fingers out. Nb HMIT have fewer staff and are on relatively poor wages, than they used to.
Weren't the savings from Brexit going to do that Boris Johnson defends the Leave Campaign's contentious claim that Brexit will create an extra £350 million a week to spend on the NHS. "We grossly underestimated the sum," Johnson told The Guardian. Perhaps paying for feasibility studies on building forty new hospitals is swallowing up that money.
Those feasibility studies don't come cheap, especially if they come from some old school chums from Eton and Oxbridge
And now Sunak is being investigated No doubt we'll be told he's 'cooperating fully with the enquiry and that he looks forward to clearing his name' etc ... ... you'd think that, out of three Prime Ministers, we'd get one who's honest or capable.
So is the accusation, that he is guilty of shovelling tax payers cash towards one his wife's companies? Never, no con would ever do that would they? I suppose there was £billions given to various con MPs friends for PPE and test and trace... so they do have form!
There is always another Tory scandal just around the corner and this is why I think the carry on over Labour's stupid gutter attack on Rishi will just be a bump on the road.
On the Rishi investigation. Why the hell would you have 2 separate registers for declaring payments or donations? The only reason for this would be to allow MP’s to get away with stuff, especially when one of them doesn’t require you to declare anything your spouse happens to have an interest in.
And amongst the labour MPs and front benchers it seems. Ask Angela, all based on facts apparently Lies, facts, all the same thing it seems.
It was a Gary Lineker moment tbh, a reasonable message overshadowed by deliberately provocative language. For an outfit regularly self proclaimed the party of law and order it has to be said they've failed to stem the rise of crime. Child abuse, sexual offences and crime by serving police officers all seem to be out of control. The figures may not back that up but it just seems the government's priorities lie in financial areas, not the welfare of the people.
