A Thatcherite horror sequel
When George Osborne delivers his first Budget on Tuesday, the re-run will be of the Thatcherism of the early 1980s. And, with much bigger cuts to public spending and no North Sea oil bonanza, it will be much worse.
Green Politics
Lamont’s lamentable borrowing blather
In today’s Daily Telegraph, former Chancellor Norman Lamont trots out the normal Conservative lines about “Labour’s legacy of borrowing” and Gordon Brown’s “spending addiction”. Putting aside his own record of raising debt, he goes on to claim that Britain wastest
Coalition cuts are bad news for jobseekers
The Coalition Government has been keen to express sympathy for those facing unemployment. But in contrast to these sentiments, the Government’s main labour market policy so far has been to cut support for unemployed people.
Progressive taxation to reduce the deficit
The Government wants taxation to contribute just a 1/5 to deficit reduction. A range of think tanks and The Economist are advising them to focus more on taxes.
Tax increases must play a greater role in deficit reduction
A truly progressive government would give a bigger role to increasing taxes than was suggested in either the Conservative or Liberal Democrat manifestos.
What’s the damage?
We have been warned that next week’s Emergency Budget could bring pain for years to come. Cameron’s coalition has promised that such pain is inevitable but that the medicine will be administered fairly. But there remain many questions about what such ‘fairness’ means in practice.
Worrying signs of a Lib Dem cave-in on capital gains tax
Dropping progressive manifesto commitments just because they happen to offend the right wing of the Conservative party are becoming a depressingly regular feature of the new administration.
GLA leads the way on pay ratios
The Greater London Assembly is following the example it set on the Living Wage, again leading the way in best practice on remuneration and reducing inequality.
Unemployment – a mixed picture around the nations
Yesterday’s headline figures on unemployment masked the mixed news on jobs that came out from across the devolved nations.
Tory right turn on Huhne over energy policy
The economic Lib Dems are seemingly finding common ground with Tory ideology, but the sticking point was and is always going to be the other side of the Lib Dem fence where Mr Huhne and the like reside.