10th March 2024
Smug Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, prepares to reveal a pointless budget
A Tory budget could never be expected to deliver anything of significance for the working class or families living in areas of the highest deprivation across Britain. In that respect alone Tory Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, deserves top marks for consistency, as the heavily trailed pre-election budget revealed on Wednesday (6th March) gave no hope of any alleviation of pain from 14 years of Tory rule for those most in need.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has calculated that while Hunt’s budget contained an estimated £9 billion in tax reductions, previous budgets have increased the tax burden by £27 billion, scheduled to kick in from next year.
Not that there is anything inherently wrong with raising taxes, if the revenue collected is spent correctly. A commitment to investment in research, development and production of green technologies to reduce the amount of carbon pouring into the atmosphere would be a start. Greater investment in the training, retention and pay of NHS staff with a boost in emphasis upon Creative Health to reduce the burden at the acute end of the medical spectrum would be welcomed by most.
Abolishing the ‘right to buy’ for council housing, which sees any investment made by local authorities to increase the stock of affordable housing effectively privatised after a short period, would be welcome. The Chancellor could have considered the proper funding of local government as an area worthy of investment, given the growing number of local Councils posting section 114 notices, effectively declaring bankruptcy and having to limp along with under resourced statutory services only.
While Councils like Birmingham are cutting £300 million and Nottingham £53 million from their budgets the government are heralding Mayoral Combined Authority deals, creating a new tier of regional government with economic development, transport and housing powers but little to directly offer local communities. The North East Mayoral Combined Authority (NEMCA) is the latest recipient of this form of government largesse, covering an area from Berwick upon Tweed to Bishop Auckland, and able to access £4.2 billion in spend over 30 years.
The fact that the NEMCA budget is a drop in the ocean compared with the cuts endured by local authorities in the North East over the past 30 years is largely overlooked by local politicians desperate to sell the deal as good news. Local authorities overall have faced a 40% cut since the Tories lit the austerity bonfire in 2010, cheered on by their Liberal Democrat partners for the first five years.
Meanwhile local leisure, library, arts and museum provision continue to face significant reductions, or even closure, not being high on the government’s agenda. It is no surprise that they are services mainly accessed by communities in areas of high deprivation who are less likely to vote Tory or, increasingly, to vote at all.
The Daily Mail meanwhile sidesteps these concerns and bemoans the lack of any further money for the military in the budget, citing a report by the Public Accounts Committee that suggests the military is £29 billion short due to overspends, mismanagement and inflation. The Mail’s response to this has been to launch a campaign, Don’t Leave Britain Defenceless, calling on ministers to increase funding for the Armed Forces “in response to the growing threats around the world.”
The Ministry of Defence has always been famous for its poor budget management but to pour good money after bad to prop it up and to waste millions on more weapons of mass destruction when people are homeless and starving beggars’ belief.
Hunt’s big ‘rabbit out of the hat’ moment was a 2p reduction in the rate of National Insurance, in an attempt to grab the headlines of the Tory press. The reality is that the NI cut will be fine if you earn over £50,000 a year; you will save £1310 per annum. This is five times more than a worker on £20,000 and 15 times more than someone on £15,000 a year. So, the Tory position remains as ever, the well off do well, while the poor get punished!
Hunt was also keen to try and steal what few clothes Labour have by announcing the abolition of non-dom tax relief for those in Britian whose permanent address is elsewhere. However, there is the caveat of a five year transition period, so no doubt the tax dodgers at the top of the tree will, as usual, find new ways to avoid paying their fair share before this measure hits.
Whatever the Tories, the Daily Mail or its readers may think, the threat to Britian does not come from Russia or China, or even maverick international terrorism. The enemy, to coin a phrase, is within. The Tory Party, the billionaires and corporations which fuel and fund them, the military industrial complex which feeds off the belligerent pro-US foreign policy, are all the enemies of progress, enemies of the working class and enemies of change.
A budget by Jeremy Hunt or any other Chancellor, Tory or Labour, will not change this reality. Only mass extra parliamentary pressure for socialist change can begin the process of really transforming Britain in the interests of the working class. As Canadian poet and songwriter, Leonard Cohen, famously wrote “there is a crack in everything/it’s where the light gets in”. There is certainly a crack in capitalism and it is the light of socialism which needs to pour in.
Avanti Populo 