People started complaining about Labour blaming the Conservatives almost as soon as the election was over, who never complained about the Conservatives blaming Labour for austerity.
The double standards are glaring.
(I mean, Johnson blamed Cameron, and Sunak blamed Johnson, and apparently that's fine even though they were actually in their respective governments.)
It all goes back to the disaster of 2008.
I am going (against my better judgement) to respond to this.
The “disaster” of 2008 was caused by the irresponsible behaviour of inadequately regulated financial markets. (Structurally, what happened had similarities with the Lloyd’s of London insurance crash two and a half decades previously.) The markets then responded by doing what (free market) economists expect (and laud them for doing) namely they corrected for the problem. Unfortunately the human and social costs of that correction were immense – as is quite often the case.
Governments and financial institutions (with the benefit of a significant lead from Gordon Brown) took steps to stabilise the situation – essentially by bailing out the failing financial institutions. There was, however, a significant financial, and therefore economic impact from this failure in the financial markets. The political fallout from that together with the Iraq war was a significant factor in the UK labour government losing the 2010 general election.
George Osborne's “austerity” program is seen by many economists now (and not a few at the time) as mistaken, and the associated political/ideological drive towards a smaller state has had adverse consequences in the education system, in the NHS, and in building standards (Grenfell Tower anyone?) to name but a few. On top of all that has been the effect of the self inflicted wound of Brexit, and the impact of the unexpected and inadequately-prepared-for COVID-19 pandemic.
This was followed by the disastrous Truss/Kwarteng budget in September 2022.
Turning now to the March 2024 Budget, here is the Institute for Government's take on it:
the chancellor is not even likely to meet his fiscal rule, despite his claims to the contrary and the OBR giving him a ‘pass’ in its formal assessment of the government’s performance. That is because the OBR is required to take stated government policy at face value. But this too is a fantasy: overall budgets per person for public services are allegedly going to be frozen in real terms even though the government has committed to large spending increases in specific areas (such as the NHS, defence and overseas aid). Meanwhile, the energy windfall tax is set to expire the year after the forecast period, which would reduce any headroom available to the chancellor in the following years. This fiscal fiction is another problem our report seeks to address.
Whoever is chancellor after the next election, they are going to have one heck of a difficult circle to square. They will inherit historically high taxes, struggling public services, a big debt interest bill, the highest debt in 60 years, and poor growth. The first post-election budget and spending review will contain some nasty surprises.
If that was not bad enough, the Government failed to provide the Office for Budget Responsibility with adequate information in the run-up to the March 2024 Budget Statement leading the OBR to give and inaccurate response to that budget, as was note in the OBR's report on it (PDF) last month. The Treasury kept these issues to themselves
Up until the March 2024 forecast, the processes for forecasting levels of RDEL spending [departmental expenditure limits for resource spending] during spending review periods had been largely successful. This was not the case in the March 2024 EFO [economic and fiscal outlook]. The Treasury did not share information with the OBR about the large pressures on RDEL, about the unusual extent of commitments against the reserve, or about any plans to manage these pressures down at the challenge panel. Further information that came to light after this meeting, but before the forecast was published, about pressures on baseline RDEL budgets and the implications of policy decisions announced at the Budget, was also not sufficiently shared.
Basically, the Treasury under Jeremy Hunt, concealed, or failed to reveal, information known to them at the time which would significantly have affected the OBR's analysis. This information only became available to the present Government after the election.
Basically, although Labour (rightly) suspected that the financial situation was bad, and said so, it was actually significantly worse than official information implied.
Are you seriously suggesting that Labour had no supporters in the Treasury. Surely Sue Gray would have insured that Labour supporters were in all departments.
Really? That's your argument?
Let me make sure I've got this right:
1. Sue Gray ensured that there were Labour supporters in the treasury
2. Said Labour supporters leaked the information to Labour
Therefore the Labour team knew things were far worse than was being said publically by Hunt et al. Hence Labour are the liars...
Have I got that right?
More or less, but Hunt never claimed things were good.
Don't forget that Labour had been talking about everything being in a mess for years
I've just checked back at the March statement on Hansard. You are being generous to the Rt Hon Mr Hunt.
Yep Civil Servants are not allowed to put their political leanings ahead of their duties.
Where the Labour Party as misinformed as they say. We have to take their word for it. It is how they are proceeding anyway. It is essentially true even if it isn’t.
The Sun, the Express, the Mail, and the Telegraph among other Tory supporting “news media”* have all jumped on this story. Here’s a fact check from the non-partisan Independent
Evaluation
Ms Reeves, 45, spent six years working for the Bank of England between 2000 and 2006.
The facts
A LinkedIn page which appears to belong to Ms Reeves says that she worked at the Bank of England between September 2000 and December 2006.
The Bank of England confirmed to the PA news agency that Ms Reeves worked for them during the dates on the LinkedIn page.
This includes a stint with the British Embassy in Washington DC, which was a secondment from the UK’s central bank – and which Ms Reeves talked about in a video posted to X, formerly Twitter, in August 2023.
Some of Ms Reeves’s time at the Bank can also be charted through papers she contributed to during her employment there.
In a December 2005 paper she is listed as part of the Bank’s structural economic analysis division, which matches the detail on the LinkedIn page.
She is also thanked for her contributions to a December 2001 speech by Charlie Bean, who was the Bank of England’s chief economist at the time.
* scare quotes because I’m not sure the term is fitting for media which publish politically motivated material without elementary checking.
Some of the confusions is about her job at the Bank of England. She does not appear to have been an economist. Some reports say that she was working in retail banking.
She worked as an economist at the Bank of England for five or six years, and then in retail banking at Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS). It was her entry for HBOS that wrongly stated she worked there as an economist.
Without knowing, or having capacity to investigate, timelines or the LinkedIn interface, I rather suspect that was a plain clerical error which was only picked up once the record came under scrutiny, and then it was corrected.
Given the utter pish the Express sees fit to publish as front page headlines regarding the weather, I wouldn't even treat it a source of the date without checking
Given the utter pish the Express sees fit to publish as front page headlines regarding the weather, I wouldn't even treat it a source of the date without checking
Quite. Although as an ex daily reader when it was still true, I find myself rolling on the floor laughing at the description of The Independent these days as ‘non-Partisan’ !
‘Basket case, interestingly funded, check the ownership’ on the other hand…
She worked as an economist at the Bank of England for five or six years, and then in retail banking at Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS). It was her entry for HBOS that wrongly stated she worked there as an economist.
Without knowing, or having capacity to investigate, timelines or the LinkedIn interface, I rather suspect that was a plain clerical error which was only picked up once the record came under scrutiny, and then it was corrected.
If this is all true, we should hear no more about it. unless we hear that several newspapers have been sued.
If were a lawyer with her best interests at heart, even if what the papers have said is clearly false, I’d advise her not to sue. It would merely give the story legs. Otherwise it’s just a flash in the pan.
If were a lawyer with her best interests at heart, even if what the papers have said is clearly false, I’d advise her not to sue. It would merely give the story legs. Otherwise it’s just a flash in the pan.
Why do all these papers have the same false story ? It doesn't make sense
Actually, not all the papers carry the same story. See my post with the fact check above. Less partisan outlets (including the Press Association) fact-checked the claim before deciding whether to publish. Having checked they decided that the fact-check was the story, rather than the false claim.
Why do you think the right wing media (including ‘only the facts’ GB News) simply published, without apparently checking, an easily checked untrue true claim discreditable to a Labour Chancellor?
If were a lawyer with her best interests at heart, even if what the papers have said is clearly false, I’d advise her not to sue. It would merely give the story legs. Otherwise it’s just a flash in the pan.
Why do all these papers have the same false story ? It doesn't make sense
They have latched onto a true fact - that RR has changed a previous job title and they have built a story, with imputed motives round that. They have done so in order to get a story which fits into their narrative about the Labour government.
Can I give you an example from my own experience, @Telford? Some years ago, I nominated a woman for a blue plaque in Aberdeen. She was the niece of a man involved in Gladstone's prostitute-rescue scheme, but her efforts were focussed on providing innovative safety-nets to prevent women from falling into prostitution. The local press covered the unveiling of the blue plaque.
I was contacted by a Mail reporter and interviewed over the phone. I thought the interview went very well. Imagine my surprise to read the subsequent full-page story in the Mail on Sunday.Daughter of the Manse on a mission to save women from the Ripper it was headlined, and it was illustrated with a photo from a film about Jack the Ripper.
At no point in the telephone interview had Jack the Ripper been mentioned. I have no interest in JtR. The article quoted me accurately, but what I said was sandwiched between lurid and salacious paragraphs about JtR, Victorian prostitution etc.
Had I been told at the outset that the story was going to be about JtR I wouldn't have given the interview, because at that point I knew so little about JtR I didn't even know if the dates matched up. But everything I was quoted on was, in fact, true - the woman, the plaque, her innovative schemes.
The end result was that, instead of sounding like a serious historian, I sounded like a seedy crank.
This is how it is done - the newspaper takes a fact and "spins" it, to a story which fits their agenda, or their readership's appetite for titillating stories.
As a corollary to that, on February 15th 2020 the Daily Mail published an article claiming that London's Chinatown was deserted because everyone was afraid of the new disease spreading from China, complete with "photo, yesterday " of a deserted Chinatown.
The Knotweed and I were *in* Chinatown the previous evening. It was anything but deserted, maybe more masks than usual but still bustling.
In this case, the "news"paper published a bare-faced lie, and I can bear witness to that.
What a surprise that right wing media try to trash Labour. Why ever would they do that?
I agree. Typing ecomomist when you meant to type retail bank worker is an easy mistake to make . Still, she has corrected it now and never need be mentioned again.
Meanwhile the self-inflicted wound of trying to nobble the farmers is going splendidly.
Apart from it not nobbling the farmers and not being a wound you're exactly right.
Like pretty much all scaremongering about inheritance tax it's the press winding up the moderately well off to support the super rich. The loudest voice being the man who explicitly bought a farm as a tax dodge and is now whining. As our friend on the other side of the pond say: "hit dogs holler".
Meanwhile the self-inflicted wound of trying to nobble the farmers is going splendidly.
You mean their union organised a demo (the language of 'union barons' has been startlingly absent in the coverage), and a bunch of far right fringe figures showed up.
Very funny watching Jeremy Clarkson trying to backtrack from his own statement that his farm was a tax dodge. I find it all confusing, conflicting stats abound.
@betjemaniacgiven this, why is it a problem for people inheriting 3 million pounds worth of property, to pay half the standard rate of inheritance tax on 2 million pounds worth of it ?
@betjemaniacgiven this, why is it a problem for people inheriting 3 million pounds worth of property, to pay half the standard rate of inheritance tax on 2 million pounds worth of it ?
Margin of sub 1%? They’ve got no cash, they already live there and it’s their home as well as their business. It’s not like any other industry
Farmland has become a Ponzi scheme because of agricultural property relief. If land value now reflects actual returns more closely, that can only be a good thing.
Farmland has become a Ponzi scheme because of agricultural property relief. If land value now reflects actual returns more closely, that can only be a good thing.
Agree… except… how many reasonably innocent bystanders get taken out while that happens because their parent has the misfortune to die? The changes of themselves make sense, and there is absolutely an issue with buying farmland to shelter from tax. But this change applied this way breaks too many butterflies under the wheel in pursuit of that. A £5m threshold would address your big investors, this crushes the smaller family set-ups at 1-5m, and all their land will be bought by the same big investors who can afford the dodges to keep sheltering.
Fundamentally, as one of my friends I travelled down with said, on paper their farm is worth £3m. But only if they sell it. Meanwhile the margins are such that last year they struggled to buy new school shoes for their 9yo daughter.
Fundamentally, as one of my friends I travelled down with said, on paper their farm is worth £3m. But only if they sell it. Meanwhile the margins are such that last year they struggled to buy new school shoes for their 9yo daughter.
If I was sitting on £3m and struggling for day to day costs you wouldn't see me for dust as I headed to the Estate Agents.
I get it on some levels. It's more like a vocation than a job, and the balance between managing the land both as an asset and for its biological value, and earning revenue is clearly both difficult and exhausting. But there has to be something other than grossly inflated tax breaks that will allow that to continue. The sense of entitlement which seems to surround farmers, both here and in France, is nauseating. French farmers are like toddlers.
Fundamentally, as one of my friends I travelled down with said, on paper their farm is worth £3m. But only if they sell it. Meanwhile the margins are such that last year they struggled to buy new school shoes for their 9yo daughter.
If I was sitting on £3m and struggling for day to day costs you wouldn't see me for dust as I headed to the Estate Agents.
Fundamentally, as one of my friends I travelled down with said, on paper their farm is worth £3m. But only if they sell it. Meanwhile the margins are such that last year they struggled to buy new school shoes for their 9yo daughter.
If I was sitting on £3m and struggling for day to day costs you wouldn't see me for dust as I headed to the Estate Agents.
Which is why you’re not a farmer. Most of them have to be born to it because in reality (never mind on paper) it’s a pretty ludicrous proposition as a way to spend your life.
The second half of my above post was a little intemperate, and I apologise. But 100% agricultural property relief is pure welfare for the rich, and creates huge tax inequalities. And treating farmers as being more like the rest of the population has to be an option. What is really needed is wholesale reform of Inheritance Tax, including the flagrant abuse of trusts, but that would require serious asbestos underpants, and I don't think Starmer has them.
But there has to be something other than grossly inflated tax breaks that will allow that to continue.
Again, agree. The issue though is that no one in government is looking for that something, they’ve gone straight to whacking up the tax, and done nothing else. and proposed nothing else. And talked to no one at all in agriculture (and most damningly even no one in their own sodding agriculture ministry) before doing so.
Fundamentally, as one of my friends I travelled down with said, on paper their farm is worth £3m. But only if they sell it. Meanwhile the margins are such that last year they struggled to buy new school shoes for their 9yo daughter.
If I was sitting on £3m and struggling for day to day costs you wouldn't see me for dust as I headed to the Estate Agents.
Fundamentally, as one of my friends I travelled down with said, on paper their farm is worth £3m. But only if they sell it. Meanwhile the margins are such that last year they struggled to buy new school shoes for their 9yo daughter.
If I was sitting on £3m and struggling for day to day costs you wouldn't see me for dust as I headed to the Estate Agents.
Which is why you’re not a farmer. Most of them have to be born to it because in reality (never mind on paper) it’s a pretty ludicrous proposition as a way to spend your life.
Yeah but let's not pretend that there are absolutely no benefits in having that amount in assets.
Fundamentally, as one of my friends I travelled down with said, on paper their farm is worth £3m. But only if they sell it. Meanwhile the margins are such that last year they struggled to buy new school shoes for their 9yo daughter.
If I was sitting on £3m and struggling for day to day costs you wouldn't see me for dust as I headed to the Estate Agents.
Fundamentally, as one of my friends I travelled down with said, on paper their farm is worth £3m. But only if they sell it. Meanwhile the margins are such that last year they struggled to buy new school shoes for their 9yo daughter.
If I was sitting on £3m and struggling for day to day costs you wouldn't see me for dust as I headed to the Estate Agents.
Which is why you’re not a farmer. Most of them have to be born to it because in reality (never mind on paper) it’s a pretty ludicrous proposition as a way to spend your life.
Yeah but let's not pretend that there are absolutely no benefits in having that amount in assets.
Yeah but (it’s always ‘yeah but’ isn’t it), the cash still isn’t there.
Fundamentally, as one of my friends I travelled down with said, on paper their farm is worth £3m. But only if they sell it. Meanwhile the margins are such that last year they struggled to buy new school shoes for their 9yo daughter.
Thing is, just the presence of the tax will reduce prices so that paper 3 million will rapidly be less than that. It will become more feasible to buy land to farm and even more farms will drop below the IHT threshold.
Here of course, nobody much cares because no crofter has 1 million in assets, nevermind 3.
Comments
I've just checked back at the March statement on Hansard. You are being generous to the Rt Hon Mr Hunt.
In the meantime: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-11-05/uk-budget-watchdog-says-treasury-officials-may-have-broken-law
Where the Labour Party as misinformed as they say. We have to take their word for it. It is how they are proceeding anyway. It is essentially true even if it isn’t.
Great. Him and Trump can reminisce about Epstein.
I did not realise they were both Beatles fans.
(You aren't the only one who can do one-liners)
Hostly beret on
@Telford if you want to take issue with the way you are hosted, you may do so in the Styx. Please don't do it here.
@Gamma Gamaliel if you want to complain about another contributor's posting style, Hell would be the place.
Hostly beret off
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
Sir Keir, who appears to know very little about Hinduism, needed some good advice. Perhaps he should have asked Rishi.
Please tell me they at least avoided beef.
Just one of the newspapers reporting that Ms Reeves has lied about her financial experience.
* scare quotes because I’m not sure the term is fitting for media which publish politically motivated material without elementary checking.
Without knowing, or having capacity to investigate, timelines or the LinkedIn interface, I rather suspect that was a plain clerical error which was only picked up once the record came under scrutiny, and then it was corrected.
Quite. Although as an ex daily reader when it was still true, I find myself rolling on the floor laughing at the description of The Independent these days as ‘non-Partisan’ !
‘Basket case, interestingly funded, check the ownership’ on the other hand…
If this is all true, we should hear no more about it. unless we hear that several newspapers have been sued.
Why do you think the right wing media (including ‘only the facts’ GB News) simply published, without apparently checking, an easily checked untrue true claim discreditable to a Labour Chancellor?
They have latched onto a true fact - that RR has changed a previous job title and they have built a story, with imputed motives round that. They have done so in order to get a story which fits into their narrative about the Labour government.
Can I give you an example from my own experience, @Telford? Some years ago, I nominated a woman for a blue plaque in Aberdeen. She was the niece of a man involved in Gladstone's prostitute-rescue scheme, but her efforts were focussed on providing innovative safety-nets to prevent women from falling into prostitution. The local press covered the unveiling of the blue plaque.
I was contacted by a Mail reporter and interviewed over the phone. I thought the interview went very well. Imagine my surprise to read the subsequent full-page story in the Mail on Sunday. Daughter of the Manse on a mission to save women from the Ripper it was headlined, and it was illustrated with a photo from a film about Jack the Ripper.
At no point in the telephone interview had Jack the Ripper been mentioned. I have no interest in JtR. The article quoted me accurately, but what I said was sandwiched between lurid and salacious paragraphs about JtR, Victorian prostitution etc.
Had I been told at the outset that the story was going to be about JtR I wouldn't have given the interview, because at that point I knew so little about JtR I didn't even know if the dates matched up. But everything I was quoted on was, in fact, true - the woman, the plaque, her innovative schemes.
The end result was that, instead of sounding like a serious historian, I sounded like a seedy crank.
This is how it is done - the newspaper takes a fact and "spins" it, to a story which fits their agenda, or their readership's appetite for titillating stories.
The Knotweed and I were *in* Chinatown the previous evening. It was anything but deserted, maybe more masks than usual but still bustling.
In this case, the "news"paper published a bare-faced lie, and I can bear witness to that.
I agree. Typing ecomomist when you meant to type retail bank worker is an easy mistake to make . Still, she has corrected it now and never need be mentioned again.
Apart from it not nobbling the farmers and not being a wound you're exactly right.
Like pretty much all scaremongering about inheritance tax it's the press winding up the moderately well off to support the super rich. The loudest voice being the man who explicitly bought a farm as a tax dodge and is now whining. As our friend on the other side of the pond say: "hit dogs holler".
You mean their union organised a demo (the language of 'union barons' has been startlingly absent in the coverage), and a bunch of far right fringe figures showed up.
Margin of sub 1%? They’ve got no cash, they already live there and it’s their home as well as their business. It’s not like any other industry
Agree… except… how many reasonably innocent bystanders get taken out while that happens because their parent has the misfortune to die? The changes of themselves make sense, and there is absolutely an issue with buying farmland to shelter from tax. But this change applied this way breaks too many butterflies under the wheel in pursuit of that. A £5m threshold would address your big investors, this crushes the smaller family set-ups at 1-5m, and all their land will be bought by the same big investors who can afford the dodges to keep sheltering.
If I was sitting on £3m and struggling for day to day costs you wouldn't see me for dust as I headed to the Estate Agents.
Which is why you’re not a farmer. Most of them have to be born to it because in reality (never mind on paper) it’s a pretty ludicrous proposition as a way to spend your life.
Again, agree. The issue though is that no one in government is looking for that something, they’ve gone straight to whacking up the tax, and done nothing else. and proposed nothing else. And talked to no one at all in agriculture (and most damningly even no one in their own sodding agriculture ministry) before doing so.
Yeah but let's not pretend that there are absolutely no benefits in having that amount in assets.
Yeah but (it’s always ‘yeah but’ isn’t it), the cash still isn’t there.
Thing is, just the presence of the tax will reduce prices so that paper 3 million will rapidly be less than that. It will become more feasible to buy land to farm and even more farms will drop below the IHT threshold.
Here of course, nobody much cares because no crofter has 1 million in assets, nevermind 3.