The oncoming party conference season promises a mass of wacky ideas, impulsive headlines, and largely meaningless flimflam. But the underlying and real question is exactly what the Chancellor’s planning for next month’s budget. As our Political Correspondent Peter Spencer reports, his choices will likely add up to the make or break for Andy Burnham.
At the extreme end of the getting-it-wrong spectrum, think Liz Truss. Her squinty-eyed take on tax cuts so spooked the folk who fund the government that she was toast. Or a lettuce leaf. Either will do.
Closer to the middle has been the make-do-and-mend method meted out by practically every resident of Number Eleven since the Americans crashed the world economy back in 2008.
It’s little wonder that a space has opened up for the populist Reform Party, tapping into people’s general fed-upness about nothing really working like it used to. It doesn’t.
More of Nigel Farage later, meantime it’s worth remembering the incoming Tory tribe’s response to that crisis made in Wall Street. Austerity.
Among the many deep cuts meted out by the then newbie Chancellor George Osborne was a near fifty per cent reduction in Whitehall funding for town halls.
No use blaming your cash-strapped local council for not fixing potholes in the roads. That one’s down to him. As well as a whole range of others.
Then came the Brexit referendum, that the then Prime Minister David Cameron got spooked into holding by Farage. And which cost him his job.
It’s said Osborne advised against it at the time, on the grounds that it was too risky. And only last week he opined that our economy had ‘fallen off a cliff’ since we left the bloc.
Possibly a bit of an overstatement there, but the experts’ consensus is that Farage’s gain was the nation’s loss. Because Brexit has indeed made us poorer. The only disagreement being over quite how much.
All this helps explain the Number Ten turnover in recent years, up there with Italy in its most shambolic phase. In short, no one’s managed to make the sums add up and keep the punters onside.
Rather than risk losing the election Keir Starmer tied Labour’s hands, perhaps ill-advisedly, by promising not to pull any of the obvious revenue-raising levers like VAT or National Insurance tax on working folk.
Instead, his Chancellor Rachel Reeves tried to get us on an even keel again by raising a load of other levies. And now, hey presto she’s out, as well as her boss.
The worst of it being that the new Chancellor, John Healey, is up against a new set of headwinds, courtesy of the White House.
Yes, the Bank of England did hold interest rates steady last week, but few in the know think we’ll be that lucky in coming months. Rising energy costs stemming from Donald Trump’s Iran war will see to that.
It happens Burnham will be meeting the great man in person for the first time this coming week. And ministers insist he’ll be ‘firm and straight’ with him.
Hmmm. Does that mean he’ll say: ‘Thanks a bunch, Donnie Baby, you really dumped on us this time?’
Don’t hold your breath. He’ll try not to suck up too obviously to the planet’s most powerful man, but no, a Love Actually moment really isn’t on the cards.
It’s possible he’ll suggest Trump’s proclamation, that fears of Artificial Intelligence wiping out humanity are nothing but a ‘Sick hoax’, might not be a hundred per cent accurate. But that’s a detail.
Has to be said, mind, that to many of us the mere fact that The Donald thinks the AI thing isn’t a problem means it probably is.
However, assuming we do all make it to budget day, we’ll get the chance to see how Healey hopes to swerve the Scilla of swingeing spending cuts and the Charybdis of screech-out-loud tax rises.
And, spoiler alert, don’t take any notice of the mega-miles of newsprint about what exactly he is going to do. When he says he’s not letting on he means it. Possibly because even he doesn’t know.
The Office for Budget Responsibility, that’s the number crunchers tasked with figuring out what if anything we can afford, is doing its sums right now.
Suffice it to say the official line is the timing is ‘hugely challenging.’ Translation: ‘The Yanks have yanked us into a cesspit’. Happy days.
At least Nigel Farage has got something to smile about, thanks to the latest opinion polls.
It was thought that after the Channel Four sting operation, that exposed possible wrongdoing and torpedoed his party’s conference, his ratings would take a hit. But he’s still level-pegging with Labour.
So maybe he had a point when he blithely brushed aside questions over his and his party’s fundraising arrangements with the words: ‘No one cares.’
Except that it’s not quite that simple.
Following the hoo-ha over the seventy-two million smackers his lot were given by two crypto billionaires, a YouGov survey found an overwhelming majority of folk reckon there should be a cap on donations.
Also, ministers are doing their utmost to find ways of getting at least some of that money handed back, on the grounds, they say, that Farage’s lot is trying to ‘buy democracy’.
That line gets added heft from Labour’s analysis of the taxman’s data, that suggests Reform’s plans would mean stinking rich crypto investors end up pocketing hundreds of millions.
All down to their promise to single out these guys for capital gains tax breaks. Shocking, says Paul Johnson, former director of the highly respected Institute of Fiscal Studies.
‘There is quite clearly no feasible economic rationale for treating crypto more leniently than other economically productive assets,’ he fumes.
And yet, Reform plans to slash this tax on crypto assets from twenty-four per cent for the better off, right back to ten per cent.
Interestingly, it seems that even before the enormous handouts from the two billionaires well over half the money donated to the party since the election came from folk in the crypto corner.
Couple that with the ongoing sleaze investigation by the parliamentary authorities, not to mention police investigations, and things could yet get sticky for them.
Still, there are folk out there who do nice things for people without expecting anything back.
Take the happy experience of Andrea Malone’s ninety-four-year-old mum who wanted to buy a vacuum cleaner from her local store in Melbourne. Only to be told the nearest one available was in another branch an hour away.
No, at her age she really couldn’t manage a drive that far. Shame, as the horrid sales assistant told her there was no way they’d bring it over for her.
But here the lady’s luck changed, as the woman behind her in the queue said she’d be happy to pick the thing up for her, and help her put it together.
She was as good as her word and the two of them had a coffee together the the next day. Only later did she find out that her Good Samaritan was the ever-so-famous Australian basketballer Michele Timms.
Just goes to show being in the limelight doesn’t mean you have to be out of kindness.
Peter Spencer has 40 years experience as a Political Correspondent in Westminster, working with London Broadcasting and Sky News. For more of his fascinating musings on the turbulent political landscape, follow him on Facebook & Twitter.
Watch Peter’s report at peterspencer.org
Peter Spencer has 40 years experience as a Political Correspondent in Westminster, working with London Broadcasting and Sky News. For more of his fascinating musings on the turbulent political landscape, follow him on Facebook & Twitter.