Tag Archives: Studies

Tax cuts proposed by both Truss and Sunak are unfunded. How are they affordable?

Grinning idiots: the tax cuts both Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have promised will worsen the cost of living crisis and make it impossible for them to fund relief measures for struggling families, a leading think tank has said.

Oh dear, oh dear, it looks like neither Liz Truss nor Rishi Sunak have bothered to think how they will make their tax cuts work.

The politically-independent Institute for Fiscal Studies has said large, permanent tax cuts could make some spending unaffordable as the UK slips into the recession that Tory policies have triggered.

The claim seems to be based on a discredited economic model that says our taxes pay for public spending, meaning if taxes are cut, equivalent cuts must be made in spending.

That’s not true; governments spend according to their priorities and then borrow from the private sector and/or tax appropriately in order to prevent inflation from exceeding targets they have set.

In this case, the end result is the same: if Sunak or Truss is to cut taxes, spending will have to come down or inflation will rise above even the current high level.

And Carl Emmerson, deputy director of the IFS, warned that spending will probably have to increase if the government intends to support families that will not be able to cope with the increasing cost of living and sky-high energy bills.

Truss has pledged to scrap April’s National Insurance rise to help households and cancel a planned rise in corporation tax, while Sunak as promised to reduce VAT on domestic energy bills from five per cent to nothing, and to cut 3p off income tax by late 2029.

Neither has explained how they will deliver this cuts without adding to inflation, although Sunak has said he will not implement his plan until the current inflation crisis has been brought under control.

So it seems they have been building castles in the air, rather than taking the grounded outlook on the economy that the UK needs. It is impossible to bankrupt an economy like ours, that can create its own money – but it seems both Tory candidates are going to try.

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Are Tory right-wingers proposing a ‘Northern Bang’ or just another clusterf***?

Money: Margaret Thatcher’s favourite thinktank, the Centre for Policy Studies, says England needs a “Northern Bang” – like the so-called “Big Bang” in the financial markets that ultimately led to the financial crisis of 2008-10. It’s begging for disaster, as Tax Research UK’s Richard Murphy explains.

Tories can’t help themselves, these days. Whatever they do turns into a “complete bureaucratic nightmare” and this plan is no different.

It’s certainly nothing new.

Let’s all be grateful to Richard Murphy for his analysis.

In his introduction, he states: “Margaret Thatcher’s favourite think tank, the Centre for Policy Studies, has published a new report suggesting what they call a Northern Bang – aimed at the Tory Red Wall seats.

“Let’s ignore the fact that they want to favour these seats over those in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. Instead let’s note that this is all the usual right-wing nonsense, including relaxing planning rules, providing state subsidies to big, foreign-owned businesses whilst ignoring those already based here, and reformed tax reliefs, for which there is absolutely no evidence of success in encouraging new investment.

“This is a Northern Whimper delivered by a think tank right out of ideas, but which still knows that its real purpose is to shovel wealth upwards from taxpayers to those who own and run large companies.

“The CPS report is here https://www.cps.org.uk/research/a-nor… and my proposals on capital allowances are here https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/w….”

Here’s the video, and it’s worth seeing:

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Coronavirus-prompted benefit boost won’t help families who are crushed by the Cap

We all thought it was so wonderful when Boris Johnson and his pals told us they were making the benefit system more generous because of the coronavirus.

It turns out the generosity went a very short distance.

For example, the 76,000 families who are subject to the Benefit Cap won’t get a penny more than £20,000 a year (if they’re outside Greater London) or £23,000 a year (if they’re within that boundary.

The Benefit Cap hasn’t been lifted, you see.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has raised this with the government, as reported by Rightsnet:

the IFS says that, due to the current benefit cap, some families are not reached by the temporary increase in the safety net, including most of the 76,000 families already subject to the cap, and those people who have moved from work without having been continuously employed for 12 months prior to that (and who therefore don’t qualify for a 39-week exemption from the cap).

Commenting on the issue, IFS deputy Director Robert Joyce said –

‘The government has implemented a substantial temporary increase in the generosity of the welfare safety net. But the overall cap on how much a working-age family can receive in benefits will mean that those increases will not benefit most of the around 76,000 families who were already capped on the eve of the crisis, as well as a small fraction of the large number who appear to have lost employment during the crisis. At the present time encouraging families to move into paid work, or to cheaper housing, is less of a priority. The government should therefore temporarily raise or remove the cap.’

For more information, see If the cap doesn’t fit? from ifs.org.uk

Will the government accede to the request? Don’t you believe it!

Source: Government should temporarily raise or remove the benefit cap, says Institute for Fiscal Studies – Rightsnet

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Tax and spend pledges show neither Johnson nor Hunt can be trusted with our money

Johnson and Hunt: I wanted to use the image someone mocked up of them as ‘Dumb and Dumber’ but I couldn’t find it.

Has the Tory leadership election degenerated into a contest about who can lie the most blatantly and get away with it?

If their tax-and-spend pledges are any yardstick, it has.

Jeremy Hunt wants to spend £20 billion from Brexit “war chest” that will only exist if the UK manages an exit deal with the EU – and that would only be available for a year. That’s not enough for permanent changes.

And Boris Johnson promised public sector pay rises that were coming anyway as the years-long Tory-imposed pay freeze finally comes to an end.

According to Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, both candidates were really saying that they are willing to borrow more money.

This means they are happy to continue racking up the highest national debt in the UK’s history – something for which the Conservatives used to blame Labour at every opportunity.

Labour, meanwhile, is having a great time mocking both candidates’ “reckless spending commitments”.

Jeremy Corbyn’s party went to great lengths to disprove claims that its own spending plans were unfunded during the 2017 election campaign, when Theresa May proved unable to do the same.

Now it seems both Mr Johnson and Mr Hunt are unable to do their maths.

Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt have been accused of misleading the public with “extraordinary” tax-and-spending pledges, as leading economists and senior Tories unite in criticism.

The two Tory leadership candidates came under fire after Mr Hunt unveiled a no-deal Brexit spending splurge worth almost £20bn – while a Johnson ally promised big public sector pay rises if the favourite wins.

The spending race provoked alarm from Conservatives, including Philip Hammond, the chancellor, and the former leadership contender Rory Stewart, who warned that such promises would make it impossible to attack Jeremy Corbyn for his “unfunded” pledges.

The head of the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) went further, saying the two candidates were misleading voters in claiming they could dip into a £27bn “war chest”.

Paul Johnson pointed out it was a figure for one year only, so could not be used for permanent tax-and-spending changes – and it would not be available at all if the UK crashes out of the EU.

“There have been some extraordinary pledges – they add up into the tens of billions of pounds,” the IFS director said.

“They claim, somehow, that these will be paid for from this so-called Brexit war chest. Well, they are not going to be.

“First, that is only available in the event of no deal not happening. And, in any case, what they are just saying is they are willing to borrow more.”

Mr Hunt, as he set a new deadline of 30 September for a no deal becoming inevitable, pledged £6bn to compensate some industries from tariffs – claiming £1 trillion had been spent to bail out the banks.

But Mr Johnson said: “It is simply not true that, in any real sense, we spent £1 trillion bailing out the banks in the same way that he’s referring to potentially finding £6bn for the farmers and fishermen.”

And, on public-sector pay, he pointed out the freeze was over anyway – arguing the cash now being spent would be in jeopardy from a no-deal Brexit because “the economy will grow less quickly”.

Source: Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt accused of duping the public with ‘extraordinary’ tax-and-spending pledges | The Independent

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Green Party MEP launches new legal challenge for release of Brexit studies

The Department for Exiting the EU is resisting calls to publish findings on the predicted damage of leaving the EU [Image: Reuters].

Molly Scott Cato, Green Party MEP for the South West, writes:

There have been letters, Freedom of Information requests, Parliamentary questions and, earlier this week, a letter signed by 120 cross-party MPs – all demanding that the government release studies they are sitting on about the economic impacts of Brexit.

But David Davis has remained bullish, refusing to publish the findings.

So, I have teamed up with Jolyon Maugham QC, a barrister and director of the The Good Law Project, to demand the Government release these studies within 14 days or face legal action. If the Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) and the Treasury fail to do so, we will issue judicial review proceedings before the High Court, which would seek to compel the Government to release them.

The form this challenge takes has been recognised by the Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights. While the outcome cannot be predicted with certainty, we have the benefit of advice and representation from experts in the field of information law.

We are after two classes of study. First, those mentioned by David Davis MP to the Commons Committee on Exiting the EU on 14 December last year, when he acknowledged that there were 57 studies covering 85 per cent of the economy: everything except sectors not affected by international trade. DExEU has repeatedly promised to publish the list of studies “shortly” – but has never done so.

Secondly, we want details of a report prepared by the Treasury comparing the predicted economic damage of Brexit with the potential economic benefits of alternative free-trade agreements.

But will it work?

The Conservatives, since 2010, seem the most reluctant government in the history of the UK. It seems someone is having to take the Tories to court every five minutes because they won’t release information that, it is self-evident, we need to see.

But they still go through with their plans, no matter what the result.

So why not just cut out the costly business of going to court and assume the logical?

If the Brexit studies being hidden by David Davis, Theresa May and the rest of that chamber of horrors we call the Conservative government said anything optimistic, they would have plastered the findings all over the front pages of the Daly MailThe Sun, The Times, The Torygraph, The Express and any other mainstream media outlet they could persuade.

They haven’t.

So the Brexit studies show leaving the EU will harm the UK’s economy – possibly cripplingly.

Let’s just go with that, and if the Tories want to dispute it, they’ll have to publish – won’t they?


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How can we trust PM Theresa May when she lied about immigration and stirred up racism?

Immigration fail: When Theresa May tried to get illegal immigrants to “go home” with an ad campaign on vans driving through London, it caused national protest – and this response from the campaigning group Liberty.

We have a prime minister who lied to the public in order to build racial tensions between UK citizens and EU migrant workers. Does anybody – at all – think that is acceptable?

This Writer does not.

Nine studies passed across Theresa May’s desk while she was Home Secretary – showing that migrant workers are good for the economy, that they do not push wages down, and that they bring in much-needed skills that (apparently) are no longer taught in the UK.

And what did she do?

She launched a campaign in which vans were dispatched around London bearing advertising slogans suggesting migrant workers were in the UK illegally and should “go home”.

This silly and dangerous idea encouraged racism and created a huge waste of time for officials because members of the public started reporting anybody who looked as though they may have come from a foreign country.

And now she is prime minister and in charge of the process via which the UK will leave the EU. Can anybody doubt that she will put us at a huge disadvantage, internationally, because of her own prejudices?

Theresa May suppressed up to nine studies that found immigration does not hit the wages or jobs of UK workers, Vince Cable has alleged.

The Prime Minister has repeatedly defended plans to impose tough curbs on EU workers after Brexit by arguing they are needed to protect Britons in lower-paid jobs.

But, the Liberal Democrat leader said: “When I was Business Secretary, there were up to nine studies that we looked at that took in all the academic evidence.

“It showed that immigration had very little impact on wages or employment. But this was suppressed by the Home Office under Theresa May, because the results were inconvenient.”

Last year, Ms May told the Conservative party conference: “I know a lot of people don’t like to admit this. For someone who finds themselves out of work or on lower wages because of low-skilled immigration, life simply doesn’t seem fair.”

But the claim was rejected by experts including at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which argued immigrants also create jobs, expanding the opportunities for British workers.

Read more: Theresa May suppressed up to nine studies that found immigration does not hit UK wages, claims Vince Cable


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Voting with the Tories on ‘welfare’ will end any credibility Labour has left

George Osborne is a liar, from a party of liars - one only has to consider the UK's secret bombing of Syria - after Parliament voted against it - to see the truth in that.

George Osborne is a liar, from a party of liars – one only has to consider the UK’s secret bombing of Syria – after Parliament voted against it – to see the truth in that.

What an amazing piece in The Guardian about George Osborne’s call for “progressive” Labour MPs to support his entirely regressive changes to social security (the only people who call it “welfare” are Tories)!

Will people believe this pack of lies?

The article starts by saying he has urged “progressive” MPs in the Labour party to back his cuts in a major Commons vote today (Monday) on the Tories’ Welfare Reform and Work Bill.

He wants Labour MPs – but more importantly, the electorate, to think that the plan to cut child tax credits (among other measures) is what the public wants, and also builds on “mainstream Labour thinking”.

This is moonshine.

Labour believes that the profits of all our work should be shared out to ensure a decent standard of living for everybody, including those who cannot work but contribute to society in other ways. For example, if you have children, then you get child tax credits because their contribution to society has yet to be made.

Removing the tax credits and lowering the standard of living – as the Conservative chancellor’s plans would do to many people – is therefore the opposite of “mainstream Labour thinking”.

Osborne also calls on Labour to “stop blaming the public for its defeat”. This is typical Tory gaslighting. As a party, Labour has not blamed the public. The prevailing mood in the party is that Labour needs to draw the correct conclusions from the election result and create policies that acknowledge what the public wants, while fitting Labour values.

That’s real Labour values – not George Osborne’s fantasy.

You can tell that Labour isn’t doing as Osborne claims. Nowhere in the Guardian article is any factual evidence provided to show Labour has blamed the electorate for its defeat. Harriet Harman is paraphrased as having said the party needed to recognise that the electorate had sent Labour a message – which is quite the opposite.

Osborne also fails to support his claim that the majority of the electorate support his cuts. The majority of the electorate voted against the Conservative Party on May 7, with the Tories managing to gain only a 24.3 per cent share of the possible vote and a tiny 12-seat advantage in Parliament. That does not indicate majority support for the cuts programme.

The article states: “Osborne sprung a surprise in the budget by proposing cuts to the level of tax credits, but balanced these in part by a rise in the minimum wage to more than £9 an hour by 2020 for those over 25.” Notice that the tax credit cut is immediate, but the minimum wage will only rise to more than £9 per hour in five years’ time. How are people supposed to survive in the years between?

Also, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the cut in tax credits, along with the other cuts that ‘Slasher’ Osborne wants to make, will remove £12 billion from the economy – but the minimum wage rise – when it finally happens – will only add £4 billion.

So the Conservatives want Labour to support an £8 billion cut in living standards for the people who can least accommodate it.

Osborne’s argument that the responsibility for ensuring decent living standards should be rebalanced, from the state handing out subsidies towards employers providing decent wages, falls because he has no intention of making employers pay decent wages.

Osborne also writes: “Three in four people – and a majority of Labour voters – think that Britain spends too much on welfare.”

Are these the same people who think 41 per cent of the entire social security budget goes on unemployment benefits, when the actual proportion is just three per cent?

Are these the same people who think 27 per cent of the entire social security budget is claimed fraudulently, when the actual proportion is just 0.7 per cent?

Are these the people who believe George Osborne’s lies, and the lies of the Conservative Government?

In case anybody is wondering, the figures quoted above are from a TUC poll that was carried out a couple of years ago. It seems that, with the help of compliant media (such as The Guardian?) the Conservatives have succeeded in continuing to mislead the general public.

Osborne continued: “For our social contract to work, we need to retain the consent of the taxpayer, not just the welfare recipient.”

People receiving social security payments are also taxpayers; indirect taxation accounts for around three-quarters of the taxes received by the UK Treasury from the 20 per cent of people in the lowest income group.

The lies keep coming: “For those that can work, I believe it is better to earn a higher income from your work than receive a higher income from welfare.” If this was true, then he would have forced the minimum wage up to a point at which people would no longer need to claim tax credits in order to receive the same amount. He didn’t; he lied.

Osborne goes on to praise interim Labour leader Harriet Harman for capitulating to the Conservatives over child tax credits. There is only one reason he would do this – to undermine support for the Labour Party by suggesting that it really is ‘Tory-Lite’. Shame on Ms Harman for allowing this to happen!

His claim, “She recognised that oppositions only advance when they … recognise that some of the arguments made by political opponents should be listened to,” would be reasonable if the argument for cutting tax credits was sound, but it isn’t – people will be worse-off in this instance. If people were to become better-off afterwards, he might have a point. As it is, it is drivel.

His very next point confirms this: “A previous Conservative opposition realised [this] 15 years ago when it accepted the case for a minimum wage.” The Conservative Party only accepted this case in 2008, under David Cameron – a Tory leader who, when campaigning unsuccessfully for the Stafford constituency seat in 1996, had said it would “send unemployment straight back up” (The Chronicle (Stafford), February 21 1996). Even now, many Tory supporters despise the minimum wage.

Osborne ended with an appeal for “moderate” Labour MPs to vote with his party.

That would be the end of any credibility Labour has remaining, as a party of Opposition.

According to The Guardian, Osborne said: “The proposals are part of a common endeavour by Labour and the Conservatives to implement difficult welfare reforms.” Again, he is trying to make the public think Labour and the Tories are the same. Labour MPs would have to be complete idiots to help him.

Some of the complete idiots in Labour who have already helped him are, according to Osborne, “New Labour work and pensions secretaries such as John Hutton, David Blunkett and James Purnell [who] all tried to reform the welfare system… Alistair Darling [who] says tax credits are ‘subsidising lower wages in a way that was never intended’ [and] Frank Field… [who] agrees the system as it stands is simply ‘not sustainable’ and the budget represents a ‘game-changer’.”

Wouldn’t social security be a little more sustainable if George Osborne spent less time obsessing about wringing more money from those who can least afford to lose it, and more time getting his extremely rich corporate friend to pay up more of the £120 billion a year they are believed to owe in unpaid taxes?

Why isn’t Labour making this point, whenever Tories like Osborne start bleating that anything is “unsustainable”?

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Cameron’s Conservatives welcome increased poverty in the UK

130617childpoverty

If David Cameron wants to tell us the current definition of child poverty is a bad one, he’s probably right. The problem is, his preferred changes to that definition will probably be worse.

Poverty is currently defined according to whether a household’s income is less than 60 per cent of the national average. So during a recession, when most incomes (apart from those of the very rich) drop, poverty actually appears to decrease.

Now, despite there having been no appreciable rise in incomes across the board, the Institute for Fiscal Studies is forecasting a rise in child poverty from 2.3 million to 2.5 million – that’s 200,000 more children in poverty, as it is currently measured.

For David Cameron, this is a disaster because it shows that – even with the help of the silly sliding-scale definition of poverty, his government is worsening the situation for children across the UK. What an evil man. What an evil government.

His solution, it seems, is to revive plans to change the way child poverty is defined, to ensure that all those children who have fallen on hard times since he came into office (in 2010, not this year – we, at least, can be honest about the effect he is having) may be dismissed from the poverty figures even if they don’t have food to eat or clothes to wear.

The thought of taking action to stop children falling into poverty probably hasn’t even occurred to David Cameron.

It seems he discussed the matter on Tuesday morning with Nicky Morgan, our dunce of an education secretary, Oliver Letwin, the Cabinet Office minister they keep in a back room in case he frightens children, and Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary who models his behaviour on the Nazis – any of his solutions are likely to be final.

(In fact, the £12 billion cuts being planned for the Gentleman Ranker’s welfare budget are likely to be fatal to a huge number of people in any case.)

The Guardian‘s report on this points out that “a little-noticed line in the Conservative party’s general election manifesto said the government would “work to eliminate child poverty and introduce better measures to drive real change in children’s lives, by recognising the root causes of poverty: entrenched worklessness, family breakdown, problem debt, and drug and alcohol dependency”.

So the manifesto plan is: Blame the parents.

What are they going to do, then – sanction them (take money away)?

Already popular organisations are starting to line up against the government. Alison Garnham of the Child Poverty Action Group took an early shot at Cameron’s claim to be running a ‘One Nation’ government (a slogan he stole back from Labour after the general election).

“You can’t have one nation if children’s lives, opportunities and life chances at every turn are shaped and limited by poverty,” she said. “The government’s child poverty approach is failing but the prime minister’s speech [on Monday] simply missed the point and failed to set out what his government will do to prevent his legacy being the largest rise in child poverty in a generation.

“It is no good pulling bodies out of the river, without going upstream to see who is throwing them in – especially, if turns out the culprit is government policy. The right choices that would reduce poverty include protecting children’s benefits with the same triple-lock protection pensions enjoy, fixing the deep cuts to tax credit help for the low-paid, tackling cripplingly high rents, high childcare costs and expanding free school meals.”

These things will not happen under a Conservative government. There’s no profit in it for them because children – unlike pensioners, for example – don’t vote.

So, in simple terms, this is the situation:

Child poverty is rising.

The Conservative Party intends to pretend that it isn’t happening by fudging a new definition of poverty.

The Conservative Party will do nothing to tackle the real causes.

What conclusion can we reach?

The Conservative Government welcomes increased poverty in the UK.

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Advance warning: Here’s what Cameron will be saying in the leader debate

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Vox Political is grateful to the spy who provided the above information on Cameron’s talking-points for the televised leader debate this evening.

From 8pm, he’ll be trying to present these as facts – but are they? Let’s see:

Firstly, governments don’t create jobs. Ideally, they create the conditions in which employers create jobs and in that respect, Cameron’s effort has been lousy. We have 800,000 more zero-hours jobs than in 2010 – a total of 1,800,000 people with no job security, who cannot claim holiday pay or sick pay. That’s brilliant for employers like Duncan Bannatyne and the other goons who put their name to CCHQ’s letter in yesterday’s Torygraph – and a living hell for you.

Next, the claim that the deficit has been halved was only ever accurate as a percentage of GDP, which has been increasing through no design of the Conservative Party’s. It seems our economy hit its lowest point somewhere in 2013 and then started bouncing back in the right direction of its own accord. That’s what the economic cycle does, you see. So what happens if we hit another downturn? Well, then the deficit grows and the claim that it has been halved can no longer be made. In numerical terms, it hasn’t happened at all; George Osborne inherited a deficit of around £130-140 billion and cut it to around £90-100 billion.

Capping benefits is no way to ensure that work always pays. Increasing wages is the way to do that. Cutting income tax helps the rich more than the poor. Tories don’t like you to think about that, though – they want you to concentrate on the slight improvement to your pittance.

The claim that Labour will create more taxes and more debt has been debunked – comprehensively and in a most damning fashion – by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. It is foolish nonsense. And why is Cameron keen to talk about Labour’s plans? Is it because he refuses to explain where the Conservatives will make £12 billion in cuts to benefit payments?

The claim that Labour will ally with the SNP is a dream shared by David Cameron and Nicola Sturgeon. Labour currently has no intention of making any such alliance. Why is David Cameron keen to discuss what Labour will do in a Hung Parliament, rather than what the Conservatives will do? The polls currently indicate he has no hope of achieving a Parliamentary majority and this writer would rather know how David Cameron intends to stay in office – not how he thinks Ed Miliband would take over.

Finally, the question of a referendum on membership of the European Union is a non-starter with most of the electorate. UKIP has made a lot of noise, but less than one-fifth of the voting public want anything to do with that party. Cameron wants a referendum because it will keep the Eurosceptics in his own party quiet – that’s all. It’s nothing to do with what you want.

And that’s all he has to offer today. Not a lot, is it?

Let’s see how many he manages to mention – and how the others shoot him down.

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providing advance warning of the lines you’ll hear in the leader debate.

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Tories put Labour’s cart before their horse in budget row

Iain Duncan Smith has had 15 months in which to tell us where he'll make £12 billion in cuts to benefits. He simply doesn't want you to know and can't be bothered to tell you.

Iain Duncan Smith has had 15 months in which to tell you where he’ll make £12 billion in cuts to benefits. He simply doesn’t want you to know and can’t be bothered to tell you.

This writer is a big fan of The Critique Archives. Martin Odoni has no problem saying what he means and backing it up with facts – and the latest piece, In a democratic process you are supposed to tell us what your own damned budgets are before you insult someone else’s, is a prime example.

“Well, that was a blundering start to the Election campaign, even by the standards of the modern Conservative Party,” he writes.

“According to [Iain] Duncan Smith, the Conservatives have not yet made decisions on exactly how they are going to make the pledged cuts of twelve billion pounds to public spending, even though they announced them well over a year ago. They just have a nice, juicy-sounding target-figure to aim at, without even calculating whether it is a suitable target, and they are going to work out a budget to reach it ‘after-the-fact’? However, they have managed to calculate a budget for the Labour Party’s plans – and in such impressive detail that they can even tell us how much extra tax the average household will pay?

“After four hundred and fifty days of not figuring out their own budget, that may go down as a disproportionately-rigorous examination of Labour’s plans.”

Having gone on to show that the Institute for Fiscal Studies had comprehensively debunked the Tory claims, the article gets downright festive in its description of how “Britain’s Most Perennially-Caught-Out Serial Liar” – that’s Grant Shapps – responded. You’ll have to go and visit the article to read it.

The point is that the Tories were more concerned with lying about Labour’s plans than they were with telling the public about their own.

In an election period, those details become very important, don’t you think? And the Tories can’t be bothered… after around 15 months.

There are more festive descriptions of the possible outcome of any further Tory spending cuts, then we get to the meat and the (blue) blood: “It says a great deal about the arrogance and inflated self-importance of Cameron and his closest circle of colleagues that they see no need to explain to the country what they hope to do next. Make no mistake, these are people who see themselves as ‘above’ most of the rest of Britain, and as such, feel no compunction over lying to them, and sneer at the very thought of being ‘accountable’ to them. No, it is their innate ‘right’ to lead.

“It is the nature of democracy, if it is ever to work, that the public are trusted with the truth, so that they can make informed decisions on whom to trust in turn with their vote. The Conservatives will not co-operate with that ideal though. Their priority is power alone, and they rightly fear that an informed public, aware of precisely what a Tory Government would do to them, would never trust them with that power.”

That’s worth bearing in mind when you’re watching the televised leader debate on ITV tomorrow!

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