A lot in this budget was trailed in advance: VAT, capital gains and personal tax allowances up, tax credits and business taxes down and big cuts in public services.
Behind it lay some particularly vicious small print that will have major consequences for the life chances of the most vulnerable in society. And the basis for it were tenuous changes to some theoretical assumptions about growth and capacity in the economy.
Meanwhile support for economic regeneration will come through private sector investment, in infrastructure projects, growth funds and support for small businesses.
For the C1 and C2 voters, so crucial in the last election, there were some gains – provided they don’t have children, get housing benefit, or work in the public sector.
The welfare benefit changes were tougher than expected, and resoundingly shifted money from purse to wallet. A £40,000 cut off for household incomes, with other changes that will hit families on modest incomes. The small print will show what happens to tax credit support for childcare costs for working parents, and the earnings disregards for lone parents. The freezing of child benefit was a throwback to the last Tory Government, when it contributed to the record rise in child poverty.
Changes to housing benefits beggared belief, with caps that are out of line with rents in any but the most depressed regions of the country. It will mean a lot of people paying hefty top-ups to landlords out of modest earnings or benefits.
George Osborne’s plans aim to create a budget surplus in time for the next General Election, assuming this Parliament runs its full course. Harriet Harman, in her well-judged attack on the Lib Dems, aims to drive a wedge into the heart of the coalition and make sure it doesn’t last so long.
Of course labour welfare reforms were nice, two new medicals which are putting people with cancer back to work.
Yes the budget is bad but Labour left power with a bloke in charge who cannot even show is face, he is now being paid as an MP while sitting at home we are told writing and writing and writing, is it a book, is it a Budget is it a pile of rubbish.
In the end after many many years of watching New labour kick the shit out of the working class, we needed a bloody Tory party.
It’s down to you MP’s who kept Brown in power knowing what the people think of him.
So Robert, the fact that Labour tackled child poverty with some success, set up the Sure Start programme, gave pensioners heating allowances, gave tax credits to pensioners and for the first ten years were lauded for their handling of the economy under Gordon Brown completely passed you by. This is not to mention the vast improvements in the Health Service and the funding for schools, the expansion of nursery education, the acceptance of the Social Chapter, the minimum wage, etc. etc. You may be too young to remember the state of the country in 1997 but there is no excuse for your ignorance. I am 70 and vividly remember the Thatcher years when all we workers were kicked virtually to death so get real !
The min wage set at 3.62 was a laughing stock, people under the age of twenty five paid less then an adult yet they are able to fight Blair’s wars, our troops earning 14,000 a year is an insult.
The removal by Brown of 10p tax band.
The idea that every child would have a job is ridiculous, all they get is another stupid training program, my grandson is going body surfing this week in a bonding plan ready for his exciting new job whoops no it’s not it’s picking up litter.
Nothing has pasted me by not even the ending of boom and bloody bust. the simple fact all Brown did in his time was carry on with Thatcherism. Look at Brown he does not have the guts to show his face, but still draws a wage.
The welfare reforms under this ass hole.
Sorry mate if Brown was such a great chancellor why is it Cameron is now in power.
This is New Labour the ideal of Thatcher with the same spin lies and bull shit.