This blog has on several occasions covered the need for the government to do well to head off the threat of populism. Whatever your politics, unless you are a Reform UK supporter (this is not your type of blog, I suspect…), a bit of Labour success would be good for the UK from a number of perspectives.
That is why the lack of competence exhibited by ministers is so frustrating. Botched announcements on spending cuts, a failure to grip house building, the small boats crisis, any social care reform proposals kicked into the long grass. The list goes on with the addition this week that some dangerous prisoners have been mistakenly released from incarceration early.
The headline of this old political advertisement still seems relevant today…
And we are in the run up to the Budget which will surely make or break this government once and for all. There is a £30 billion deficit to fill and that means there will be no good news for anybody. As a small business founder, if I hear from politicians that small businesses are the backbone of the economy, I shall scream. Both Conservative and Labour governments have raised taxes on small firms, taken away incentives for entrepreneurs to take risks and smothered them in red tape. If Reeves doesn’t understand the ingredients for growth now, she never will. I am not optimistic.
Public spending must be reined in but Labour backbenchers don’t seem to have the appetite to make even minor cuts. There is a review of benefits being undertaken but it is not due to report for some while so not much expectation that cost savings will be found in this area soon. It is incredible to hear that one in five people of working age are not in employment and receiving benefits for one reason or another. This is not sustainable. Truckloads of cash are thrown at the NHS whilst doctors keep striking, but it has already been announced health spending will be ring-fenced. Local authorities are going bankrupt across the country as they struggle to recover from austerity whilst spending ever more sums on the private provision of social care.
So, more taxes on the rich, and short-term spending cuts which will probably be chaotic as there isn’t the time, before the next election, for thought to be given to strategic, meaningful targeted reductions. This should have been done long before now.
Farage has no solutions, the Tories are irrelevant, LibDems have nothing to say on economics, the Greens under their new leader come across as anarchists. Oh dear. We need Labour to succeed but expectations of them doing so are very, very low. If only ‘Abstain’ was a political party…
Inside Right Politics 