A Budget of Nothingness

Todays budget was, as ever, a story of Tory failure: failure to tackle climate change (except for increased taxation on red deisel); insufficient funding of public services (nothing, yes nothing for social care); no plan to support workers in the GIG economy, (or their employers) through the emerging coronovirus pandemic and no VAT reductions to help businesses cope with reduced footfall during the crisis.

What we do see is a government panicking over the failures of its predecessors and chucking money at the NHS and infrastructure without a plan or some insight into the real problems underfunding have created over the last decade eg: 16k less beds and 30k nursing posts unfilled.

The panic has also resulted in the Tories, not for the first time, stealing our policies: it is clear we won the arguments on capital spend, R&D and regional rebalancing, but it is a pity it took the Tories a decade of wasted austerity to recognise that it doesnt work. Labour has always argued that it was a political choice, not a necessity, and this budget of borrowing and Keynesian state intervention demonstrates that Johnson and his ministers agree with this analysis.

This is a budget of ‘nothingness‘ because it fails to provide any roadmap for the future. We are told disposable income ‘may’ decline in 2022; we know that there is a possibility of recession caused by the health crisis and brexit, the economy is flatlining and, of course, there is no £350m a week Brexit dividend. Hidden amongst the soundbites is the cold reality that growth over the next 5 years is expected to be 7.3%, and this was calculated before the coronovirus impact is known and when the downgrade to growth this year is added, it is likely to result in the weakest official 5 year growth forecast ever.

Difficult times ahead, the failure to secure a Labour government in 2019 may cost us all dearly.