The Budget: sound and fury signifying very little.

 

 

In nearly sixty years of studying and teaching economics I have always felt attitudes to the UK’s annual budget to be over-hyped. In earlier time MPs honoured it by wearing top hats,  chancellors of the exchequer stimulated themselves with mysterious drinks, one of Disraeli’s  budget speech lasted five hours  but this wasn’t a record as he took a break in the middle, Gladstone once  managed four hours non-stop.

Rachel Reeves’s budget probably wins the record for the longest and most misleading  deluge of pre-event speculation around (deliberately leaked?) predictions.

These annual budgets have very little effect on the quality of the day to day lives of the vast majority of the population.  The very poorest may benefit by  a little more income or a better chance  of getting a job.  The lives of the comfortable and rich are hardly affected at all.

Similarly whatever the government does to try to affect the over-all level  of economic activity,  presently  the desperate quest for economic growth,  is often far overshadowed by external events:   Donald Trump's tariff wars, the price of oil, the Ukraine war, a stock exchange crash, to name but some.

That said, I watched most of the speech  and M/s Reeves sounded confident and  I felt made a good case.  She kept within her self-imposed fiscal rules and pre-election promise, found enough money to abolished the two-child benefit  limit, taxed gambling and EV cars, and introduced an additional council tax on very expensive houses. (Will that stay with the councils or go to the central government for re-distribution from the rich to poorer authorities?)

I was sorry to see the Lower Thames Crossing confirmed as that is just a pointless prestige project, (ditto the largest of the London Airport expansion schemes) and the overhauling of the planning system which will further over-centralise our inefficient government.

In summary, the budget raises taxes in order to marginally improve the public realm and the plight of the poorest. The Tories regard that as a criticism: Labour should be “out and proud.”

I have three major criticisms.

1.The whole hooligan atmosphere of the budget debate does our democracy little credit.  Despite the reservations expressed above, the budget is a serious business, especially for the poorest, and should be treated as such, not for jah-boo behaviour which would disgrace a football crowd

 2.The approach is “muddling through.”  The extra “add on “ of council tax for expensive houses is simply to make an unfair and ineffective tax just a little bit less  unfair and ineffective.  For real change we need a root and branch revision of the purpose of local government and how to finance it.

3.  We need lots more “green” measures.  Why is the pause in “accelerator” on fuel duty still in place, and no duty all or aviation fuel; why no taxes on pollution, congestion other “bads.?”

As to the political effect, I suspect both M/s Reeves and Sir Keir Starmer (who was very confident at PMQs) have saved their jobs.

 Now let’s hope the Labour Party will stop fighting itself and get round to governing the county efficiently and with vision.

World Toilet Day 2025

 Like Christmas, World Water Day (19th September) seems to come round more quickly every year.  The number of people without access to a place to defecate,and  urinate in privacy, safety, decency, with  and the waste disposed of  hygienically, at 3.4 billion,  is slightly lower than the figure I quoted last year, 3.5 billion,.  Not much as a ball-park figure, but it does mean a reduction in human anxiety for 500,000 individual people.  

Think of that when you next retire to your bathroom or a lavatory cubical. That's a huge reduction in human anxiety.. Maybe you'll feel "moved" (pun intended) to send a donation to Wateraid  ,  who work hard to help communities create suitable and sustainable facilities for their inhabitants.  One such is the VIP toilet, which doesn’t mean for Very Important Persons, but Ventilated Improved Pit, the ventilation cutting down the smell and the flies and therefore  the spread of disease.

 Today is also International Men's Day, so it's worth remembering that the lack of access to lavatories is a bigger problem for  women that it is for men, and particularly those who still have to resort to  "Open Defecation" (squatting in the bush ) where they can be the prey to predators aiming to rape them as well as to  embarrassment  and indignity. 

 Maybe we males should double our donations in recognition and  appreciation  of our more "convenient" (pun intended)  endowment.

 

A Liberal Policy on inward Migration

 The following is lifted 100% from a post by  Matthew Hulbert on Liberal Democrat Voice (17th November 2025.https://www.libdemvoice.org/mathew-on-monday-labours-reformlite-immigration-crackdown-isnt-leadership-its-politics-by-fear-78723.html)

 

"Liberals should say this clearly: You don’t fix the asylum system by making life harder for refugees. You fix it by creating safe, managed, humane routes to the UK; by processing claims efficiently; and by helping people (not forcing them) to integrate and contribute once they’re here, as the overwhelming majority of people do.

A genuinely fair system would do three things.

First, expand safe and legal routes so people fleeing war and persecution don’t have to gamble their lives on dangerous journeys.

We know this works – it’s the safest, most cost-effective, and most orderly way to protect people and maintain public confidence.

Second, replace indefinite insecurity with clear, timely, routes to settlement. Twenty years in limbo doesn’t deter desperate people; it simply prevents them from building stable lives, working, contributing, and integrating into our communities.

Third, enforce the rules in a way that distinguishes between criminality and legitimate asylum claims. A blanket crackdown treats human beings as a problem to be managed rather than as neighbours, workers, parents, friends, and future citizens.

Our Liberal vision isn’t naïve. Rules matter. But compassion matters too. The two can – and must – go together. A Britain that treats people with dignity is a Britain that strengthens its own social fabric and moral standing.

Labour had the chance to show that progressive government can be principled as well as pragmatic. Instead, this Prime Minister and his new Home Secretary opted for headlines over humanity.

As Liberal Democrats we must make the case for something better: an immigration system rooted in fairness, compassion, and confidence – a system that treats everyone as human beings, not political props."

Thank you Mr Hulbert. I hope our parliamentary party adopts this policy and its tone lock, stock and barrel. and so demonstrates there is till a sense common decency in Britain's political system.

 

As well as posting regularly  on LDV Matthew Hulbert is   Co-Host of the Political Frenemies podcast.

The Nasty Twenties

 

Some decades are characterised  by a name.  The last  of the nineteenth century was “the Naughty Nineties,”  though by current standards I suspect they were very straight-laced.  The second decade of the twentieth Century was the “roaring Twenties” when people enjoyed the relief of the end of the First World War.  I suspect most of the “roaring” was done by the better better-off. 

There followed the “Swinging Sixties.”  I lived though these.  There wasn’t much swinging in my life-style, but  I do recollect a tremendous amount of optimism and hope.  We really thought we could  “Build the New Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land” as the then deputy leader of the Labour Party, Mr George Brown, put it at an election rally I attended in Cleckheaton.

If the present decade gets a name it will surely be the “Nasty Twenties.”  Day after day the news is peppered with small-minded sniping, much of it directed at people of other cultures, particularly those coming across the Channel in boats (despite the fact that they represent only 7% of the total number of  migrants, most of whom we desperately need.)

Tory Robert Jenrick complains that while filming in part of  Birmingham he couldn’t see another white face.  Another Tory, Katie Lam, suggests that | lot of migrants already here perfectly legally  may have to be sent “home” in order to preserve a “mostly but not entirely culturally coherent group of people.”  A Reform MP, Sarah Pochin, complains of being driven mad when she sees “adverts full of black people, full of Asian people.”  Maybe  this, at the very least “dog whistle,” racism, is legitimised by Sir Keir Starmer’s having  expressed fears of our becoming an “island of strangers” (though he has retracted the statement.)  Justice Minister David Lammy refers to a recent migrant accidentally released too early from prison as “Vile”.  He’s certainly no gentleman, but . . . “Vile?”

It’s not just racism.  After fourteen years of Conservative rule of which he was part and  in which the justice system, along with the rest of the public realm was allowed to deteriorate, the above mentions Mr Jenrick has  the audacity to blame Mr Lammy, barely two months in the job, for the “incompetence” (more probably over-stretched resources) which led to the prisoner’s release.    

The right misses no opportunity to expose and exaggerate the tiniest slip that the government and its members make. The latest is  a concerted attack, probably confected by ex-Prime Minister Johnson and his cronies, on the BBC for the improper conflation of Mr Trump’s speech  to his followers as they marched towards Congress to try to prevent the declaration  of the Election of Joe Biden as President in January 2021.

 What Trump actually said early in the speech  was. ““We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women”.  The bit about “fighting like hell” came towards the end.  None of this alters the fact that Trump played every trick in the book in his attempt to coerce  judges and returning officers to declare results invalid, and is now dong his best to rig the coming mid-term elections.

In the UK the Right has the money to control most of the media and can make sure its prejudices are well aired.  The BBC attempts a balance.  Most of us on the “Left” believe it gives more exposure than is deserved to the Right (consider climate change, the excessive appearances of Farage ). So if both ends of the spectrum feel affronted , the BBC is probably getting it right

The BBC, the jewel among  the world’s communicators,  should not be cowed.  I dearly hope Starmer and Co have the courage to defend it to the hilt.  But I’m not optimistic.

Nic Aubury’s 4-line poem in this week’s “The New Word” sums up our decade:

Poppy Zealots

Ironically, they do appear

Quite broadly to support

The views against  which those that we’re

Remembering once fought.