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Christmas Tree

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Alex
Alex

The thing with the trans issue is it’s another thing they’ve tried to weaponise to play to their base. Even in the wake of this, another entirely avoidable and entirely of their own making PR disaster

Renton
Renton

I'm just going to land this here. Two years ago I was in a desperate place, I reached out and for some reason you were there and really helped me. We don't see eye to eye on everything Rayvin but you

trophyshy
trophyshy

My first wife had her period on our honeymoon.    Not since Pearl Harbor has a Japanese flag seen so much action in Hawaii.  

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Alex

Alex 35095

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By the way, Osborne's 3% stamp duty premium, which on paper is a good idea to dissuade landlords from buying up all shared property and allow FTBs instead to buy homes....

 

Well a Treasury spokesperson has admitted that limited companies with portfolios of 15 properties or more are exempt from the increased stamp duty. So the wealthier you are as a property developer, the better positioned you are to keep buying up property. You could not make this lot up.

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Dr Gloom

Dr Gloom 21924

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from the FT


George Osborne takes a leaf from Ed Balls’s book


George Osborne’s revised spending plans bear an uncanny resemblance to those of his erstwhile rival, former Labour shadow chancellor Ed Balls, according to economists.

Before the May general election, the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies calculated Labour plans meant departments would have £30bn more to spend by 2019-20 than under the Conservatives.

At the time, Mr Osborne argued the UK general election was a choice between “chaos and competence” and repeatedly criticised Labour for having what he categorised as “unfunded” spending commitments.

But on Wednesday, the Chancellor rowed back from the cuts he had pencilled into departmental spending by just over £30bn — in effect bridging the gap between the two pre-election spending policies.

Gavin Kelly, chief executive of the Resolution Trust, said the plans “now look more like what we might have expected to see had Labour won power.

“Mr Osborne has confirmed in his Summer Budget and then Autumn Statement not just his political pragmatism but also his openness to ideas from a variety of sources: he’ll steal ideas from both Ed Miliband or Ed Balls.”

Paul Johnson, director of the IFS, said that there was now a “really big gap” between the outlook now and what voters would have expected from the Conservative manifesto. That document heavily emphasised tax cuts and spending cuts.

The U-turns came as Mr Osborne shifted the emphasis of his economic programme, with additional tax rises and extra spending pencilled in to lessen the cuts to public services.

Instead of anticipated cuts of over a third to all non-protected government departments, the annual spending review instead raised stamp duty on rental properties, increased local taxes and imposed an “apprenticeship levy” on employers. Cuts to unprotected departments were reduced to 18 per cent, the IFS calculated.

Ironically, Mr Osborne has also breached his self-imposed cap on welfare spending as a consequence of his retreat from plans to cut £4.4bn from tax credits, although there are still cuts for some low earners to come as a new benefit, universal credit, is phased in to replace existing welfare payments.

Mr Balls declined to comment for this article but Karim Palant, his former head of policy, said that the changes showed that Labour was right to warn that Mr Osborne’s stated plans were “implausible” and it was “making the most credible arguments in the Spring.”

The softening of spending cuts is also a vindication for those economists who had questioned whether the deep public spending squeeze would be politically palatable and deliverable in practice.

Michael Saunders of Citi said the shift “has probably made the fiscal plans more politically sustainable and hence more likely to be delivered”.

Those close to Mr Osborne laughed at the suggestion he was changing his political clothes, saying “we are merely occupying the central ground”.

Business paid a price for the shift, as details of the apprenticeship levy were published on top of the estimated £4bn annual costs of the national living wage already announced by the chancellor.

Mr Palant noted that when Labour suggested a 1p rise in corporation tax, “this was painted as the end of Britain as a capitalist economy”, but the £3bn apprenticeship levy imposed by Mr Osborne represented a far more substantial tax on business.

Middle England’s favourite investment vehicle — property — was also hit hard, with those purchasing buy-to-let properties or second homes facing an additional 3 per cent on stamp duty. When Labour proposed an annual “mansion tax” on properties worth more than £2m, Mr Osborne said the idea would be “unworkable”.

But with the country still only half way through one of the biggest deficit reduction programmes in the developed world, this does not mean austerity has been forgotten.


Carl Emmerson, deputy director of the IFS, cautioned though that while it was “certainly true” Mr Osborne has moved closer to Labour manifesto, in terms of easing the planned cuts particularly to unprotected departments over this parliament, there were still major differences.

“There are still some quite big cuts to come, whereas under Labour’s plans it was possible only pretty small cuts to departmental spending might have been required,” he said.

Mr Osborne is planning to achieve an absolute £10bn surplus by 2020, whereas Labour had pledged to run a surplus on the current budget — which excludes investment — “as soon as possible.”

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