Having slept on it, watched, and listened to the coverage of the Pre-Budget Report I think a conclusion I drew yesterday when the National Insurance increases were introduced is more true than ever.
That conclsuioon was that the 0.5% increas ein NI had just lost Labour quite number of marginal seats. Now the dust has settled that seems even more likely because anyone earning £40,000 a year, which is not actually alot of money in the scheme of things, will find themselves around £1000 a year worse off under the changes.
That change is going to have a direct impact on the very people in the marginal seats that Labour took from the Tories in 1997 and that they need to hold on to to win the next election. I would say that the NI change alone will lose those seats for Labour. Of course, they are gambling that people will "understand" they have to "do their bit". I personally don't think people think like that.
When a recession is going on, when the economy is tanking, what people look at is not the so-called "wider picture" but instead they just see the bottom line of their net salary. When they see that drop by just under £100 every month they will react. Let's just put that into persepctive, that's a weeks supermarket shopping on VAT exempt purchases for a family of four.
What's more, the tax credit changes for those people, if they even choose to take them out represent little more than pennies in a month. This mini-budget as such not only spells the death of New Labour but the I'd say the death of the Labour Government for the next term.
10 comments:
People on £40,000 already do more than their "bit", which is why although £40,000 sounds like a lot of money, it doesn't seem to go very far after tax. Do the socialists think it's OK just to keep hammering and hammering the same people?
The budget reaction in my office of middle income people is one of anger and frustration. Frustration that the socialists have done it again, anger that it will be so hard to fix again.
Fingers crossed.
I don't see what the problem is. The clever ones can offset the £1000 a year salary deduction by applying for one of those higher-paid super jobs that are still being crammed into the Guardian's vacancy pages. I, for one, am fed up with working as a skilled tool-maker, producing goods that are the envy of the World; I've always wanted to contribute more to the country's GDP, so my application's in today as a diversity inclusion outreach empowerment facilitating officer.
'..death of Labour for....'
This is the death of Nu/Old/Lab for twenty years or more. Those Middle Englanders who were seduced by Blair/Mandelson/Campbell promises and voted Lab in 97/01 will never ever vote Labour again - their savings and pensions have been destroyed- and neither will their children.
The mini budget is a summary of the systematic destruction of UKplc by the mad and evil Brown who used this country as his lab for his social engineering schemes.
Sadly those fools taken in by Tony Bliar could have avoided this by listening to anybody who could remember the 70's. How long now before the lights go out?
It's just a pity that Messrs Brown and Darling have realised this and decided to go with a scorched earth strategy - the situation will be so dire for the Tories when they take over.
By constantly reiterating that this is all "the world's" fault and then leaving the next government to pay for this government's actions, Labour are trying to absolve themselves from blame for the current state of affairs and leave the Tories to take the blame for the tax rises (after all, these tax rises didn't happen under Labour). The objective is to make themselves more attractive by 2015 or so.
Oh dear, I wish I had a £40k income - try living on £16k and no assistance in NuLab's Britain!
And there are still fools out there who'd vote for this shower of shit!!
And will a miserly 2.3% off prices produce a boost in the Christmas retail figures?
No, didn't think so.
Who was it that used to go on about "the pound in your pocket" sometime during the last century?
Well that pound just dropped through the pocket of my threadbare jeans (Tesco reduced from £3 to £2.40 last week)
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