Imagine the glee in
Tory HQ yesterday when the Chancellor sat down. Not only had they produced a
budget which depends heavily on entirely
fictitious cuts to public spending in future years, they’ve also stolen
Labour’s clothes on two tax increases which were designated by Labour to fund a
whole load of policies. Given Labour’s ‘cast-iron’ commitment to a
stupid and unnecessary fiscal rule, it means that an incoming Labour government
will be obliged to identify the cuts which Hunt has declined to identify (in
the certain knowledge that it won’t be him making them) and obliged by a
compliant Tory media to explain how they will now fund the various things for
which the cash has now been given away. I’m sure that the backroom staff will
be celebrating the success of their cunning plan to make things as difficult as
possible for the next government. How clever they must have thought themselves.
So clever, in fact,
that they even issued the press with a helpful
briefing list of all the things which Labour will not now be able to do.
The thing is, though, that most of the items on that list appear likely to be
generally popular. Telling people how clever the Tories have been by sabotaging
funding for more NHS appointments, more NHS dentistry (a service which has
reached crisis point), school breakfast clubs, home insulation and so on doesn’t
immediately strike me as being the cleverest of moves. Preventing Labour from pursuing
unpopular policies is one thing; preventing them from pursuing popular ones is
quite another. And boasting about it looks like a form of political insanity.
Still, as the saying
goes, “those whom the gods would destroy…”.
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