[NevTheSweeper]

"Keir Starmer's government should stop the austerity denial about these cuts"- Byline Times.

https://bylinetimes.com/2025/03/26/spri ... ts-budget/

[Tubby Isaacs]

It’s not austerity. Its cuts relative to the fairly large fiscal expansion announced in the budget. That isn’t denial.

[Boiler]

However, the DWP themselves (links to PDF file) have said that the effect of this statement will be that:

• Tighter Pip eligibility rules will lead to 150,000 people losing carer's allowance
• 250,000 more people, including 50,000 more children, will be pushed into relative poverty by benefit cuts
• Disability benefit cuts will affect 3.2m current or future claimant families, with average loses of £1,720

Not sure that this will easily be forgotten come 2029.

[Tubby Isaacs]

It's bad, but it's not "austerity" because that refers to overall current expenditure which is still going up.

[NevTheSweeper]

However, the DWP themselves (links to PDF file) have said that the effect of this statement will be that:

• Tighter Pip eligibility rules will lead to 150,000 people losing carer's allowance
• 250,000 more people, including 50,000 more children, will be pushed into relative poverty by benefit cuts
• Disability benefit cuts will affect 3.2m current or future claimant families, with average loses of £1,720

Not sure that this will easily be forgotten come 2029.

When looking at this objectively, it states exactly what it means.

CONTINUING AUSTERITY.

[Tubby Isaacs]

ISAs are going to be reformed in the Budget in the Autumn, by the sound of it. They're great for me but not sure why everybody else needs to fund my tax free saving. If you aren't lucky enough to have one of these, you may not know that you can put up to £20k in every year, and the interest remains tax free forever. You just stick it into another tax free ISA account at the end of every year. That's a pretty significant freebie.

Not that I have kids, but you can put £9k in every year for 2 kids. Plus £20k for your spouse. £58k worth of new tax free savings for a household every year, how can that be a priority?

[Tubby Isaacs]

When looking at this objectively, it states exactly what it means.

CONTINUING AUSTERITY.

It isn't, as I've explained. It's bad but it's not austerity if current spending is going up, as it is from tax rises and extra borrowing.

This isn't me being unobjective. This is maths.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Doubtless the people making these decisions think they're being very clever, but they basically added another significant cut on top of what was supposed to be strategic new approach last week. I think that looks (and is) very bad.

I know they want to point to improvement in the NHS, but wouldn't they have been better taking some of the money from the increased spending there? The determination to stick to capital budgets is laudable, but in terms of the day to day spend, how much difference does, say, £500m a year make to that in the short term? I would think not all that much when you share it across the whole NHS system. Whereas £500m on a specific benefit cut is a lot aimed at a fairly small group of vulnerable people.

[Tubby Isaacs]

So this was all a load of bollocks. Funny how this keeps happening with some papers supposedly favorable to Labour.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Dan Neidle thinks some very good stuff has been announced about tax avoidance. Not revenue raising but will stop a lot of dubious barristers ripping naive people off.

https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/03/26/rad ... statement/

[The Weeping Angel]

Doubtless the people making these decisions think they're being very clever, but they basically added another significant cut on top of what was supposed to be strategic new approach last week. I think that looks (and is) very bad.

I know they want to point to improvement in the NHS, but wouldn't they have been better taking some of the money from the increased spending there? The determination to stick to capital budgets is laudable, but in terms of the day to day spend, how much difference does, say, £500m a year make to that in the short term? I would think not all that much when you share it across the whole NHS system. Whereas £500m on a specific benefit cut is a lot aimed at a fairly small group of vulnerable people.

I'm inclined to blame the OBR for that somewhat.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I'm not. Reeves didn't need to announce any of this stuff now. Could have all been in the budget in the Autumn. If you're missing your targets then, you can do stuff. Of course, it's unlikely that Trump disappears by then, so things are unlikely to be better but the fact remains, you can do it then.

This seems to have been about getting (some) bad news out the way now. There'll likely be tax rises in October. All they gain by doing this is have more time of everyone saying they're bastards. Just in terms of news management, that doesn't seem to work.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The UK Government might have found some extra cash from an unlikely source- the Scottish Government.

This would be absolutely mad for the Scottish Government to support.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Apart from Jonathan Portes, this is a fairly unimpressive set of single-issue commentators, some of whom just seem to dislike Defence spending. Sure, the overseas aid and green power advocate might not like the money being moved to Defence, but given that the UK is fairly strong in this sector already and Europe is committed to spending a lot more, I don't see why it's particularly fanciful to see it as a source of growth.

Why invite a civil service union leader to comment rather than an expert on government? Of course he doesn't like the fact that civil service budgets could be cut. His argument that the government shouldn't have a budget in mind at this stage is not very strong. And "Patriotic Millionaires" are a self-selected group of 60 people who support a wealth tax. I think there are considerable reasons to be skeptical of that. Perhaps I should join up with 59 other people and form a group. "We should pay more ourselves if we want more, like they do in Western Europe". Where's my media gig?

Portes' comments are worth quoting.

Blame Tony Benn. The requirement for the government to publish at least two official economic forecasts each year, enshrined in his 1975 Industry Act, has collided with the chancellor’s commitment that those forecasts be consistent with her fiscal rules. Without that we wouldn’t really need a spring statement all.

The government has promised a spending review, an industrial strategy and an immigration white paper, all to come, not to mention a reset of our relationship with the EU. After that we will know the policy specifics behind the government’s strategy. Meanwhile, largely outside our control, we will also get a much better idea of just how much damage Maganomics will do.

So it would have been far better to wait until October and look at tax and spending in the round. Instead, alongside some really positive improvements to help support people into work, the government has hastily thrown together a package of cuts to disability benefits to “balance the books”. The problem isn’t the fiscal rules themselves, although the need to get within their lines twice a year is unnecessary. Ultimately, the constraint that government should balance tax and spending over the medium to long term, while borrowing to invest, can’t really be dodged, rules or no rules.

By October the numbers will have shifted again, but the basic challenge will remain the same: how to restore productivity growth and improve living standards, while repairing Britain’s public services and addressing what should in any civilised society be unacceptable levels of poverty and destitution, all in the face of an ageing population. There is some genuinely good news in today’s statement – on planning reform, further increases to capital investment, and on training. But more will be required – not just higher taxes, but major tax reforms, and willingness to take some difficult political decisions on social care, immigration, EU relations and much more.

He's pretty complimentary, considering the benefit cuts (he's a strong advocate of spending on benefits). My impression is of a good government with an over punitive attitude to benefits. Whether anyone will vote for that, God knows.



https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -forecasts

[Tubby Isaacs]

Interesting to read that the need for a second forecast goes back to Tony Benn in 1975. I suppose things were pretty volatile then and he thought the government might get some extra headway sooner (though the Treasury did the numbers then, so could pull strokes with them).

[Tubby Isaacs]

Again, I'm bound to ask what he actually wants to happen. Becoming a de facto customs union with the EU is going to involve walking into a lot of tariffs. Is Starmer really after a US trade deal which nobody wants, or is this trying to keep Trump in Ukraine and from sticking a load of tariffs on the UK.

Bluesky seems to be full of people who think like this. If it's representative of the public, Ed Davey and Clive Lewis can start measuring up the curtains in No.10 and No.11.

[Tubby Isaacs]

But perhaps something is happening. Doubtless this will satisfy hardly anybody, even if it's good. Hard Man of Rejoin, Ed Davey, will probably be chief critic.

[Crabcakes]

My hope is, the universal negative feedback about the spring statement/benefit changes (some hugely overblown, some fair, some inevitable) will lead to closer European ties and more quickly to allow for a better economy and rapid easing of the cuts to those hardest hit. My worry is a hammering in the local elections spikes a panic and a rightward shift in pursuit of remain voters.

[RedSparrows]

My hope is, the universal negative feedback about the spring statement/benefit changes (some hugely overblown, some fair, some inevitable) will lead to closer European ties and more quickly to allow for a better economy and rapid easing of the cuts to those hardest hit. My worry is a hammering in the local elections spikes a panic and a rightward shift in pursuit of remain voters.

Given the dominant logic still feels fundamentally Tory in origin (in terms of, at least, a) the press and its obsessions, b) the 'feel' of public discourse, and c) Labour's genuflection to b), even with many differences, I'm not optimistic.)

[Abernathy]

You know, it struck me last night that the way that Reeves & Starmer are being widely excoriated for the decisions taken in order to try to reduce the massive cost of sustaining people on long-term sickness and disability benefits, particularly from anguished lefties and even centrist dad Labourites along the lines of it being “not something you’d ever expect Labour to do” is something not many of those critics (Corbyn was on Newsnight last night offering nothing beyond a half-hearted “How about a wealth tax?” ) really understand, politically speaking .

Stick with me - this might sound counter-intuitive, but the very fact that these policy decisions are “not something you’d ever expect Labour to do” provides me with some reassurance that Reeves & Starmer’s decisions have not been arrived at on a whim, or with malicious intent, or even carelessly or wantonly. They have been arrived at because, in the global economic and geo-political conditions in which this government is obliged to operate -Trump could well throw a massive tariff-shaped spanner into the UK’s economic works just next week - they are judged to be necessary, or even essential, if not, perhaps, wholly unavoidable.

Paradoxically, that the Labour government is doing stuff that you wouldn’t normally expect a Labour government to do is a stone-cold indicator that that government is deadly serious about fixing the shitfest left by the Tories, in advance of beginning to deliver the sort of good stuff that you would expect a Labour government to do. Remember that even the Blair government stuck rigidly to Tory spending plans for the first two whole years of its first term - before delivering a properly funded and well-regarded NHS, Sure Start, The Good Friday Agreement, and much else.

In raw political terms, of course, there is an element of getting all this unpopular but necessary stuff over and done with early in the government’s term, in the expectation of being able to deliver more beneficially popular stuff closer to election time. That’s just politics.

The message ? Bite the bullet. Weather the storms. We will get through this.