[Tubby Isaacs]

It's basically a general tax though, like any other.

The trouble with the budget process now is that you just tell the OBR that you're definitely going to increase fuel duty and make big cuts next year, and there's not much they can do about it. Doubtless there are even more ridiculous figures pencilled in for after the eleciton than now.

[Tubby Isaacs]

This would seem to be the opposite position on migration to what Rishi has been promising...

[Tubby Isaacs]

Some nice economic nationalism from Jeremy. Hunt, not Corbyn, amazingly.

[Youngian]

Some nice economic nationalism from Jeremy. Hunt, not Corbyn, amazingly.

Sounds Iike a Brown policy, George not Gordon. Capital wasn’t as mobile in the 60s and you could defer or avoid 97% wealth taxes by being patriotic. Hunt’s just giving more free money to people with spare cash (they do exist, you might not know them but Hunt will) who pay next to no tax.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Sounds Iike a Brown policy, George not Gordon. Capital wasn’t as mobile in the 60s and you could defer or avoid 97% wealth taxes by being patriotic. Hunt’s just giving more free money to people with spare cash (they do exist, you might not know them but Hunt will) who pay next to no tax.

That sounds like a classic from the "we're going to make the economy grow faster because we're clever" era. Call it neoliberalism, or whatever, but one of the insights of the era was that they couldn't really make it grow faster than it would anyway, With a few exceptions (what were South Wales pit villages supposed to do with coal?) I mostly prefer to swerve that stuff and make sure that money goes into areas and the pockets of people who live in them rather than strategising your way out of broader cycles in industry.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Unlikely attack from the Right here. SNP say Hunt should have brought back mortgage interest relief.

[Youngian]

I’d like my British ISA to invest in luxury flats in Southampton. Jeremy Hunt has seven and the rents rose by 15% last year. Nice little earner.

[The Weeping Angel]

Really thoughtful piece here

The fundamental deal of democratic politics is this: the political class deal with the policy detail and, on the basis of reality, put forward visions for the country from which voters choose.

Our role, and I include myself here, as a political class is to amalgamate the incoherence of public opinion and policy options into a coherent programme. That involves making hard choices, grounded the reality. And, once we’ve done that we present these separate visions to the country who chooses.

This means that those with better things to do don’t have to engage with policy detail but still, fundamentally, control our trajectory of the country. They delegate their role in scrutinising that detail to us, a key responsibility of the press and political class. It’s never been a perfect system but, broadly, it has worked. Until now.

Because fundamentally the political class have abdicated that responsibility. We are no longer engaging with reality or even trying to provide coherent programmes. We pretend we can cut taxes against imaginary headroom, move the dates of spending plans back for electoral expedinacy, and deliberately salt the ground for our opponents in the hope of electoral advantage.

More than that this sort of behaviour is actively incentivised by our system. The political class consists for 3 broad, interrelated pillars; the politicians themselves, the press and commentariat and the policy wonks. In general the politicians decide, the press hold to account and the wonks provide the ideas.