You will be relieved to know that there will be no live blog of Alastair Darling's Pre Budget Report this afternoon. I shall be in the car heading for London, no doubt shouting at the car radio. One thing I shall certainly be listening out for is for Darling to announce a review of Inheritance Tax. There's no doubt that Labour have been hurt hard by the George Osborne's announcement last week. Any announcement by Darling will have to be seen for what it is - a knee jerk reaction and a desperate attempt to reclaim the political agenda. The PBR is supposed to be about spending, not tax.
I suspect many of us will have fun over the next few days compiling lots of Labour quotes about how wonderful IHT is.
9 comments:
Careful, Iain. Plenty of Tories have said that all sorts of things were wonderful, or not...
Or more interestingly how Darling will spin the initial "IHT is only paid by x% of households" and reforming it will cost y thousand nurses and teachers.
"The PBR is supposed to be about spending not tax..."
Where did you get that from? It's nonsense. It's been used to preview Budget measures since 1997.
I see that Tony and Cherie are contemplating buying an £8 million estate in Buckinghamshire to add to their portfolio of properties in London, Sedgefield and Bristol.
To be honest I cannot think of a better argument for inheritance tax (and possibly wealth tax too) than that.
Clearly they have combined the CSR with the PBR to muddy the waters. It is clear that the forecasts unveiled by one G Brown just 6 months ago were hopelessly optimistic. It is clear that instead of heading for surplus the budget defecits will be piling up faster in the years ahead. Darling is going to have to slash growth forecasts and bring in some fairly hefty tax rises or accept a piling up of yet more debt.
My only hope is that we shred the government over this, not just in the HoC but in the media.
Darling will do what he's told - that why he's chancellor. Gordon will have some complex, targeted system that requires the employment of lots more civil servants to mis-administer it.
Inheritance Tax Credits ?
There is an underlying theme here. Labour see being in government as an opportunity to campaign for 5 years. The are only interested in the headlines, not the country or the job they have been elected to do.
Who would have believed a hundred days ago that a Brown government could be more shameless than a Blair government - but it is !
"Any announcement by Darling will have to be seen for what it is" - you mean a smart response following the highly successful cunning plan to tease out some half-baked Tory policies twenty months before the election?! Tee hee...
Treasury civil servants who spent last week getting out figures to prove that the Tory IHT proposals were unaffordable have spent this week getting out figures to prove the contrary.
Q. "Prime Minister, Would you have raised the threshold on IHT if it had not been suggested by the Tories last week?"
A. "I would have made the same decision."
[Nose grows longer, pants begin to smoulder, etc. etc.]
Even when Gordon nicks someone else's idea he can't make it straightforward
Amazing how long a week is in politics. Last week Labour were queing up to denounce those with estates of £1M as the "wealthy few" but now they realise that they were actually voters in key marginals of "middle england"
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