Having Your Cake and Eating It
April 6th, 2008The start of a new financial year finally brings the baleful effects of the 2007 Budget into force. Gordon Brown’s final flourish as Chancellor was one of the most dishonest moments of his career to date. After ten years spent in complicating the tax system, he dared to declare himself as the great simplifier. He would leave us with just two bands: 20% and 40%, shaving 2% off the lower rate at a stroke. How they cheered him on the Government benches! Members who continue to sit on those same benches are now telling us that they are concerned that the ending of the 10% band is causing direct, immediate and real hardship to people on low incomes.
We are told that Mr. Brown wants to review the situation, although what he can do short of reversing a major plank of his own Finance Act is difficult to envisage. After the minister responsible for the pub trade told us that he disapproved of this year’s duty hikes but then back-tracked in the most bizarre way, none of us should be in any doubt about the finality of financial measures. That is the case with every Government.
Mr. Brown’s sympathetic noises are yet another manifestation of the way in which members of this Government, unlike any of its predecessors, seem to think that they can disassociate themselves from unpopular measures. Perhaps Lord West and Lord Jones (he wants to be called Digby, Lord Jones, but he is no Alfred Tennyson) can be forgiven because they are new to party politics, but for Ministers and PPS’s to campaign to retain local post offices whilst supporting the Government’s closure plan and opposing Tory attempts to suspend the current closure progamme is sheer hypocrisy. Does Collective Responsibility mean nothing any more?
Don’t kid around, Mr. Brown; you knew perfectly well what the effects of the abolition of the 10p band would be. Please don’t indulge in this charade - get on with the job of making decisions and accepting the unpopularity that will accompany some of what you are doing.
I have been out and about in the opening days of this local election campaign. It is clear that residents are worried about the cost of living and that many still fear crime. The message from my meetings this weekend is that so-called “petty crimes” of drunken disorder and criminal damage are not petty to the victims. Each incident that goes undetected or unpunished edges us a little closer to a society where people’s fears will have eroded their quality of life so drastically that the streets will be “lost” to us.
I am particularly proud of this year’s batch of Conservative candidates in Swindon. We will be fighting a positive campaign, and I do hope there is no repetition this year of the unpleasant and slanderous literature generated by the Labour Party. Lies and slander didn’t get them anywhere last year; even less so, this year, I suggest.
