The Guardian view on budget tax cuts: stealing from the public | Editorial

For the chancellor to yield to his rightwing obsessives would be bad economics and bad politics

Few things in British politics are more glumly predictable, whatever the economic and political circumstances, than Conservative MPs and their rightwing media echo chamber demanding budget tax cuts. Reducing the tax burden for the less well-off undoubtedly has a place in an even-handed approach to Britain’s economic challenges. The tax system also needs reform. But renewed backbench calls for cuts in personal taxes in advance of Jeremy Hunt’s pre-election budget reveal a party that has learned nothing.

It is only 18 months since Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng brought the UK economy to its knees by pursuing exactly this approach. Sterling crashed to its lowest level against the dollar in half a century after they declared their tax-cutting budget was just the start. Borrowing costs spiralled. The package also inflicted what may prove to be irreparable damage on the Tory party’s electoral standing. For the chancellor to do anything next week that smacks of that approach would be both reckless and unjust.

Continue reading...

from The Guardian https://ift.tt/IV2i4On

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Two years after Buffalo mass shooting, an art exhibit focuses on the victims

A few months after 14 May 2022, a curator sought out three local artists. The resulting exhibition, Before and After Again, is thought to be the first of its kind Two years ago, a white supremacist drove 200 miles to Buffalo, New York, and opened fire in a grocery store in the city’s predominantly Black East Side neighborhood, killing 10 people and injuring three. Though the Tops Friendly Markets where the racist mass shooting took place has been remodeled, and most of the country has forgotten about the violence that occurred on 14 May 2022, Buffalo’s East Side is forever changed. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/mqu1LFv
Read more

£1 Thursdays review – nightclubbing, sex talk and big decisions

Finborough theatre, London A mix of sweet observations about female friendship and cheeky brazenness about sex, Kat Rose-Martin’s play finds two young women at a crossroads in their lives In the cold air outside a sticky nightclub in Bradford, 17-year-olds Stacey and Jen are at a crossroads. In one direction lies the world they know: the family stress, the looming exams, the pumping pop beats at the club where they’ll reliably pull boys from school. In the other direction lies an uncertain path, and questions of who they are apart from one another, whether they could be the first in their families to go to university, and how to afford it if they do. Constantly on their minds, while they’re drunkenly dancing the nights away, is where they’ll end up, and what to do if they are the ones left behind. Thoughtful if not revelatory, £1 Thursdays covers an uneasy period of big decisions in these characters’ lives, as the gap between them widens. Monique Ashe-Palmer (Six) is ebullient as St
Read more