Working people are in desperate need of some genuine good news when Rachel Reeves delivers Budget on Wednesday
Date: 2024-10-29It’s so unfare
IT’S hard to think of anything more likely to hit hard-pressed, ordinary people than the plan to scrap the £2 bus fare cap…
Unless it’s the suggestion of ending the vital fuel duty freeze.
It is “working people†who would be most badly affected by either.
Do the Treasury nerds inside their cosy Westminster bubble not realise how ordinary people depend on buses to get around?
The Prime Minister defined “working people†as those not able to write a cheque to get themselves out of difficulties.
How about the difficulty in affording the bus to get to work?
Of course, it could all be a sadistic bluff.
Some of the threats of cuts and tax rises, leaked over the last few weeks, might just be a political ploy.
If some of the most dire predictions do not materialise in the Budget, the thinking goes, then we will feel better about the tax rises that do.
But that is a dangerous game.
The list of those with “anxiety in the bottom of their stomachs about making ends meet†— another of Sir Keir’s definitions for working people — is growing longer by the hour.
They are in desperate need of some genuine good news on Wednesday.
Grow for it
AFTER all the talk of Budget pain, the Prime Minister will at last tell us what the Government is going to spend our money on, and why. His new path.
If the extra funding the Chancellor has found, by manipulating fiscal rules, is for infrastructure projects which will boost long-term growth then that could well be good news.
(And an extra £500million to fix the country’s potholes certainly will be).
So what will they build?
More schools, hospitals and prisons, and more affordable rail and road infrastructure to improve public services overwhelmed by the growing population?
All are desperately needed.
It’s still borrowed money, however, that needs to be paid back.
Ms Reeves must be careful in her Budget that, while she is splashing the cash, she does not impose taxes that stunt the very growth that we will need to pay for it.
Will it work?
THE Jobs Foundation think tank says the £22billion “black hole†the Chancellor claims was left by the last Government could be plugged by moving two million Brits off welfare into work.
That would be a win-win — better for the economy and better for those previously trapped in dependency.
But hitting employers with increased National Insurance payments, discouraging them from creating those jobs, could be a lose-lose.
Something for Ms Reeves to wrestle with.
