“We do want to see an injection into the NHS to get it back on its feet,” the Shadow Paymaster General says. But he will not confirm how extra investment will be funded.
Last week, Jeremy Hunt took important first steps toward solving three serious problems: the system’s anti-family bias, too much disparity in how earned and unearned income is treated, and absurd marginal rates.
I have a theory: more often than not, a political party is better at evaluating its opponent’s political weaknesses than its own.
The Health Secretary is pressed by Trevor Phillips over whether freezing tax thresholds means that the Government is really raising the tax burden, not lowering it.
New legislation is not required to enact popular conservative policies immediately. There are great powers on the statute book which give ministers serious leeway to introduce new policies by order or regulation,requiring minimal parliamentary time.
It’s clearly time for a course-correction. Taxpayers are told repeatedly that you can have low taxes or high-quality public services. But at the moment, we have neither.
Still, the argument that tax cuts themselves lead to growth is one that the Conservative Party hasn’t been used to making since the days of David Cameron Mark One.
We are a services superpower second only to the US. That doesn’t just mean banking, but also the creative industries, legal services, architecture and consultant engineering.
Hunt should raise his sights from South West Surrey, and focus on tax cuts that would bring the greatest relief to the greatest number.
If there is leeway for cuts, wouldn’t it be wiser to use it for a reduction that affects a greater number of voters or boosts the economy?
Fifty-five years ago, on the 8th, August 1968, Johannes Bjelke-Petersen, one of the most unconventional and controversial twentieth-century conservative leaders, became the Premier of Queensland, Australia.
The sixteenth article in a new series on ConHome about how government might be made smaller, taxpayers better off and and society stronger – through strong families, better schools and good jobs.
On some issues, he got it wrong. On other issues, he got it right but is misrepresented by some of his cheerleaders. And on other issues, he was right in the context of the time but circumstances have changed.
Any sincere reading of the British economy since 2010 need acknowledge one basic thing: that the essential problem with the modern economy isn’t income inequality, but a lack of income.