Budget 2010: Alistair Darling goes political
Gordon Brown looked terrible. That’s the first thing that struck me watching the Budget. He sat next to his Chancellor looking washed out, exhausted, sour. Maybe he hated sitting through another guy doing the job he prefered. And the news was dire, whatever way you sliced it. Debt debt debt, an ocean of it. Sure, marginally less than forecast but the acreage of the thing remains terrifying. Mr Darling delivered his trademark unflappable performance (so calm in fact that it clearly riled David Cameron, who has just completed a barnstormer of demolition and indignation) and in the process showed a new side of himself: the politician.
This was his Budget, we are told by the Treasury, meaning that while Mr Brown may have been allowed to have his say (do you think he ever stops to say to his Chancellor ‘thanks for not treating me the way I treated Mr Tony’? no), Mr Darling was in charge. And while he has emerged with credit as one of the few straight-talkers in the gang who kept a cool head while others flapped, he is also a Labour politician who has an election to fight. So in addition to the narrative about tough choices (that Tories would not have made), there were specific digs: the rejection of a unilateral bank tax, the offsetting of a stamp duty cut for first time buyers with an increase for those buying million-pound properties, the boast that most additional tax was coming from the top 5pc of earners, the decision to pay for long term care by freezing IHT allowances, the extension of the ‘temporary’ rise in winter fuel payments for a year inviting a campaign question to the Tories – ‘will you extend it?’ and particularly the partisan attack on Lord Ashcroft via a convenient tax information exchange deal with Belize. It was a pointless Budget without a spending review, but it was above all an election Budget from a Labour politician. The reinvention of Alistair Darling continues apace.
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COMMENTS
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Benedict Brogan – I’d say that the situation was completely clear. IF Labour win, then there will be a leadership contest and Alistair Darling will be in pole position to win.
How else to explain this?
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Cheap and nasty political points from the sanctimonious Darling (he couldn’t help a sniggered smirk at the naming of Belize) throughly orchestrated by the Labour farmyard noises behind him. The rabble seem determined to demonstrate their low life credentials to the very last
Cameron’s performance -one of his best to date, more like this may yet win him the election
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Do you notice how rattled he gets
when he’s attacked over selling off gold too cheaply and ruining the pensions?
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Davidjay
I have to agree. Cameron is becoming an excellent performer.
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It was a very credible response from Cameron – passion, anger and self-belief.
If, if, the Tories can deploy more effectively and make emotional connections with the electorate – ‘we are angry and you should be too’, then they will win and win well.
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Cameron is almost always a reliable performer.
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PMQs YouTubed, if a little late today:
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Crikey Brown looks as if he is about to pass out. Did you see the bags under his eyes? Mrs Brown better put him on a life support system. Alternatively don’t bother.
This “hit the so called rich” might just win Labour the election. Labour voters appear to have missed that they lost the 10% tax and are paying more than double what they paid under Major. Thick or what. -
interesting stuff.
Alistair Darlings’ “Geoffrey Howe moment”.
Watching Ed Balls’ choleric face giving his customary impression of being about to explode with rage, who can no doubt where the fault lines will appear after the election.
Hoon etc have been deemed expendable as the great corruption row rumbles on ( and this is why this particular disclosure didn’t cause a fresh outrage; because for many people “expenses” was always a metaphor and synonym for “corruption” in the wider sense ). If Brown is knifed in the back by Mandelson once the Lisbon Treaty is ratified – and who would be surprised by this? – I wouldn’t give much for Harman’s or Balls’ chances.
Darling has the gravitas the situation requires. Call Me Dave can rant and splutter at the Despatch Box all he likes, but he simply doesn’t convince the people who need convincing.
Who can doubt that inflation has always been an integral, unadmitted part of Nulab’s long-term strategy?
it’s going to be interesting.
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More a mini-manifesto than a budget and, yes, Brown looked washed out as though he had been up for 3 days drafting the budget speech.
Yes, “And the news was dire, whatever way you sliced it. Debt debt debt, an ocean of it”, all created by the same washed out Brown who chatted most of the time with Cooper and no doubt she and husband Balls had a hand in the content of Darlings speech.
The fact remains that this nation is afloat on a sea of debt, national and personal plastic debt which, just like the plastic expanse of debris floating in the Pacific is causing havoc and unless it is cleaned up will remain a toxic hazard that will hold the recovery of this nation back for years to come. It is the result of both the government and the chancellor over-taxing, over-borrowing and over-spending and individuals over-borrowing and over-spending for the last 13 years. It is time that we learned to live within our means, but, since the personal allowance is not to be increased, petrol, booze and tobacco will be hiked as usual it means belt tightening for all those whose income is in the lowest two quintiles in our society and the pain is still likely to be felt more by the poorest than the rich.
Shame, shame on this government and the politicians who have brought the nation into disrepair and disrepute.
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youtube digest of Gordon Brown’s “highlights” from gold-dumping to pension-ruining, bogey-eating at the dispatch box, currency-debasing, claiming to have saved the world, abolished boom & bust etc:
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The one thing we all want, and haven’t yet got, is for Public Enemy No. 1 TO ANNOUNCE THE BLOODY ELECTION DATE! Enough waiting already.
I for one am sick of this campaign before it’s even properly begun.
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Thumbscrew, don’t forget Labour have now educated a generation of our children. So ‘well’ that many of them are not stupid but not educated enough to spot the missing 10%. At least that is what Labour hope.
Personally I hope that the silent majority of young people are smart enough to see through Labour and do not reflect the minority of loud, barely literate, drunks who infest the streets at closing time.
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Darling – just another Marxist Scot. His future is behind him.
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Deep joy. At least I’ve got 4 days warning to hit the cider. I was amazed at how adept Cameron is at appealing to voters who will already vote for him whilst loooking like a complete prat to those who won’t. He’s a sort of anti-kinnock.
As for the budget – who frankly cares? Nothing in it will bear any semblance to reality after May 6th. I seriously doubt all the good news coming out now and wouldn’t be surprised if GB calls an election promptly just to spike the response of Camp David.
Indeed I wouldn’t be surprised either if a lot of tax revenue has been accumulated just by bringing forward paying it to escape paying it after 5/6th April in the new financial year when taxes go up. Far be it from journalists to make this point, tho. All that effort getting a 2:1 from a good university have left a lot of the dears devoid of any investigative ablity.
To blame a politician for producing a political budget 6 weeks before an election does seem a tad ridiculous – what on earth else would expect him to do? It is patently obvious they have had little concern with real world economics outside of election time so they are hardly going achieve Damascene conversion with 40 odd days of this parliament left.
If you vote Labour it was a comnpetent performance, if you vote Tory; Cameron gave a competent performance and whole merry-go-round of politics of the past 60 years continues.
As for the Cider tax. Bastards.
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From Darling to the man drowning in 170billion feet of water ” hey, count yourself lucky, I could have made it 178billion”
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Who apart from journalists believes that this was all Darling’s work? Brown’s fingerprints were all over it. Darling is just the boring front man and he won’t even be that for much longer regardless of the election result.
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Just for once David Cameron looked like he could become a credible PM. His scathing attacks on not just Darling’s budget but the whole mess that Labour has got us into was magnificent. More than that, for the first time since the ‘Brown Bottled it’ campaign he made the Government look like a tired, stale crust in comparison with the sparkle he would bring to the despatch box.
What a shame he can’t be so forthright on Europe. If he were he would have a majority of the entire country behind him.
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Benedict, you do make me laugh.
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So that’s the voters of Hereford (cider) and Devon (Scrumpy) alienated then.
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What did we expect from this failed government.We are in a hole and they keep digging.Alistair Stood there telling us how we had managed to cut 11 billion from the deflect so everything in the garden was rosie forgetting the other 167 billion still in deflect.So that means in English we are borrowing 167 billion to live on.Then he puts 10% on cider sounding the death keel for the cider industry What this means is A pint of strongbow cost £3.20 in a pub today and will cost £3.50 tomorrow.The foreign larger will cost £2.80 once again British goods sacrificed.
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“The one thing we all want, and haven’t yet got, is for Public Enemy No. 1 TO ANNOUNCE THE BLOODY ELECTION DATE!”
Legalvulture; I totally agree but we all know why Gordon will not announce the date. It is because he has to start using Labour Party funds once he declares the date until then he can use public funds.
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Jack Cade on Mar 24th, 2010 at 4:22 pm
I agree. He looked and sounded like he meant businesses.
I hope the fact that the Tories are dipping alarmingly in the polls will make him wake up and realise he needs the ex-Tory vote and he will have to do something drastic re. the EU in order to get it.
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Davidjay, Post 2.23 pm.
I agree with you regarding Mr. Cameron’s performance today, most gratifying. Let us hope that he has not left it too late.
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I see the pound is looking washed out too following the utterences.
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On the front bench I couldn’t avoid noticing how close G. Brown is with his shoulders to Yvette Cooper. Maybe my glasses re-alignment.
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This is a non-budget. Irrespective of who wins the May Election, Alastair Darling will NOT be the next Chancellor. The next Chancellor either be George Osbourne or Gordon Brown’s chief economic adviser and the man he wants at No11, the fiscally deranged Ed Balls. Balls prompted Broon to flog our gold reserves and wreck private pensions. Balls wants to spend, spend and spend and on his advice, Broon has sprayed our money around like a financial incontinent.
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That two faced lieing sod, Liam Byrne,said a week ago that their would be no new tax rises-we now have a plethora of the same, so as usual the spinmeisters keep spinning and lieing and nothing in the budget is
believable-Nulabour are pure fiction and fantasy-for gods sake get rid of the rats-the health of the nation demands it. -
This just won’t do. This is about money, not politics as usual. When the foreign exchange dealers and bond markets are done with putting Club Med into its place, they will turn to Britain, all in good time.
That time has been wasted by silly arse politicians, talking among themselves in pursuit of winning a general election. Bollox. Nonsense. The people will starve when this lil Westminster grudge match is done.
This country imports most of its food. If its government fails to put forward a credible debt reduction plan, then this country returns to rationed food, and energy…with the distinct possibility of violent civil unrest.
The budget was very clever, cynical vote grabbing in this ‘post democratic age’, as Peter Mandelson has described it.
But this: money talks, and BS walks. The strong must defend the weak, and that has no political allegiance. -
I think the most entertaining review I have read of today’s budget is at http://dioclese.blogspot.com/
Makes some good points too!
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I think the most entertaining review I have read of today’s budget is at http://dioclese.blogspot.com/
Makes some good points too!
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Question Time was a lesson for us all in Scotland. The Scottish Secretary and the Leader of the Labour Party in Hoyrood refused to appear because Alec Salmonds was
speaking for Scotland. They only speak for London Labour.
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