Gary Gibbon
Although the Lib Dems have been lecturing everyone for years on the iniquities of property taxes, activists are pleased by the party’s new plan to tax those with expensive properties.
Gary Gibbon
Schools Secretary Ed Balls won’t call his planned £2bn “savings” in education budget “cuts” as he is still holding out for real-terms growth in his budget.
Gary Gibbon
The first party conference of the era of cuts and the top story is, you guessed it, cuts. Nick Clegg promises to be “savage” about cuts and drops a heavy hint that the biggest internal cut will have to be the party’s commitment to the abolition of tuition fees.
Gary Gibbon
Brown speaks of ‘cuts’ at the TUC; a small demo greets the opening of the Prime Minister’s speech.
Gary Gibbon
Gordon Brown prepares to talk about “cuts” in his speech to the TUC Conference – but will the unions bay for blood?
Gary Gibbon
David Cameron announces cuts in ministerial salaries, ministerial cars and MPs’ perks, on a day when the Chancellor is giving a less eye-catching speech on public spending.
Gary Gibbon
The refinement of the government line on “cuts versus investment” got a helping hand from Welsh Secretary Peter Hain today. In an article in the Western Mail, he repeats some of the lines agreed in last week’s Cabinet – including a variation on “the next 10 years can’t be like the last 10 years” –…
Gary Gibbon
Cabinet this morning acknowledged that the “cuts versus spending” line of attack which Gordon Brown has been pounding out at top volume for weeks has been a bit of an own goal and ministers this morning talked about “refining” the message. The new mantra is supposed to be “more realistic”, I hear, with messages like…
Gary Gibbon
So where’s the money coming from for the Building Britain’s Future policies announced today? The government says that some PFI contracts got cheaper recently… money had been set aside thinking the poor economic climate would stay poor, but it wasn’t needed. There’s also been a raid on some departments’ “underspends”. But on the biggest spend…
So the cross-party crossfire on spending and deficits continues. It is remarkable that the actual underlying figures in this spat are totally unchanged from the figures we first reported on the day of the Budget itself. But there clearly is a problem to be solved, and the political process seems to be shedding more heat…