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Can anyone explain how a £20 Billion Black hole on 10:53 - Dec 1 by JammyDodgerrr
You can't function on a surplus of £4.2 billion, there was still 16bn less than needed. It really wasn't misleading, it's just semantics.
Quite, and guess what that £16 billion equates to?
This from the Economist’s Matthew Holehouse.
"It was the most botched budget briefing since Truss… but this is increasingly wild. It is not an unsubstantiated “claim” that the OBR priced the productivity downgrade at £16bn in foregone revenue!"
As it is, Labour don't really stand a chance with the right wing media making up stories, disparaging them and setting the agenda since they came to power.
I say this as someone who has been very critical of certain things they have done but the abolition of the two child benefit cap is to commended, as is their desire to maintain rather than cut public spending, given the appalling state of public services.
[Post edited 1 Dec 13:22]
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Can anyone explain how a £20 Billion Black hole on 11:21 - Dec 1 with 222 views
Can anyone explain how a £20 Billion Black hole on 11:45 - Dec 1 by bartyg
What's the benefit of the government running on a surplus anyway?
It's not a savings account.
Well, the Tories would use it to fund tax cuts just before an Election, and Starmer could use it to make promises to disgruntled MPs to make "structural funds" available to invest in their constituencies, timed for maximum benefit before the next Election.
Under Sunak, the Tories actually did this with structural funds targeted to some of their vulnerable constituencies in Middle England, but it obviously didn't work!
Can anyone explain how a £20 Billion Black hole on 11:45 - Dec 1 by bartyg
What's the benefit of the government running on a surplus anyway?
It's not a savings account.
It isn't a current surplus, it's a projected surplus, taking into account billions in debt interest payments.
And given OBR forecasts are rarely, if ever, right, trying to sell to the bond markets a £4 billion surplus wouldn't have gone down well.
Indeed, the relatively positive reaction to the Budget by the bond markets is something that the Government is getting no credit for, given gloomy articles in the the right wing media about high bond yields.
Indeed, when it comes to a black hole the right wing media have themselves been projecting £30 billion or more these last few months, and are presumably disappointed things haven't turned out worse.
Of course, the Tories might well have accepted the £4 billion figure had they been in power and on the back of that gone for tax cuts and savage spending cuts to build up a greater surplus but I don't think that would have been the best way forward.
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