Is the New Labour budget just old austerity rebranded?

It seems like we have been waiting with baited breath for months to hear our fate. The only people that seem to be enjoying this power trip, too much actually, are the new PM, his deputy and of course the chancellor Rachel Reeves.

Despite their appalling messaging about the state of the country’s finances, black holes and doom and gloom they have been wandering around with grins like Cheshire cats for months.

It’s seemingly ok to get 16,000 quid’s worth of tickets for Taylor Swift concerts, more clothes than I’ve got in my wardrobe, free penthouse flat accommodation and all manner of other bizarre freebies when you’re the PM or a senior cabinet minister. And at the same time shaft most self-employed small businessmen and women including farmers because we don’t fit this lot’s definition of ‘working people’, if indeed they could actually provide such a definition.

At the end of the day decisions about taxation and public expenditure are about choices and to pretend such choices are being forced on the new Government by the sins of past administrations is frankly rubbish and totally disingenuous. There is nothing different about this budget to the early days of the George Osborne/David Cameron era, (they blamed the Blair/Brown governments for the mess our economy was in then).

So really it may not be called austerity but it is actually just the same old crap on a different day with a new name. For example, the politics of envy hammering private schools and non doms will in reality do more economic harm than good but represents nothing more than the policies of envy.

And all the negative publicity in the last few months trying to blame other’s for these budget cuts and tax rises has been hugely damaging to our economy by creating doubt and fear across business and for individuals the first half of 2024 saw a significant bounce back from 2023’s short-lived recession making the UK one of the top performing economies amongst the major global economic powerhouses.

However as we entered the second half of 2024 that recovery has lost significant momentum as businesses and individuals continue to grapple with higher costs, including a jump in interest payments especially for individuals coming out of fixed rate mortgage deals. And of course confidence and sentiment is what drives business and individual’s investment and spending decisions and Keir and Rachel have managed to totally undermine these across every part of our economy as they terrify us into submission.

The headline grabbing rebooting public investment (fiddling the current borrowing rules in reality), is also dangerous even if done for the right reasons. If (no, actually when) government borrowing becomes more expensive that will hurt every business and individual with borrowings or a mortgage as interest rates will need to stay higher for longer.

And the idea that massive public sector projects like HS2 or hospital building will suddenly see their budgets properly controlled because Angela Raynor or Rachel Reeves says so is frankly fanciful balderdash. These types of public sector infrastructure investments have been woefully run for years and always end up miles over budget and late because the folk running them aren’t good enough and they aren’t working with their own money or accountable to shareholders, so at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter to them.

A scapegoat is always identified to be slaughtered on the altar of political expediency, but how often does the civil servant or minister ultimately responsible for the mess ever carry the can? Look no further than Ferguson Marine for your answer!

Meanwhile in Scotland we will have to wait even longer to find out how much more tax we are going to have to pay than the rest of the country for the mismanagement of the Scottish economy by John Swinney and Shona Robison. It’s about choices here as well. And while the Health Service crumbles to a virtual standstill in some instances, education standards continue to fall, drug deaths increase, the roads become even more like Zimbabwe and the agriculture budget gets raided again as food production becomes even more marginalised Ms Robison boasts at her party conference that the SNP has given public sector workers the highest starting salaries in the UK.

And the number of core staff employed by the Scottish Government has almost doubled in the last decade, with the civil service head count in this area rising from 5120 to 9222 between 2015 and this year. And public sector workers account for 22% of the workforce in Scotland compared to 17% in the rest of the UK where average salaries are around £2000 lower.

And the most shocking recent revelation of all is that the Scottish Government somehow managed to spend £4.2m on press officers in one year! How?!

So when you hear all this rubbish about the country being bust, and everyone having to do their bit, remember that the nests of those in politics, quangos and the public sector remain totally immune to this ‘all for one and one for all’ nonsense. If that is supposed to make us all feel better when they steal our legitimate hard won funding, and hand it to some press officer or civil servant that can’t write policy or run a project, but is still encouraged to work four days a week, then believe me it doesn’t!

It’s about choices, it always is and if you don’t matter you don’t matter, simple and despite the rhetoric agriculture and food production doesn’t matter in Scotland.

And now the budget has been announced it is clear agriculture doesn’t matter in the UK full stop. I haven’t seen the exact figures but the DEFRA budget will likely be cut by the same 2% as other departments that this government aren’t interested in. But more concerning as I (and others) predicted are changes to Inheritance and Capital Gains Tax. As far as IHT is concerned Agricultural Property Relief up to £1m does little or nothing to ‘protect the small family farms’, the chancellor referred to in her statement.

I’m not sure what kind of farm Treasury officials think they can buy for a million quid but I would love to know. Mind you a million quid will buy more acres after these changes kick in in April 2025 that’s for sure. Unlike this government I won’t be talking anything down or destroying confidence but this change can’t increase land values!

And the significant increases in NI and Capital Gains Tax are further proof of their attitude to business. It’s clear that the manifesto commitments and charm offensive to woo business were no more than hollow rhetoric. The interesting thing about the theme running through the chancellor’s budget statement is the naivety of it, and the fact that she clearly believes voters will buy it.

Namely this is different to any tax and spend budget we have seen before and it’s not her fault. But every chancellor I’ve ever heard at the despatch box has for example, promised to crack down on welfare, benefits and tax fraud, achieve efficiency savings across government departments, use smart IT to cut costs (that’s a joke and you don’t need to look any further than Scot Gov’s Ag payment system for proof of this), and control the budgets of big public sector capital expenditure programmes.

Of course none of these ever materialise, and all that happens is the civil service or NDPBs charged with these glorious crusades keep on growing and further tax increases are required.

Of course with all these announcements the devil is in the detail but as a supposedly pro growth budget announcing less than 2% annual growth in the economy for the next five years after this debacle today is appalling.

And even before Shona Robison twists the knife in even further when she has her pound of flesh it is clear every farmer in the country will be worse off as a result of this ‘budget of envy’.