British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, has sharply accelerated the descent of popular and international respect for the new Starmer government in the United Kingdom with an almost unimaginably inept budget. The only sensible budget that has been presented in the parliament of that country in many years was by the chancellor in the brief Truss government that followed the incendiary self-destruction of the Boris Johnson regime two years ago. That was a Thatcherite, tax-cutting, economic growth, Conservative budget. In Britain, Conservative prime ministers who raise taxes or fail to lower them after they have become too high, suffer 100 per cent predictable parliamentary or electoral failure. That, more than anything else, explains the debacle of the five consecutive failed Conservative party prime ministers in the United Kingdom in the last 10 years, (a record of governmental and political incompetence approached by no other party in British history going back to the installation of the first prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, in 1721).
The Truss budget, presented by the Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, was pounced upon by the large section of British MPs who supported Liz Truss’ rival in the leadership contest to succeed the overwhelmingly rejected Johnson, (Rishi Sunak). Sunak made his point and succeeded Truss with clockwork speed, and thus earned the honour of leading his party to a catastrophic defeat earlier this year. In Britain, Conservatives are not elected to raise taxes or to maintain high taxes enacted by governments replaced by Conservatives. It is understood and well established that the Labour Party is not so dependent upon the contentment of income taxpayers. But in leading what he endlessly proclaimed to be a New Labour Party, Tony Blair, Prime Minister 1997-2007, increased public spending and to some extent financed it by an endless series of revenue increases that did not amount to direct tax increases on personal income. His treasury officials’ resourcefulness unearthed every alternative source of revenue except an income user fee.
The Blair experiment, finished off very unsatisfactorily by his chancellor, Gordon Brown, led to 14 years of failed Conservative government which conspicuously omitted to roll back any of the multifarious revenue raising imposts of the Blair-Brown government, whose much vaunted novelty was really just a shell game of hiding and disguising the usual Labour tax and spending increases. Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves had this clear message that what was required was a reduction in spending and to the extent that any new tax revenue had to be imposed, it should be on some sort of sales or goods and services or value added basis that taxed elective and not essential spending. They have a huge parliamentary majority because of the colossal failure of the Conservatives which led to massive vote increases for the unofficial opposition parties, Liberal Democrats and Reform. The country could not re-elect the Conservative Gong Show, but had little confidence in Labour, whose percentage of vote increased only slightly.
