In an interview with the Guardian yesterday, Ed Davey discussed Liz Truss’s administration ahead of tomorrow’s budget that is not a budget. He said of Truss:
She is saying some of the most extraordinary ideological things. She has appointed probably the most right wing government in modern history. And it seems completely out of touch.
He said Truss’s decision to style Friday’s announcement as a “fiscal event” rather than a budget seemed to be aimed at preventing the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) scrutinising its impact.
The failure to have an OBR assessment shows the economy is being run by ideology, not a plan. They clearly don’t want the evidence, because that would be unhelpful to their argument. And that should trouble everybody.
Davey described trickledown economics as “a fabrication of right wing economists”:
She is saying some of the most extraordinary ideological things. She has appointed probably the most right wing government in modern history. And it seems completely out of touch.
[The Conservatives] are now the borrow and spend party. And that is highly risky for our economy – for interest rates, and for the future stability of jobs and growth.
They’re now going to slash taxes, mostly for businesses and the better off… The biggest concern of the Conservatives is bankers, banks and oil and gas companies.
[They want] deregulation, tax cuts for the multinationals and the wealthiest, and suddenly trickle-down is going to promote growth. It’s almost a caricature of right wing nonsense…
It looks like they’re completely out of touch…
These are difficult times and you want calm, stable, evidence-based politics. And we’re not getting that.
* Andy Boddington is a Lib Dem councillor in Shropshire. He blogs at andybodders.co.uk.
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One Comment
The decline of sterling has 2 effects. 1. Rump up of inflation due to $ based imports going up in price. This isn’t demand induced inflation. 2. Increased cost of financing new borrowings, especially inflation indexed bonds. With the PSBR due to be much higher due to tax rises and abolition of NI increases, getting debt raising away would be much more difficult on a falling currency with a high interest rate differential to the dollar.