World Keep On Turnin'...

So - the first Labour budget for half a generation or so by the UK's first female chancellor - cause for celebration in itself on both counts - and has been commended to the House and to the country in general. And the world hasn't fallen apart, despite the ex-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's petulant tirade of a response to it; still sticking to his 'the Labour Party hasn't got a plan!' schtick. It's almost like he's on endless loop and nobody knows where the off switch is. Listening to the budget speech I would say that the government not only has a plan, but it's a pretty good one at that. Working with the meagre scraps left behind after fourteen years of self-interested Tory greed and grift, they've made the best of a bad lot and eased as much of the inevitable pain as possible. That the markets didn't immediately melt down is testimony to the groundwork negotiations with business that the party have been engaged in during their last year in opposition and since. The Tories were just too lazy and complacent to see what happening under their radar; which just goes to show the shallowness of their commitment to the job in hand.

And this morning, what did we get? The trotting out of the tired old press cliché of a return to a [typical] 'Tax & Spend" Labour government. All I can say is, despite this yawningly tired characterisation,  "bring it on". This country and its public services needs some money spending on them, and to be perfectly frank, isn't the sole economic purpose of a government to "Tax & Spend"? How else is stuff to be done and paid for? Leave it entirely up to the private sector and the markets? I think we've seen ample, painful, evidence of how that turns out under successive Tory administrations - and in particular under the last one - and it certainly ain't pretty. So, all I say is, let's revisit the status quo in a twelve-month and see where we are then, eh? Nothing can happen overnight and neither should we expect it so to do. Rachel Reeves gave us a fair, balanced and frankly grown up budget yesterday, given the shit hand she was dealt, and if anyone thinks otherwise, just think Truss/Kwarteng and think long and hard again...