As Dr Oliver Hartwich outlined on Coffee House yesterday, The Treasury doesn’t have much room for manoeuvre ahead of Wednesday’s Budget. In short: it’s down to our economy being taxed, spent and borrowed up to the hilt. Even shorter: it’s down to Gordon Brown’s decade as Chancellor.
What, then, can Alistair Darling use the Budget for? He’d have found some inspiration at the pre-Budget event organised by the British Bankers’ Association (BBA) and the think-tank Reform this morning. As the chief executive of the BBA, Angela Knight, put it: this Budget shouldn’t be about tweaking, twitching or changing – there’s no space for that. Instead, it should be about “sending out a message”. A message which tells the financial services sector that Britain’s still a great place to do business. This can be done by either pro-business rhetoric (“attitude,” as Knight called it) or by announcing, say, a review into Britain’s unfriendly corporate tax regime.
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