Summer Budget: the key announcements live
Find out just how big this summer budget is with our live list of announcements, as George Osborne makes them.
Politics
Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
Wednesday
Nicky Morgan takes photographer to task for calling her a ‘girl’
With the press pack out in full force today to cover George Osborne’s budget, one photographer’s day has got off to a bad start. As Cabinet ministers Nicky Morgan and Amber Rudd left a pre-Budget Cabinet meeting this morning, they were greeted by a photographer who shouted ‘morning girls’. While the snapper managed to win the 42-year-old Education Secretary’s attention he may wish he hadn’t. Morgan replied incredulously: ‘Girls?! Girls?!,’ before wagging her finger at him. Next time Mr S suggests it’s best to address the ladies by their names.
Budget tricks: is Middle Britain really getting a tax cut?
We learn this morning that George Osborne is planning a tax cut for the middle class, by raising the earnings threshold for the 40p tax. Of course, this was raised automatically in the Labour years (in line with RPI inflation) and even tricksy Gordon Brown never billed it as a tax cut. It’s only a tax cut if the threshold rises faster than average wages (i.e., the green lie above). If the threshold is frozen, or falls at lower rate the average earnings, then it’s a tax rise. This point is often lost on broadcasters, and HM Treasury is in no rush to explain things. So keep your eyes on this:
Summer Budget 2015: Full text of George Osborne’s speech
[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/spectatorpolitics/summerbudget2015/media.mp3″ title=”Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss the Summer Budget”] Listen [/audioplayer] Mr Deputy Speaker, This is a Budget that puts security first. It’s a Budget that recognises the hard work and sacrifice of the British people over the past 5 years and says: we will not put that at risk, we have a job to do and we’re here to get on with it. This will be a Budget for working people. A Budget that sets out a plan for Britain for the next 5 years to keep moving us from a low wage, high tax, high welfare economy; to the higher wage, lower tax, lower welfare country we intend
Tuesday
With no coalition partner, George Osborne negotiates himself out of £12bn welfare cut
Let’s face it: George Osborne’s pledge to save £12 billion from welfare over two years was never really credible. He never told us where the savings would come from, and it seemed as if he didn’t really know. So tonight’s news, that the Chancellor has cut this to £8bn and given himself an extra year (or two) to make the full £12bn, is welcome. listen to ‘Nick Robinson: Osborne will soften his £12bn welfare cuts.’ on audioBoom
Eurozone meeting breaks up with no agreement, full EU summit Sunday
The meeting of Eurozone leaders in Brussels has just broken up. There is still no agreement on a new deal for Greece. In these circumstances, the European Central Bank will not lend more to the Greek banks, so they will remain closed. What has been announced is a full summit of all 28 EU members for Sunday. Now, the significance of this is that Greece stops being an issue just for the Eurozone and becomes one for the whole of the EU when it leaves the Euro. The presence of all the EU leaders on Sunday will mean that the issue of a Greek exit from the single currency can
Revealed: David Cameron’s plan to bring back hunting
When Bill Clinton was asked if he had ever smoked marijuana he uttered the infamous cop-out that he had smoked it but had not inhaled. David Cameron’s position on hunting has been similar. He cannot deny that he once rode to hounds with his friends in the beautiful English countryside where he spends weekends. But he has never said much about the experience other than it was terribly challenging to stay on the horse. Rather than saying ‘I enjoyed it’, he has always been careful to give the impression that hunting was going on around him, so he did it, and he survived to tell the tale. But he didn’t
Tories ‘to slow welfare cuts’ in Budget, reports suggest
Tomorrow’s Budget is expected to be brutal, with the Conservatives recognising that now is the time to inflict the maximum pain as the party is the furthest it will ever be from the next election. But Sky News reports tonight that one of the most-reported aspects of that brutal Budget, the £12bn of welfare cuts, will be introduced a little more gently than expected. Faisal Islam writes that this is ‘partly because buoyant tax revenues and new Office of Budget Responsibility projections mean the Chancellor can meet his fiscal mandate without making the welfare cuts within two years’. It does also mean that a withdrawal of tax credits, for instance,
You’ll never understand Greece from a God’s eye view
We were breakfasting outside on the morning of the Greek referendum. The result could only be guessed at and all the polls were saying it was neck-and-neck. I thought ‘yes’ would win because surely Greek people believe in membership of the EU. Our friend Marie, however, who is French, announced that it would be a decisive ‘no’. Marie is neither a left-winger nor a Europhobe. ‘Why?’ her husband asked, ‘how do you know?’ ‘Avantage acquis,’ she said. Few of us were fluent French speakers, but I made a guess: ‘You mean people’s sense of continuing entitlement to something they have already got?’ Yes, she said, such things are very hard
Tories nervous of EVEL rebellion
MPs are getting very worked up in this afternoon’s emergency debate on English Votes for English Laws. Depending on which party they’re in, of course, they’re getting worked up about slightly different things. Labour have stick to arguing about the procedure, which is what the debate is supposed to be on, saying that the measure is far to big to be put through using standing orders. The SNP’s objection is primarily that this makes Scottish MPs second class, and secondly that the Tories are trying to create an English parliament in two weeks when they should, as Pete Wishart put it ‘do the work’ in the same way as the
Calm down: English Votes for English Laws is a very minor modest proposal
Ed Miliband – remember him? – has just told the House of Commons that the government’s proposals for so-called English votes for English laws (EVEL) are a betrayal of everything for which the Conservative party is supposed to stand. Well, that’s certainly one way of putting it. According to Miliband, EVEL is “not true to the great traditions of the Conservative and Unionist party” but since the foremost of those traditions is a keen and ruthless appreciation of the best interests of the Conservative party I suspect Miliband, not for the first time, misunderstands the Tory party. “You’re the Conservative and Unionist party”, Miliband said. “This is neither for Conservatism nor
Tory MP appears topless in new commercial
As one of the new intake of MPs in this Parliament, Johnny Mercer will be full of ambition for the five years ahead. However, judging by a video he appeared in ahead of the election, one of his aims appears to be achieving a high ranking on the Sexy MP website. Mercer has a starring role in a Dove Men shower gel advert which is currently being broadcast in America. While the video includes a scene in which he appears topless in the shower, the film is family friendly with the MP for Plymouth Moor View’s six-year-old daughter also appearing on camera. Mercer is taking his new found fame in his stride. ‘When
Five tricks that George Osborne may pull in his Budget tomorrow
It’s Budget day tomorrow, and as James Forsyth put it recently, George Osborne will never have a better time to do bad things. The Labour party is a complete mess, the quality of scrutiny will be pretty ropey. So if he’s going to pull a fast one, now’s the time. Gordon Brown’s budgets were famous for having a lollipop (a goodie, briefed out to the press) and several weasels (nasties, heavily disguised in the small print). Now, Osborne may well be honest about his good and bad news tomorrow. But his Treasury staff, schooled by years of Brown’s shenanigans, may have persuaded him that the best way to deliver bad news is to
Ministers aim to make Sunday less ‘miserable’ by relaxing Sunday trading laws
The latest pre-Budget trail in the newspapers is that the government plans to confront an issue that caused Margaret Thatcher’s only Commons defeat as Prime Minister and further relax Sunday trading laws. Ministers are keen to allow elected mayors and councils the freedoms to relax the laws in their areas. George Osborne said that there is ‘some evidence that transactions for Sunday shopping are actually growing faster than those for Saturday’, while his colleague Anna Soubry said ‘Sunday was the most miserable day of the week’ before people were allowed to shop. Thatcher first tried to make Sundays less ‘miserable’ in 1986, but was defeated thanks to a backlash from
Monday
Labour MP: I’m supporting Yvette Cooper because she’s a mother
How, as a seasoned politician, might you decide who to back in the party’s leadership contest? It might be that you’re swayed by the ministerial experience of one candidate, or perhaps the fierce commitment of another candidate to a policy that you hold very dear. Perhaps it’s because you’re from the same faction in the party, because you’ve been friends for years, or maybe it’s because, as a result of various twists of good fortune and circumstances not entirely under their control, they have children. Apparently, that last is the primary reason that Helen Goodman, a Labour MP who served as a minister when her party was in government, selected
How the trade unions make it more difficult for Labour to win back Ukip voters
Do unions like Unite want Labour to win the next election? A fair few people, including a number of Labourites, have been asking this question since the union announced its backing for Jeremy Corbyn at the weekend, but it’s a something that those involved in the election campaign were asking as polling day approached, too, for slightly different reasons. The party found that it had a problem with Ukip during the election campaign – and some wise figures like John Healey had been urging the leadership to get to grips with Nigel Farage’s party long before election chiefs actually did do anything. While there is now a general acceptance among
How can Labour avoid being a useless Opposition in this week’s Budget?
One of the toughest jobs in politics is responding to a Budget. It’s the job of the leader of the Opposition, and given the Labour Party has still got two months until it elects its chief, that job falls to Harriet Harman as interim leader. Therefore Harman has an even tougher version of one of the toughest jobs in politics, as she has to work out not just how to scrutinise the government’s spending plans, but also how to stop her party having an unpleasant fight over its stances on certain controversial cuts. If a cut is, in Labour’s view, wrong, then it will struggle to make much headway in
Anna Soubry and Alex Salmond bury the hatchet following sexism row
Only last month, Alex Salmond found himself at the centre of a sexism row after he told Anna Soubry to ‘behave yourself woman‘ during a Commons debate. The chippy Cabinet minister went on to criticise the former SNP leader for his comments, claiming he had a 19th century attitude to women, by which they ‘should be seen, and not heard’. Happily, the pair now appear to have put their differences behind them during a trip to Aberdeen. Soubry reports that Salmond provided great entertainment on their flight from Aberdeen back to London. The feeling is mutual, with Salmond boasting that Soubry behaved ‘impeccably’ this time around. She even gave him
Does anybody still believe that the EU is a benign institution?
Ever since Margaret Thatcher U-turned in the dying days of her premiership, there has been a kind of agreement between Left and Right on what the European Union is. Most Conservatives followed the late-vintage Thatcher. They stopped regarding the EU as a free market that British business must be a part of, and started to see it as an unaccountable socialist menace that could impose left-wing labour and environmental policies on a right-wing government. As many critics have said, the Tory version of British nationalism that followed had many hypocrisies. It did not want foreigners infringing national sovereignty when they were bureaucrats in Brussels but did not seem to mind
Exclusive: top Scottish academic speaks out over Mhairi Black ‘slut’ tweet
After Scottish Labour compiled a dossier of online abuse by cybernats, Scottish nationalists were quick to respond that supporters of other parties are just as bad. Step forward Jill Stephenson, Professor Emeritus of Modern German History at the University of Edinburgh. The retired academic is in the firing line over tweets she sent ahead of the election calling SNP MP Mhairi Black a ‘foul-mouthed slut’. After the Scottish Herald dug up the tweets over the weekend, the SNP responded with a strongly worded statement against her: ‘As we have repeatedly stated, the online debate in Scottish politics should be respectful at all times – that clearly includes people who oppose the SNP and independence, as this person