George osborne

Osborne and Corbyn publish their tax returns – but are they any more interesting than the PMs?

George Osborne and Jeremy Corbyn have now both followed in the Prime Minister’s footsteps by publishing details of their tax returns. As James Forsyth said on our Spectator podcast earlier today, it was just a matter of time before the Chancellor and Labour leader bowed down to pressure. But what do the two documents actually tell us? The simple answer is that Osborne and Corbyn’s tax returns make for even less interesting reading than David Cameron’s. Properly speaking, Osborne’s isn’t even a tax return at all but rather a summary of the main bits. It shows his earnings as Chancellor; it also appears to show that he isn’t putting any

Tom Goodenough

The Coffee House podcast: David Cameron’s tax headache

David Cameron has bowed down to pressure by publishing his tax return and now the Chancellor has done the same. But where will the calls for financial transparency end? And how did this issue blow up into such a big political row? Spectator editor Fraser Nelson joins Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth to talk about the Prime Minister’s tax headache. Speaking on the podcast, James Forsyth says the whole topic shows Downing Street is so fixated on Europe that it has taken an eye off the ball. He tells Fraser: ‘I think what is going on is this: Europe is totally and utterly distracting Downing Street from everything else. This

The Spectator’s notes | 7 April 2016

However wicked tax evasion is and however distasteful some tax avoidance may be, people should imagine a world without tax havens and see if they really want it. The prime reason that tax havens exist is that taxes in most countries are too high. If they did not exist, the competitive element would be reduced, and taxes would go up even more. The EU constantly complains about ‘unfair tax competition’, by which it really means just tax competition itself. Tax avoidance is what most of us try to do (see next item). Resentment about it is largely because the rich find it easier to achieve than the rest of us.

The Tories should have known the taxing questions were coming

Downing Street has spent the past 24 hours trying to clarify David Cameron’s links to an offshore fund set up by his late father, which never paid tax in Britain. Initially, Downing Street said this was a ‘private matter’, Cameron was then asked about the matter, and said ‘I own no shares, no offshore trusts, no offshore funds, nothing like that. And, so that, I think, is a very clear description.’ Then Downing Street issued a statement saying ‘to be clear, the Prime Minister, his wife and their children do not benefit from any offshore funds’. And today Number 10 had to clarify further: ‘There are no offshore funds/trusts which

In defence of George Osborne’s ‘left-wing’ Living Wage

It was unfashionable of me to write in praise of George Osborne on Budget day. I did so, you may recall, because ‘at least we have a finance minister who’s always on the front foot’: I wanted to make a contrast between our Chancellor’s relentless activism in pursuit of his political goals, and the supine performance of eurozone leaders — who continue failing to offer any strokes at all while hoping for Mario Draghi to knock up a few runs with monetary trick-shots from the other end. Within 48 hours, however, our Chancellor seemed to be very much on the back foot, one hand clutching his protective box, as bouncers

How the Living Wage helps the rich more than the poor

The biggest mistake in politics is to judge a policy by its intentions, not its ayesults. The Living Wage sounds like it’s helping those at the bottom: the over-25s are on £7.20 as of today, up from £6.70 under the old minimum wage. Within four years, it will be over £9. So a massive pay rise for the poor! Except it’s nothing of the kind. What a £9 minimum wage does is ensure that anyone whose skills are not worth £9 will be unemployed. How many people are we talking about? The OBR says 60,0000. Prof Ray Barrell, from Brunel University, fears it will be closer to 300,000. While the

Power failure | 31 March 2016

A fortnight ago, the energy minister, Andrea Leadsom, declared grandly that Britain, alone in the world, would commit to a target of reducing net carbon emissions to zero. ‘The question is not whether but how we do it,’ she told Parliament. It is now becoming painfully clear how this target will be reached: not by eliminating our carbon emissions but by exporting them, along with thousands of jobs and much of our manufacturing industry. This week, Tata Steel announced that its entire UK business is to be put up for sale. That came after Stephen Kinnock, whose South Wales constituency includes Tata’s giant plant at Port Talbot, joined a union

Martin Vander Weyer

Osborne’s on the back foot but his Living Wage deserves praise

It was unfashionable of me to write in praise of George Osborne on Budget day. I did so, you may recall, because ‘at least we have a finance minister who’s always on the front foot’: I wanted to make a contrast between our Chancellor’s relentless activism in pursuit of his political goals, and the supine performance of eurozone leaders — who continue failing to offer any strokes at all while hoping for Mario Draghi to knock up a few runs with monetary trick-shots from the other end. Within 48 hours, however, our Chancellor seemed to be very much on the back foot, one hand clutching his protective box, as bouncers

Spectator’s Notes | 23 March 2016

Why have David Cameron and George Osborne overreached? Why are so many in their own party no longer disposed to obey them? Obviously the great issue of Europe has something to do with it. But there is another factor. Victory at the last election, followed by the choice of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, has convinced too many Tories, including Mr Osborne himself, that they will be in power for ten more years at least. So they get careless and cocky. Then they make mistakes. Then they come up against the most admirable fact about parliamentary democracy, which is that you can never guarantee being in power for ten years.

James Forsyth

The Conservative crack-up

No one does political violence quite like the Tories. The fall of Margaret Thatcher in 1990 unleashed a cycle of reprisals that lasted until David Cameron became leader in 2005. During that time, Tories specialised in factionalism: wets vs dries, Europhiles vs Eurosceptics, modernisers vs traditionalists. Cameron’s great achievement was to unite the party in pursuit of power. Now that unity is coming undone. You can blame Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of Labour for the latest Conservative breakdown. The Tory wars of the mid-1990s were fuelled by a sense that defeat was inevitable: since the Conservatives weren’t going to beat Tony Blair, they felt they might as well fight each other.

George Osborne starts a fight in the Commons and comes out unscathed

George Osborne turned up in the Commons chamber with a clear plan to get through this Budget debate: turn it into a partisan slug fest. His aim was to make it a straight Labour/Tory fight and by doing that, rally the Tory benches to him. With some help from the whips and the PPSs, he largely succeeded in doing that. Crucially for him, he got through the speech without incurring any further damage. As soon as Osborne began talking about the Budget, Labour started trying to intervene on him. Chris Leslie was first up, demanding an apology for the proposed PIP cuts. Osborne, in a response that set the tone

Steerpike

Nicholas Soames on IDS resignation: ‘you’d have thought there’d been a coup by a black African dictator’

With the Conservatives currently experiencing inner party turmoil following Iain Duncan Smith’s resignation over the Chancellor’s Budget, there are concerns that in-fighting may soon overshadow the party’s work. However, despite several backbenchers speaking out about their doubts in George Osborne’s ability,  not every Tory is so fussed about the growing row. In an interview with Conservative Home, Nicholas Soames has offered his take on the situation. The Tory grandee says that Duncan Smith’s resignation is simply an ‘inconvenience’ even though the media reaction suggests that there has ‘been a coup by a black African dictator’. ‘This is what my father would have called a kick in the gullet, these are inconveniences, what

Isabel Hardman

Tories face the new political reality on welfare

Are there going to be more welfare cuts or not? In an afternoon in which the government tried to calm the row following the resignation of Iain Duncan Smith, the key line that stood out was Stephen Crabb telling the Commons that ‘we have no further plans to make welfare savings beyond the very substantial savings legislated for by parliament two weeks ago’. The new Work and Pensions Secretary’s language was qualified by the Treasury, which clarified that this didn’t mean no more cuts in this parliament – just that the government didn’t have any planned. But it has become the big takeaway story from yesterday’s medley of statements. George

Watch: Dennis Skinner takes Cameron to task over Osborne’s ‘nine lives’

With George Osborne’s disastrous Budget the main topic of conversation today in the Chamber, Jeremy Corbyn surprised his colleagues by opting not to mention the Tories’ current inner-party turmoil — let alone Iain Duncan Smith’s resignation — in his speech. Instead it fell on his estranged comrades Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall to land some blows. Happily Dennis Skinner also joined in — offering up one of his trademark one-liners. He asked David Cameron whether he would pledge to make this Budget Osborne’s last: ‘Will the Prime Minister give us an assurance that in the view of the financial mess that’s been created with this Budget that this will be the Chancellor

Isabel Hardman

Why isn’t Jeremy Corbyn kicking the government while it’s down?

The government is in a mess, with the Chancellor having to go underground while a row rages in the Conservative party about whether or not the central mission of the Prime Minister to lead a compassionate Conservative party is really happening in practice. David Cameron had to use his statement on the European Council this afternoon to defend the government’s record on social justice, and praise the work of Iain Duncan Smith in an attempt to get things back on track. And yet Jeremy Corbyn saw today’s open goal yawning before him, and decided to kick the ball into a hedge. The Labour leader managed to mention the fact he’d

Isabel Hardman

Number 10 tries to neutralise Budget row

David Cameron and George Osborne have got a lot to do to patch up the current Tory wars. But first they need to ensure that those wars don’t get even worse, by making the Budget battles of this week seem less potent. This, it was revealed at morning lobby briefing, will now involve allowing MPs to vote on a Budget that does not set out how the government will save £4bn that the cuts to personal independence payment were supposed to achieve. It will also involve the government not opposing the rebel amendments on the tampon tax and VAT on solar panels and insulation products. This second decision on whipping

Iain Duncan Smith warns government in danger of ‘dividing society’

In one of the most extraordinary political interviews of recent times, Iain Duncan Smith has warned that the government ‘is in danger of drifting in a direction which divides society rather than unites it.’ He repeatedly, and pointedly, argued that in drawing up policy the Tories have to have a care for those who don’t, and will never, vote for them—a remark that everyone in Westminster that will see as being directed against George Osborne. Explaining his resignation, IDS that he was ‘semi-detached’ from decisions taken in government, and that his department was being forced to find savings because of the welfare cap which had been ‘arbitrarily’ lowered by the

George Osborne should have gone to the Foreign Office after the election

Imagine how different politics would be now if George Osborne had moved to the Foreign Office after the election. He would have left the Treasury with his economic and political strategy vindicated by the election result and wouldn’t be involved in this deeply damaging row with Iain Duncan Smith. For Osborne to have a former leader, and one of the most respected figures among the party activists, attacking his whole approach to deficit reduction and his conception of fairness is politically disastrous, to put it mildly. The problem for Osborne is that with no fiscal wriggle room and his opponents on the Tory benches determined to cause him trouble at every

Portrait of the week | 17 March 2016

Home In the Budget, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, kept talking of the ‘next generation’. He outlined cuts of £3.5 billion in public spending by 2020, to be ‘on course’ to balance the books. Personal allowances edged up for lower taxpayers, with the higher-rate threshold rising to £45,000. A ‘lifetime Isa’ for under-40s would be introduced. Corporation tax would go down to 17 per cent by 2020. Small-business rate relief was raised: a ‘hairdresser in Leeds’ would pay none. Fuel, beer, cider and whisky duty would be frozen. To turn all state schools into academies (removing local authorities from education), he earmarked £1.5 billion. He gave the go-ahead

Steerpike

George Osborne bullied in the playground

Is George Osborne’s newly announced Budget already losing him the youth vote? After the Chancellor of the Exchequer revealed plans to introduce a sugar tax on fizzy drinks and extend the school day, he received a lukewarm reception on a visit St Benedict’s Catholic Primary School in Garforth, Yorkshire. There to watch a netball lesson, his attempt to join in on a game of catch fell on deaf ears as he ended up playing an involuntary spot of piggy in the middle. At one point Osborne appeared to think he was being included when a child pretended to throw the ball in his direction. The Chancellor then raised his hands