Bribing your own voters
The Tories are planning to bribe pensioners by increasing their personal tax allowances by huge amounts at a cost of £2.5 billion a year, on top of the £2.5 billion for national service for the young announced last week.
That is another £5 billion that the Tories have found down the back of the sofa, half of the imaginary money is being spent on alienating young voters and the other half on bribing the only age group which supports the Tory party.
You might think it is madness to do both of those things but the young vote labour or don’t bother voting and the OAP vote is about the only one Rishi Sunak has and that is not very firm. The cut to NI announced in the Spring Budget was very unpopular with pensioners as they don’t pay National insurance, they are I am afraid an especially selfish bunch of voters.
So what next? I assume inheritance tax will be the next target for tax cuts funded by more cuts to the NHS or closing tax loopholes or efficiency savings as they are called.
Also don’t forget the Tory party is promising to abolish NI altogether and increase defence spending, also without raising taxes or borrowing.
Even the bluest tory pensioner might begin to wonder; if all this money has been available all the time why is everything falling to pieces? Why are taxes so high and services so bad, why no taxes cuts today?
Because apparently it is all there, just waiting to be spent, tens of billions of it.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media
In today’s Guardian Sir Simon Jenkins (Mill Hill and St John’s, Oxford) believes in Sunak’s nonsense about national service for under-resourced and over-tested teenagers (managing to completely overlook that there’s no money for it). Would a better starting point be to ensure those teenagers had the educational privileges Sir Simon enjoyed?
Basically they are shameless. Nuff said!