‘Like a family solicitor sitting you down to tell you that, sorry, I know you thought you could pay the mortgage off but your mother has actually left everything to the cats’ home’, is the best description I’ve heard of the Starmer Rose Garden Speech this week. Basic message, things are far more terrible than we thought, those with broadest shoulders etc. The question, of course, is how broad or weedy will your shoulders need to be before they’re loaded up, presumably with more tax? And what sort of more tax? It’s been said that the 30th October Budget will be the most significant for years; and can’t you just see those Halloween next-day headlines, with a photo of Rachel in a witch’s hat or Kier as Dumbledore? My world-weary message remains the same, though. If you try to pre-empt, you’re as likely to lose as to win. So unless you have a yacht on which to sail away, grin and bear (or, who knows, celebrate) with the rest of us.
“When will Labour’s first Budget be – and when will tax changes come into effect?”
‘Should we be panicking? What taxes will go up and when, because Labour always put up taxes, don’t they?’ What we do know is that they have pledged that they ‘will not raise taxes on working people’, which means the holy trinity of income tax, NI and VAT.
