The figures to look for in the Pre-Budget Report are not next year’s but the five-year forecasts. It’s not the cost of coping with recession that will shock us but the cost of paying for it in years to come.
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When the TUC and the big unions ally themselves with the CBI and large companies, - backed by big banks from, both sides of the Atlantic - we should either be very worried or concede they have a strong argument.
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Despite appearances, the government’s early-autumn mini-budget is not aimed at reviving the housing market but with rescuing the economy – just as last September’s actions were not about baling-out Northern Rock but saving Britain’s banking system.
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Woolworth has emerged as the latest pension fund with a business attached but giving away the operating assets is no way out of the problem.
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Ivan Lewis, a health minister in Gordon Brown’s government, is calling for a tax on the rich to subsidise the poor. Such a policy may have worked for Robin Hood but it would not work nowadays either fiscally or politically.
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