The Truss premiership proved a false dawn for free marketeers. But there is still an opportunity for the fortunes of Britain and the Conservative Party to revive.
Stability and market confidence have been re-established. That allows the possibility to relax the planned fiscal restraint over the next two years, if global economic circumstances improve.
This Government does not have long to overcome quangoland’s opposition. It must show determination to get change in Whitehall before Whitehall’s resistance helps engineer a change of government.
Why should a tiny minority of taxpayers domiciled in other countries pay the Treasury for money they earn elsewhere?
Hunt also says he will announce “spending cuts” this week but insists the government will protect the most vulnerable.
Pity poor Hunt, facing the most miserable in-tray ever to greet a Tory Chancellor when even rising to the challenge will benefit only Starmer.
Much talk about the “painful choices” of spending cuts and tax increases. But releasing surplus public sector land to provide a million new homes a year, for five years, offers a way out.
Those wasted assets are worth around £4 billion. They should be sold off to increase the housing supply and reduce the National Debt.
It strikes the right balance between her goal of a “low-tax economy” and Johnsonian “investment in education, infrastructure and technology”
Shadow Ministers have attacked the idea. But Labour councils were falling over themselves to put in bids. Levelling up is now about a hand up not a hand out.
The tough inflation requirement which will constrain public spending and borrowing should be complemented by a growth target.
“Our long term health depends on being a low tax economy,” the Chancellor adds. “I very strongly believe that.”
Reynolds says the Labour Party would not borrow for “day-to-day spending” and they will make decisions once they have seen the OBR forecasts.
The EU has imposed a series of requirements which have increased costs and complexity. There is no longer the need for the UK to impose such EU requirements.
“For too long, the political debate has been dominated by the argument about how we distribute a limited economic pie. Instead, we need to grow the pie so that everyone gets a bigger slice.”