Britannia Radio

First I give a selection of what the CH: Blog lists.   Then I give 
wider extracts from them and others.  If this expansion is modest I 
will add it to the blog’s extract in my usual colour!   If it is 
extensive I will give it separately

To send the lot would be counter-productive as nobody would read them 
all - BUT ME!  (and I've done it!)

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CONSERVATIVE HOME Blog   25.11.08
Today's editorials on the Pre-Budget Report

"Yesterday, the battle lines were drawn. The 18 months to polling day 
now have their theme. A tax and spend Labour government which has 
trashed the public finances is trying to defy the lessons of history 
by spending its way out of a recession, in the process saddling 
future taxpayers with a crippling bill. And a Tory opposition will 
seek to reclaim the badge of economic prudence through sound money, a 
smaller state and tax cuts that last. Now that is a fight worth 
waging." - Daily Telegraph  [in full below -cs]
----------------------
"What was most remarkable about yesterday's PBR, though, was the 
possibilities it held out for future budgets. For over a decade, the 
two major parties have agreed that a tax cut here must be paid for by 
a tax rise there and that income tax rates should never go anywhere 
but down. That dogma is over; the argument now is over what comes 
next." - Guardian [expanded below -cs]
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"The death was announced yesterday of the political idea first 
advanced by Tony Blair. News of its passing was announced to 
parliament yesterday by the Chancellor of the Exchequer."
It was a brief shining moment. For a little more than a decade 
Britain's centre left party turned its back on past economic folly. 
It had realised that it could offer voters a potent combination. It 
become not just the party of social justice, but also the unabashed 
champion of economic opportunity and individual aspiration
  But when faced with difficult choices in a serious crisis it has 
abandoned its new dogmas (----) Yesterday  Darling - - - - - provided 
Members of Parliament with details of New Labour's tragic end. - - - 
- - So Labour has chosen a different dividing line. It will fight, as 
it used to, partly on taxing the rich.
The deep international crisis would have been difficult for any 
Government. For this one - with excessive borrowing already underway 
- the challenge is particularly severe. It has mortgaged the future 
on the ideas of the past
  - Times
----------------------
"The fiscal package unveiled by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 
the House of Commons yesterday under that insipid name was a colossal 
and highly risky piece of economic engineering. The implications are 
anything but dull, for upon it hang the economic future of this 
country – and, quite probably, the shape of the next government."   
The question is whether what was announced yesterday will boost the 
economy or whether it is, ultimately, just huge sums of public money 
down the drain- (- - - - -)  . Mr Darling, influenced by his boss, 
Gordon Brown, clearly set out to crush the political opposition, as 
well as the prospect of a prolonged slump. The Tory idea of a VAT 
holiday for businesses and the Liberal Democrat proposal for higher 
taxes on the wealthy were cunningly co-opted to make it more 
difficult for opposition parties to criticise the package.  This 
might have been cunning. But it was not necessarily wise. The problem 
is that the political calculation was so obvious, as so often with Mr 
Brown's machinations. It is impossible to see the proposed 45p tax 
rate for earners on more than £150,000 a year as much more than a 
political gesture, designed to set out dividing lines with the 
Tories. There is nothing wrong with a highly redistributive approach 
to tax, but as a means to help balance the budget this measure makes 
little sense because the sums raised will be negligible by comparison 
with the gaping holes in the public finances. One would have thought 
that Mr Brown would have learnt from the 10p tax debacle that playing 
politics with budgets is a risky strategy. Evidently not.  (- - - - - 
- -) Whatever else, it is a gamble in a world where the economic news 
has become progressively more depressing. But now the roulette wheel 
is spinning. And the state of the British economy and the political 
landscape will depend on where the ball falls        Independent
----------------------
(- - - - - - - - -) But Britain’s special weakness is, at least in 
part, down to Labour’s reckless 12-year spending spree on bloated and 
inefficient public services." - The Sun  [In full below  -cs]
------------------------
"in the Commons yesterday, Chancellor Alistair Darling announced the 
most dramatic about-turn in government policy since the 1970s. 
Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that New Labour  -  the 
enterprise-friendly party that once claimed to be 'nothing less than 
the political arm of the British people as a whole'  -  is no more." 
- Daily Mail
=====================
EXPANDED VERSIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE
1 Telegraph  (in full)
Labour lands Britain in a £1 trillion hole

As the economic crisis has unfolded over the past 15 months, people 
have become punch drunk as blow has followed blow. Sunday night's 
rescue by the US government of Citigroup would, in normal times, have 
rocked world markets, but instead was noted with the merest flicker 
of interest.

Even the most shell-shocked, however, will have been shaken to the 
core by yesterday's pre-Budget report. Despite the best efforts of 
Alistair Darling to gild the lily - predicting a "shorter and 
shallower" recession as a result of his measures - the true enormity 
of the cataclysm that has engulfed us was finally laid bare.

What lodges in the memory is not so much Mr Darling's endless list of 
frequently footling measures as the sheer depth of the hole we are in.

The nation's debt will double to £1 trillion while borrowing will 
rise from £78 billion this year to £118 billion next year. By 
2013/14, the level of debt will hit 57 per cent of GDP, which is 
worse than when the Callaghan government had to call in the IMF to 
bail Britain out in the mid 1970s. Indeed, this level of indebtedness 
is unknown outside wartime. The country will not balance its books 
until the middle of the next decade, a date so distant as to be 
meaningless.

On Mr Darling's reckoning, children who started in secondary school 
this term will be halfway through their university careers before we 
get out of the red - always assuming that the Government's wildly 
optimistic growth forecasts prove sound. Given that Mr Darling's last 
forecast was yesterday subjected to the biggest downward revision in 
Treasury history, we should not hold our breath on this. And yet the 
Chancellor had the temerity to say that the UK economy is confronting 
this crisis "from a position of relative strength".

The other aspect of the statement that rankles is the risible attempt 
to blame irresponsible American bankers for the recession. As George 
Osborne, the shadow chancellor, observed, it is not America's fault 
that we have the biggest budget deficit in the developed world; or 
that we have the highest level of personal debt in the world; or that 
we have one of the most unbalanced economies with an over-reliance on 
housing, financial services and the public sector. This crisis should 
be stamped "Made in the UK".

Given the scale of our plight, the Government had a duty to act in 
the national interest. Instead, it has acted in sectarian interests. 
From start to finish this mini-Budget has been fashioned with an eye 
to party political advantage. The country deserves better. The 
cynicism is depressing.

The heavily trailed tax giveaway - VAT cut from 17.5 per cent to 15 
per cent - kicks in immediately, although all that and more will be 
clawed back through big tax rises, but only after the general 
election. And will the VAT cut work?

Against a backdrop of deep price cuts in the retail sector, there is 
a risk it will hardly be noticed. The other pre-leaked measure, a new 
45 per cent higher tax rate for those earning £150,000-plus, is 
spiteful and dangerous, targeting a group that already supplies a 
giant share of income tax revenues. Punishing wealth creators is an 
odd way to rescue a collapsing economy. It also sets a precedent for 
more rises in the future.

The big unleaked measure is the hike in national insurance 
contributions, which will hit middle-income earners hard. Taken 
together, these tax rises mark the end of the New Labour experiment 
which actually sought the support of the middle classes. Yesterday 
saw Labour slipping back deep into its comfort zone.
Nowhere was that more true than in Mr Darling's refusal to offer up 
any serious cuts in public spending. He offered a derisory £5 billion 
in "efficiency savings" at a time when every Whitehall department 
should be rigorously prioritising all spending commitments.

Far from being shamefaced, the Chancellor boasted that, despite the 
economic collapse, public spending will soar from £584 billion this 
year to £682 billion in 2010/11. While every business and family in 
the land tightens belts and cuts costs, the public sector with its 
job-for-life security and gold-plated pensions sails merrily on, 
impervious to the hardships of the real world.

Mr Osborne, finally unshackled from the foolish commitment to match 
Labour spending plans, rose above his recent difficulties to skewer 
Mr Darling and Gordon Brown mercilessly. All Labour chancellors run 
out of money, he said, and they all leave the economy in a worse 
shape than they found it - and this chancellor was no exception.

The frightening price of Labour's "decade of irresponsibility" was a 
national debt that will actually double in just five years. This, Mr 
Osborne said, was the greatest failure of public policy in a 
generation. People face a lifetime of tax rises to pay off the debt.

Yesterday, the battle lines were drawn. The 18 months to polling day 
now have their theme. A tax and spend Labour government which has 
trashed the public finances is trying to defy the lessons of history 
by spending its way out of a recession, in the process saddling 
future taxpayers with a crippling bill. And a Tory opposition will 
seek to reclaim the badge of economic prudence through sound money, a 
smaller state and tax cuts that last. Now that is a fight worth waging.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
2. Guardian

If every budget has a theme, the raft of measures announced by 
Alistair Darling yesterday can be called the banking-crisis budget. 
Not just because the collapse of Lehman Brothers and all those other 
financial dominoes prompted major economic shocks which this 
government and others have to deal with. But also because the banking 
crisis has thrown open to question a decade of economic and political 
assumptions that Gordon Brown took for granted, yet which his 
successor at Number 11 cannot. What replaces New Labour's economic 
model now, with its reliance on booming finance, soaraway house 
prices and feel-good on the high street? What price light-touch 
regulation when giant banks are being part-nationalised? These 
questions will feature in any debate over economic policy and 
politics for years to come.

(- - - - - - - - -) Mr Darling's crisis statement (- - - - - - - - -)
did not resolve those issues. It could not, so soon. But it showed a 
chancellor edging away from the assumptions and boasts of his big 
clunking predecessor - even if he was unsure what would replace them.

So Gordon Brown's famous fiscal rules were put in a drawer, not to be 
opened until the middle of next decade. That golden rule of borrowing 
only to invest in new buildings and the like now looks academic in 
the face of a worldwide downturn. As for the 40% cap on government 
borrowing, forget it. By 2013, Mr Darling admits, public debt could 
be over 57% of national income. (- - - - - - - - -) Instead, Mr 
Darling announced he would return to the true Brownian path - after 
an eight-year hiatus. It was a compromise with old orthodoxy that the 
new chancellor did not need to make.

But that is what Mr Darling's performance yesterday was like: full of 
compromise, while at the same time showing a more freethinking side. 
That VAT giveaway, for instance, looked like classic Brown: an 
attempt to buy the support of Middle England (- - - - - - - - -) but 
it is a pointless policy, encouraging junk-consumerism of Chinese 
imports, rather than laying the ground for a more sustainable 
economic model. And that is what Britain needs, as the coming months 
will make clear, with banks laying off workers and tax income from 
financial firms, house sales and share-dealing fast drying up.
(- - - - - - - - -). Even so, the economy is unlikely to have the 
short, sharp recession predicted by the government. The worst would 
be over by next summer, Mr Darling forecast, in a claim that has 
hostage-to-fortune written all over it. And the most crucial part of 
restoring the economy to any form of health lies not with more public 
spending, but with getting the banks lending again. Until then, 
predictions on growth or public finances are as much guesswork as 
analysis.

(- - - - - - - - -). For over a decade, the two major parties have 
agreed that a tax cut here must be paid for by a tax rise there and 
that income tax rates should never go anywhere but down. That dogma 
is over; the argument now is over what comes next.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
3. THE SUN SAYS - - -
The death of New Labour
BRITAIN is apparently so close to meltdown that the nation must be 
plunged deeper into the red to avoid catastrophe.

Gordon Brown says it is not his fault that we are worst placed in the 
Western world to weather this storm. We must blame America’s chaotic 
mortgage crisis — not our own overblown housing bubble or badly-run 
banks.   And it will take seven bitter years before we get our heads 
above water again.

But the Prime Minister cannot wash his hands of responsibility like 
that.
Yes, the whole world is suffering.   But Britain’s special weakness 
is, at least in part, down to Labour’s reckless 12-year spending 
spree on bloated and inefficient public services.   In such 
circumstances, a £16BILLION tax and spending boost may seem small beer.

The hope is that worried shoppers will be tempted back to the high 
street by a tiny 2.5 per cent VAT cut when stores are already 
offering 20 per cent off.

There is welcome relief for pensioners and poor families with 
children.  The rest — about £7billion — will help firms and save a 
few jobs.

The mini-budget, boosted by the Citigroup bailout, won swift applause 
from the stock market and business leaders.  But make no mistake. It 
marked the death of New Labour.

In one emergency splurge, a beaming Mr Brown reverted to Old Labour’s 
natural big government tendency to big government tax, spend and borrow.

The clue is in the tax changes.
All the CUTS are temporary.
All the RISES are permanent.

Britain is once again a high tax economy. VAT will shoot back to 17.5 
per cent after 13 months, with sharp hikes in petrol, booze and 
cigarette prices.

But the new 45p rate for high earners will remain — if Labour stays 
in power.   In hard times, few would argue against the wealthy paying 
their whack.

But who would bet this new rate, welcomed ecstatically by Labour MPs, 
will stay at 45p.
We are back on the slippery slope to the 1970s.

Other changes, including higher National Insurance and personal 
allowances, will hurt low and middle earners — and small business.

Yesterday, we saw the battle lines drawn for the next election.  If 
Gordon Brown succeeds he may well lead Labour to a fourth term.

If he fails — as Shadow Chancellor George Osborne warned — he will 
have mortgaged our future in an unforgivably reckless Budget.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=