Wages weren’t keeping pace with inflation, rents skyrocketed, and energy price hikes left people choosing between heating and eating (Picture: Hollie Adams/PA Wire)
The upcoming Budget marks yet another crossroads for Labour, as we are grappling with the disarray left by successive Conservative governments.
Fourteen years of austerity have wrecked our economy. Our public services, starved of funds, are failing those who need them most.
Wages weren’t keeping pace with inflation, rents skyrocketed, and energy price hikes left people choosing between heating and eating.
Meanwhile, the urgent task of getting Britain to net zero was left to languish by the last government – leaving us way off track to meet the targets we desperately need to hit if we are to avoid the worst consequences of the climate crisis.
It’s a pitiful legacy that the Tories have left us, and one voters likely will not forget. But the question we face now is: how do we respond?
With our first Budget tomorrow, two things are clear.
Firstly, those most vulnerable should not bear the cost of these failings.
In the 2010s, the Conservatives attempted to balance the books on the backs of the poorest through austerity.
Instead of departments being told to make cuts, Chancellor Rachel Reeves should introduce taxes on the ultra-wealthy (Picture: JUSTIN TALLIS/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo)
This caused untold damage to our society, including people who paid with their lives, with one study linking over 330,000 excess deaths to the impact of public spending cuts. Under a Labour government, there can be no return to the era of austerity.
Secondly, we have to realise that trying to repair our broken economy without investment is like trying to start your car with the brakes on.
This Budget needs to recognise the transformative potential of fiscal policies that redistribute wealth.
Instead of departments being told to make cuts, Chancellor Rachel Reeves should introduce taxes on the ultra-wealthy.
This country is crying out for funding that will get the economy moving, bring our public services back to world-class standard, and create secure, well-paid jobs for all those who need them.
As well as restoring much of the funding cut from departments since 2010, we need a mass programme of insulating homes and retrofitting heat pumps, more investment in buses and trains, and a huge expansion of social housing.
Studies suggest that we need to invest £50billion a year in the climate transition by 2030, in order to keep us safe from disastrous climate impacts and unlock the economic opportunities of a green future.
Asking millionaires to pay their fair share in tax would raise tens of billions for urgently needed public investment (Picture: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire)
Some capital spending could be funded by the additional billions released through changes to the rules on public debt, but the real change the chancellor should make is to our tax-system.
For far too long, our outdated tax system has chronically under-taxed the super-rich. Asking millionaires to pay their fair share in tax …read more
Source:: Metro
