Last week we had the latest Tory Budget. The last ‘mini’ Budget cost the country £30 billion and needlessly hit mortgage payers with hundreds of pounds a month in higher costs.
I’m yet to see a genuine apology from the Tories for the damage they did and this latest Budget is still repairing their mess after 13 years in office, including five propped up in the Lib Dem Coalition.
Thirteen years of the Tories have left people worse off, facing higher taxes, higher prices, dropping living standards and worse services. It is an extraordinary and awful record leaving most people wondering who is benefiting. Well, the Tories did again prioritise the wealthiest with a £1 billion tax cut for the top 1% of earners.
Some of the measures announced by the Government initially sounded like they should be welcomed. I’ve been raising childcare for local parents, including the Bermondsey Mums’ Club, for some time for example. But the numbers fell apart as soon as they were revealed in full: the headline ‘30 hours per week of free childcare’ only covers parents who both work and only helps for 38 weeks a year.
I don’t know any jobs in Southwark with 14 weeks of annual leave, leaving a huge bill to pay. Ministers also announced the free childcare now, but it won’t be available to many parents until September 2024.
As ever with Tory Budgets, the smoke and mirrors of it all have left many local people upset. Ministers’ contradictory positions also flabbergast: with nurses told to put up with the real terms loss of income for their work because Tory paymasters claimed they did not want to increase inflation with a pay rise. But then the bankers’ bonus cap gets lifted and inflation-busting rises are imposed on cigarettes and alcohol.
This Government has always taken people for fools and it is Ministers’ arrogance and dismissive attitude that I think will cost them, and none more so than Boris Johnson who this week faced questioning for misleading the Commons about his Downing Street parties. These are, of course, the parties he said did not exist at all to begin with! Then he claimed they were within the rules. Then he belatedly, begrudgingly apologised for getting caught.
He still blames others for breaking his own rules and has never been sincere in his regrets as he and other Tories simply do not understand the hurt caused to the vast majority of people who did follow the rules they set and missed out on seeing loved ones, including in some cases when they tragically passed away from covid. A sincere apology has been required but has yet to appear.