‘Law-sterity’ - A Political Con Job
Another budget in the United Kingdom and another chance for Britain’s ruling class to give the public a good kicking. At first reading, however, Budget 2024 did not appear to be as severe as previous iterations. With the Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt announcing tax cuts worth roughly £14 billion, this seemed to be more of a pat on the head rather than a swift rebuke of the boot. While the sprinkling of such sparse crumbs won’t make much difference at all to the average Joe, the fact that no severe spending cuts were announced made this a budget that lacked the usual Tory malice.
Or so it seems, as long as you don’t take much more than a cursory glance at the politics and economics behind this budget. Peer closer, however, and you will see this is in fact yet another one of the Conservative Party’s trademark austerity budgets. There was nothing to tackle the decline in living standards of the majority of the British people. Millions live in poverty, local councils are going bankrupt, community facilities are closing down, NHS waiting lists are lengthening and the average worker’s income has now stagnated for longer than at any time since the Napoleonic wars. The budget offered nothing to alleviate such societal ills and the spending increases that were announced amount to real-term cuts, since they are below the rate of inflation.
