It could be the budget of resignation in the face of the foreseeable electoral defeat, that of prudence in the face of a delicate state of public accounts, or even that of overdue traps for when a future Labor Government arrives.
But if one thing has become clear, it is that the economic measures presented this Wednesday in Parliament by the British Minister of Economy, Jeremy Hunt, did not contain either the drastic tax reduction demanded by the hard wing of the conservatives or any surprise announcement to raise the mood of voters and
Tory
MPs
.
“Regardless of pressure, and regardless of ideology, a Conservative Government will always work in coordination with the Bank of England to achieve a solid economy,” Hunt assured when presenting his “spring budget”, designed side by side. in the previous weeks with the prime minister.
There have been tax cuts, but not on income tax as requested by the Conservative Party deputies most desperate to offer some bait to voters who seem to have definitively turned their backs on them.
The minister has announced an additional cut of two percentage points in social security contributions, which is added to the other two points he announced last autumn.
The measure represents just an extra saving of 20 euros per month for an average worker, and will cost the British public coffers nearly 12 billion euros.
But it contains a more alarming message for pensioners or the unemployed.
The
national insurance,
as social security contributions are known in the United Kingdom, finances public pensions and unemployment benefits that are already quite small in that country.
The maximum basic pension that a citizen can aspire to is about 950 euros.
“Our long-term ambition will be to end this unfair double taxation when it can be done responsibly and without compromising the quality of our public services.
We will continue to cut fees,” announced Hunt, who equated this tax with income tax.
The Sunak Government has also decided to freeze taxes such as fuel and alcohol, as well as rob Labor of its star proposal: the elimination of the non-domiciled tax, which in reality was more of a way to favor the billionaires resident in the United Kingdom but with tax headquarters in another country.
The prime minister's wife, Akshata Murty, daughter of Indian potentate Narayana Murthy, founder of Infosys, took advantage of this formula until media pressure forced her to start paying income tax.
The result of the budgetary measures has been twofold: the low ambition of their approach reveals that the conservatives maneuver more to hold on, in the hope that the economy will show some sign of growth before the foreseeable autumn elections, than to encourage their voters.
And in the process, they continue to spend public money, even if it is in minor tax cuts, at the expense of public services that the incoming Government, which will most likely be Labor, will have to rebuild.
“We find ourselves facing a Conservative Party that desperately clings to the ideas of the past, and that is incapable of generating the growth that working people need, demanding that they pay more and more for fewer and fewer public services,” he said in his parliamentary reply was the leader of the Labor opposition, Keir Starmer.
The harsh reality for a technocrat like Sunak, who clings with hope to macroeconomic figures – GDP growth for this year and next will be better than expected, and inflation may drop to 2% in the coming months – is that he has already The perception of excessively deteriorated public services and a general standard of living of the population at its lowest historical levels has permeated citizens.
To the point that, according to recent surveys, a majority of conservative voters would prefer greater investment in health or infrastructure than any tax cuts.
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