If you read my three-part pre-Budget analysis of the economic policies that Britain needs then you will have been armed with the knowledge to see for yourself what a disastrous disappointment Jeremy Hunt's appalling and deceitful Budget was. Exactly as I forecast, the UK’s tax burden is on track to hit its highest level since the second world war. If you haven't read my previous articles (shame on you) then do so now! You don't realise what pearls of wisdom you are missing out on! You can find them here:
An anti-business Budget
What Hunt says is “I want us to have the most pro-business pro-enterprise tax regime anywhere” so that Britain becomes “the best place in Europe for companies to locate, invest and grow”. But only a fool would listen to his outrageous lies; watch what he actually does instead. And what he has done is impose the biggest rise in corporation tax in more than four decades, which has increased Britain's corporation tax to DOUBLE that of our nearest neighbour and greatest competitor - Ireland, whose tax rate is 12.5% compared to the UK's new rate of 25%.
Not many people understand this, but lack of business investment is one of Britain's biggest economic problems. In 2021, business investment in the UK accounted for 10% of GDP compared with the OECD average of 12.5%. I have previously highlighted all the companies that are moving their investments abroad following Stupid Sunak's announcement that our corporation tax rate would dramatically increase, and obviously this trend will now continue and even accelerate. UK plc has been stabbed in the back.
Realising how disastrous this tax increase will be to business investment Hunt has tried to mitigate the calamity by announcing that he “will introduce a new policy of “full expensing” for the next three years, with an intention to make it permanent as soon as we can responsibly do so. That means that every single pound a company invests in IT equipment, plant or machinery can be deducted in full and immediately from taxable profits”. You will remember that I called for full expensing in my pre-Budget articles (which you have now read, right?). So am I happy? No, because what Hunt announced was NOT the full-fat version of full expensing that I proposed. I wanted new buildings to be included, as these are the most expensive part of any new investment, but he has failed to do this. So this is a very limited, toe-in-the-water, version of full expensing and will thus have an equally very limited effect.
Worse still, it does not apply to R&D, as I also called for. Here too, however, the arrogant pillock thinks we ought to be grateful that he has only crippled businesses rather than killed them off altogether. For in his Autumn Statement last November he had threatened to cut R&D tax credits from 33.4% to just 18.6%, which had horrified small, innovative, hi-tech small and medium-sized companies. But now he has graciously reduced the cut in support so that it 'only' falls to 27%. But only if they spend more than 40% of their total expenditure on R&D! So this will not benefit small companies that have a limited budget but are trying to develop new products to stay ahead of their rivals and survive.
An anti-Britain Budget
So Hunt has stabbed British businesses in the back through higher corporation tax, through an inadequate system of full expensing, and through cuts in tax allowances for research and development. Anything else? Oh yes – he is also threatening to knee-cap our most important engineering company, Rolls Royce, and kill off our budding nuclear industry. How so? Because RR has designed what is known as a Small Modular Reactor (one that is mainly built in bulk in a factory, meaning it is cheaper and quicker to make than conventional nuclear power stations). Several companies around the world are in a race to get their SMRs approved and built first, giving them a huge advantage in what will be a massive global market for these power stations. The government had previously indicated it would move ahead with the RR design, and foreign countries had begun discussing importing these too.
But Hunt the Traitor has now decided to allow foreign companies to compete with RR here in the UK. This will create a long delay, meaning that while RR was in the lead globally it will now lose its 'first mover advantage'. Worse still, if the government decides to buy a foreign design RR will be completely screwed. My previous Budget articles (you have now read these, right?) argued that the government should have a Buy British policy, but it is doing the exact opposite! The RR SMRs would have been designed and built in the UK, creating jobs and pushing forward British technology and engineering. They would have made RR a stronger more diversified company, paying more corporation tax to the exchequer and it would have created a UK global champion in nuclear power. Instead, the vile and treacherous Hunt is going to open the door to FOREIGN companies to come here and steal the work. A complete DISASTER for the UK. And what did all the Tory backbenchers do? They cheered. The Tories are utterly contemptible.
The other thing I despair about is how slow and complacent this government is in everything it does. It does not seem to realise or care that Britain is facing an economic emergency, that we are competition with every other country in the world and that speed is of the essence. So I nearly fell off my chair when Hunt declared “subject to consultation nuclear power will be classed as “environmentally sustainable” in our green taxonomy, giving it access to the same investment incentives as renewable energy”. Why consult? Doesn't he KNOW what he believes and wants to do? This is such an obvious thing to do (and something that the EU is already doing – I thought Brexit was meant to make Britain quicker and nimbler than them!) that he should have just announced it right away.
And the same delay and procrastination was evident in another part of the Budget, when Hunt said “we need to build a larger, more diverse financing system, where the benefits of investment in high growth firms are available to more investors. So I will return in the Autumn Statement with a plan to deliver that. It will include measures to unlock productive investment from defined contribution pension funds and other sources, make the London Stock Exchange a more attractive place to list, and complete our response to the challenges created by the US Inflation Reduction Act.” Why wait until the autumn? Why not do this right away? Why, indeed, has he not already done this? Doesn't he understand there is a crisis that needs instant and immediate action? But no, let's all go on our summer holidays first and then we'll think about saving the country.
No help for ordinary people
So if Hunt hasn't helped businesses has he at least come to the aid of all those suffering from our sky-high inflation, falling household incomes and the cost of living crisis? NO. He has failed to deliver any increase in the personal allowance (as I asked for in my articles – but you will know this already, having read them, right?). As a result, the OBR (Office for Budget Responsibility) predicts that “real household disposable income” per person – which measures real living standards – will fall by a cumulative 5.7% over the two financial years 2022/23 and 2023/24: this will be the largest two-year fall since records began in 1956! By 2027/28 the six-year freeze in the personal allowance and higher rate thresholds will have dragged 3.2 million more people into paying basic rate tax, 2.1 million people into paying higher rate tax and 400,000 people into paying the additional rate. This fiscal drag will mean basic rate taxpayers will be paying an extra £500 in 2023/24, and higher rate taxpayers paying an extra £1,000.
But don't worry, because, as the Financial Times declared: “Jeremy Hunt delivered a tax bonanza to 2 million of the highest-earning pension savers”. Phew, what a relief that is to us all. Finally the lifetime allowance on pension pots has been scrapped. I know that's what you always wanted, as the current limit of only £1.073 million was such an appalling problem to families up and down the country. Sorry, am I being just a touch too cynical?
And in more wonderful news, Hunt has now decided that he will bury £20 billion in a hole in the ground. Yes, the problem of Britain having too much money has been solved! You think I'm joking? Think again. Hunt announced that he will allocate £20 billion to 'carbon capture and storage' (CCS). This involves taking carbon dioxide that is produced by factories and power plants and literally burying it underground. This is, of course, part of our fabulous green 'net zero' agenda, a legacy left to us by the late and unlamented (to any patriot with a brain) Boris Johnson. CCS is, without doubt, the most stupid and unproductive waste of money ever devised by man. My contempt for this mentally retarded policy knows no bounds. It is nothing less than burying money.
But the centrepiece of Hunt's Budget, the part he will want to trumpet the most, was a £5 billion plan to offer 30 hours of free childcare for nine-month to two-year-old children in England, an attempt to get more mothers into the workplace. Some people will approve, but not me. The government is obsessed with nationalising childcare, taking it away from mothers, so that children will be raised by state-approved strangers rather than their own loving families. No, mothers mustn't engage in caring for their babies, they must be sent to work as low-wage slaves instead – that's what big business wants! And big business will be provided with state-subsidised workers rather than be encouraged to increase its efficiency and productivity through automation, so that workers can be better paid.
Crumbs of comfort
Was there anything positive in the Budget? Not much! As I predicted, Hunt confirmed that he would maintain the domestic £2,500 energy price guarantee for another three months from April, in order to prevent a jump in domestic energy bills. Then there was the expected announcement that the government will invest £900 million to build a powerful so-called 'exascale' supercomputer, to boost our national scientific capabilities. These superfast computers, that can perform trillions of operations per second, are necessary for research into everything from artificial intelligence to new drugs. So this is good news, of course, but only begins to make up for the lack of investment over the last 20 years, which has seen Britain collapse from 3rd in the global ranking for supercomputing power in 2005 to 10th today, behind even France, with no machines in the world's top 25 by power and just two supercomputers in the top 100. On the other hand, there is still complete silence on the long-awaited and grotesquely overdue semiconductor strategy. This is so important I cannot begin to stress it enough, but the government is asleep at the wheel as Britain plummets over the cliff.
The only real surprise in the Budget was the annual prize of £1m, for the next ten years, to the person or team that does the most ground-breaking British artificial intelligence research. This is certainly better than the idiotic “Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering” which offers an annual £500,000 prize for engineering innovation which is of global benefit to humanity, but is not limited to UK engineers and can therefore be won by anyone in the world. In fact, since its launch in 2012 only two Britons have won this. What use is that to British science? What cretin thought that was a good idea? Oh yes, it was that group of mentally retarded traitors: David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband! And they had the gall to name it after Queen Elizabeth II (who had no involvement in it!).
The new AI prize (to be known as the Manchester Prize) reminds me of the Longitude Prize, launched by parliament in 1714, for for a practical and useful method to determine longitude to an accuracy of half a degree. This was crucial for British ships to be able to sail accurately and the prize offered was £20,000 prize – worth about £1.5m today. The problem was finally solved by the great carpenter turned clock-maker John Harrison in 1735. It is thanks to him that Britain was able to master the world's oceans. If the Manchester Prize has even a fraction of the success of the Longitude Prize it will be well worthwhile. Indeed, I just wish that the government had had a touch more ambition and imagination and set up a whole series of such prizes. £1m is peanuts as far as government spending is concerned (remember that we are spending £7m a day just on housing asylum seekers in hotels!) but it can really help inspire new research. So why not have prizes for other vital fields such as quantum computing, materials science, energy production, energy storage, life science, and nano-technology? What a wasted opportunity!
The dark, hidden secret
But wait! Hidden in the OBR's report on the Budget is the secret that the Tory Traitors hope you won't notice: a forecast that net migration will settle at 245,000 a year, rather than the 205,000 it had assumed only a few months ago in its November forecast, which itself was dramatically higher that the 129,000 estimated just a year ago! How much higher is this figure going to rise? And to think that until recently the Conservatives repeatedly pledged to cut net migration to tens of thousands! Is anyone still stupid enough to believe a word the lying Tories say? As I have told you before, there is NO difference between the Tories and Labour. They are both exactly the same.
But Hunt intends to play the old game of offering tax cuts in the last Budget before a general election, hoping that people will be too stupid to remember all the years of hardship and be happy to be bribed into voting Conservative once again. And if you think this is just me being cynical, once again, then read what the Financial Times reported: “Hunt has told Tory MPs that by the time of his next Autumn Statement he expects inflation to be under control. Official forecasts say price rises will fall below 3 per cent by the end of the year; at that point he hopes to turn on the spending taps. Then by the time he presents his second Budget in spring 2024 - stage four of the fiscal plan - Hunt hopes to be showering cash on the voters. “That’s when we’ll blow the fiscal headroom,” says one Tory strategist.”
So, are you going to fall for it? Will you remember the years of betrayal, the years of high taxes, low growth, increased immigration, net zero madness, high inflation, high energy prices, poor services and general misery, or will you allow hope to triumph over experience once more, tug your forelock at your tuppenny bribe and give your vote to the Conservatives, the enemies of Britain and the British people? As the saying goes: the people get the government they deserve.