A lousy budget for the UK
This apology for a Conservative government continues to overlook Rule Number One of the UK economy, business pays for everything, hardly surprising when its ranks are infested with so many blinkered Westminster bubble neo-socialists.
Adam Smith’s canons of taxation are certainty, proportionality, convenience and efficiency. In the way that classical economists had to attune to the disciplines of the behavioural sciences too, in a society with an economy heavily driven today by services, so Adam Smith’s canons need overlaying with these too.
If writing an epitaph to the UK economy today he might title it: “The Wealth of Other Nations”. Hunt’s failure to kill inheritance tax, his abolition of non-dom status, his inflicting the highest tax rates for 70 years, his tourist tax and his massive corporation tax increase, his efforts to drive capital and business out of the UK should make him a shoe-in for the “Hero of the EU” medal for the next few years. Wealth is abandoning the UK like never before.
The UK is expected to see a net outflow of 3,200 high-net-worth individuals in 2023, higher than the projected 3,000 net loss for Russia, according to the Henley Private Wealth Migration Report 2023. Add to the this the reluctance of investors to introduce wealth to the UK and Hunt’s tinkering made for an uninspiring budget.
It is time the Office of Budget responsibility was shut. Staffed with left-wing Treasury has beens and cast offs, its predictions have hardly been models of precision. Next, did we really need 99,000 more civil servants since 2016?
The philosophy permeating that once great British institution is disturbing. From a £140,000 pa official who thought she could work from home permanently, to a “sickness” record double that of the private sector and the delusion that it could work four days a week, for five days’ pay, it is deeply flawed. A top to bottom restructure with the levels of reporting and senior executive responsibility of a style demanded by it of the private sector is the only way, with pay and bonuses linked to agreed, demanding KPIs.
Back to Rule One, pluck the golden geese bald, steal their eggs, starve them of feed and treat them with overt contempt, they will fly away. It is happening Jeremy Hunt and its down to you.
Robert Lefroy
Business Money Group editor
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