JAM doesn’t get sweeter with Philip
Tory Chancellor Philip Hammond is so gloomy he makes sombre Alistair Darling look like Michael McIntyre. And Hammond’s got a lot to be miserable about.
Because he knows the public has finally sussed the Tories carried out a long-term economic scam. The respected Institute for Fiscal Studies says we now face a decade of lost wage growth, thanks to Osborne’s austerity and May’s decision to continue with it.
According the IFS, workers face the longest squeeze on pay in nearly 100 years. That means between 2010 and 2020 your salary will have grown by just 1.6%. Between 2000 and 2010 it was eight times higher at 12.7%.
May claimed she wants to help those “Just About Managing”. But thanks to lower growth, rising inflation and cuts to in-work benefits, these people will be hit hardest. Under Labour, government debt as a percentage of GDP was about 40%. Under Cameron and Osborne, it shot up to 90% – and it’s still rising.
PATHETIC
Hammond has finally accepted what Labour’s Ed Balls and Darling called for all along – you’ve got to borrow to invest. But May and Hammond’s plans for infrastructure are pathetic. Labour and the CBI issued a joint call for an HS3 link from East to West across the North. Their response was to give £100m for a link from Oxford to Cambridge.
When it comes to transport spending between the South East and the rest of the UK, you still have to mind the gap.
There was also nothing for spreading wealth and prosperity across the regions.
That’s why Labour’s plan for a National Investment Bank to hand out £500bn of investment through regional banks is a smart move.
Instead we have a southern- focused Government which abandoned balancing the books by 2015 and now can’t even get there by 2020.
Thanks to the Tories, you’ve never had it so bad.