Rishi Sunak and the age-old art of stealing the Opposition’s clothes
sir – Wednesday’s Budget was a classic example of a government taking over the Opposition’s policies wholesale – as the Conservatives under Sir Robert Peel did with the Whigs’ free-trade policies in the 1840s.
The success of this bold manoeuvre will depend on two things: how the coronavirus pandemic develops, and whether interest rates remain low.
In any case, it is a mark of how far Boris Johnson and his colleagues have departed from traditional Tory policies. Time will deliver a verdict on the wisdom or otherwise of what has been announced.
Rev Andrew Mcluskey
Ashford, Middlesex
sir – If Jeremy Corbyn thinks the Conservatives have done so very badly over the past 10 years, can he explain why he didn’t win a landslide victory in last year’s general election?
Wendy Beavan
Hereford
sir – If the Chancellor and Treasury thought Entrepreneurs’ Relief was getting expensive, just see how expensive things get when people stop taking risks to create new businesses – or leave Britain to realise their capital gain. I thought I voted for a Conservative government.
Graham Holding
Corby, Northamptonshire
sir – Estate agency may not be the most popular business on the high street, but we are just as likely to be affected by coronavirus as the retail shop next door.
Why, then, do our “shops” not qualify for the 100 per cent Business Rate Relief announced in the Budget?
James Hayman-joyce
Moreton-in-marsh, Gloucestershire
sir – Once again, borrowers are to be
feather-bedded with lower interest and mortgage rates, following the Bank of England’s emergency cuts.
Savers, who tend to be older people, have once again been thrown to the wolves. Even National Savings and Investments is reducing its interest rate to a miserly 0.7 per cent, cutting many pensioners’ incomes in half.
Michael Edwards
Haslemere, Surrey
sir – Here we have yet another example of the North-south divide: while the Government prepares to spend goodness knows how much on constructing a tunnel under Stonehenge, dangerous sections of the A1 in Northumberland and Scotland remain as single carriageways.
Aidan Tasker
Durham