[Dalem Lake]

I'm losing the will to live with this government. They laid the groundwork for raising income tax with that speech a few weeks ago only to do another U-turn. They really are making themselves look incompetent and without an economic plan. At the start of the year I had high hopes and enthusiasm for Starmer and his government but that's all but evaporated now. I wish we had proportional representation.

[Youngian]

Maybe comparing the DPP to an American state prosecutor is not valid as the latter is a much more political role. Politics is littered with people that had run large organisations who believed their skills are transferable to political leadership and weren’t, especially business people. Don't quite know why.
Heard Gove warning opponents not to underestimate Starmer as he doesn't make mistakes twice. Having Mystic Mike Gove big you up is the kiss of death.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Bond market doesn’t like the news income tax won’t rise.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Freezing the thresholds gets you somewhere to where they need to be. But that’s a worse policy and more regressive than raising those with inflation and increasing the rate.

Unless there’s something big with eg the triple lock being suspended, this looks like a disaster.

[Boiler]

Bond market doesn’t like the news income tax won’t rise.

Guardian BTL seems obsessed with bond markets.

[Tubby Isaacs]

And some of the ATL too, mostly in the mistaken sense that they don't matter.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The silly thing about this is that had the OBR downgraded productivity earlier, when it could well have done, Hunt couldn't have ratfucked the new government with his NI cuts.

I can only think of fuel duty as something substantial that they didn't promise to raise. And perhaps gambling is getting a really big increase.

There seems to be lots of "pasty tax" criticism of doing small rises/changes. I'm not quite sure why these were said to be such a bad thing in themselves. As with farms, school fees etc, you'll come up against lots of lobby groups. but there are anomalies in things like VAT.

What these aren't of course is big revenue raisers. See the bond reaction to this.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Rather indicative of the reporting here.

While Alex Wickham from Bloomberg reports that a better-than-expected fiscal forecast has allowed Rachel Reeves to drop the plan to raise income tax in the budget (see 9.03am), other explanations are also being offered. This is from an analysis from Beth Rigby, Sky News’s political editor.

I understand Downing Street has backed down amid fears about the backlash from disgruntled MPs and voters.
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Wouldn't a better fiscal forecast be good news? Beth's got her "Labour forced by backlash" in though.

Whether there's a better fiscal forecast or not, raise taxes, stop everything falling to bits.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Don't do this.

Treasury considering cutting thresholds for higher rates of income tax in budget, after ruling out basic rate hike