A Coming Election?

Today, Alistair Darling is going to announce some big tax policy shenanigans. This is apparently so that he can help fix the economy and give people more money to spend. As such, we're going to see a VAT cut to 15% and some deffered rises to corporate tax.

This is a contradiction.

Giving people more money in their pockets would include cutting council taxes or slashing income tax. What the government has leaked so far sounds much more like a cut to corporate tax burden for buisnesses. That's neither fixing the economy - that might involve getting both Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley to start lending at very competetive rates (good for both personal and corporate situations) or maybe actually lowering those taxes that we all pay once a year.

I'll post with a more indepth opinion on what our dear Darling has proposed when he's actually proposed them.

But what do all these policies mean? Well, let's go back to my A Level History class, namely the 1959 election. When Harold Macmillan went to woo the public, he went in with a strong economic backing and a recent tax-cutting budget. If this sounds familiar, this was what was happening last year when George Osbourne suddenly turned up and gave a much stronger policy speech than Brown was expecting (which, according to Andrew Marr's A History of Modern Britain is why he called off the election). So Brown is trying to recreate last year. That means that, with the Tories on the back foot for the first time in a year, we might be about to see a Spring 2009 election, which is disasterous for the Lib Dems. Back in the summer, Nick Clegg decided that the Lib Dems needed a bit of modernising of the background functions and systems that will be needed to cope with a larger number of MPs and local parties. They're probably chatting about the needed changes as we speak. The current system - an interim government, if you like - is supposed to last until it's all ready to be changed. From what I've read, that should be in 2010.

AFTER a 2009 election, if there is one!

I'm a big fan of modernisation - it's like a massage, in that it can be both be excrutiatingly painful and good for the body as a whole - but if it alls get held up for an election, then a lot of work might go to waste. Let's not forget that we're currently not in a strong polling position, either!