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Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Of course I welcome it—the Leader of the Opposition proposed it. Yesterday, the Chancellor began his speech by comparing himself, with characteristic modesty, to William Gladstone, but he said that when he becomes Prime Minister, unlike Gladstone, he will not try to be his own Chancellor. He then spent the rest of his speech writing the Budgets for the rest of the Parliament. The income tax changes we have been discussing will not come into force until April 2008. The rise in national insurance and the top rate threshold will happen in April 2009. The inheritance tax changes take place in April 2010. The Chancellor has fixed the Budgets of his future Chancellors and given them their marching orders before he has even chosen who will do the job or before they turn up at the Treasury. Perhaps it will be the Education Secretary—who knows?—thrust into a job that the Prime Minister of the day will not let him do, no doubt exposed to death by a thousand cuts from the daily press briefings of the Brownite cabal. That may be the right hon. Gentleman’s fate, but what the Budget tells us about the fate of the country is that the Chancellor will not change his ways. We shall have the same stealth, the same spin and the same con tricks. We shall have the same complete contempt for colleagues and belittling of Ministers that the Cabinet Secretary told us about. We shall have the same old-fashioned, top-down Stalinist control that is so out of tune with our times. With his last Budget, the Chancellor has shown us that he cannot be the change the country wants—that he is part of the problem, not part of the solution. One thing is clear from yesterday: if people want change and to restore trust in the political process, we do not just need a change of Prime Minister—we need a change of Government.