I'm unbelievably ill informed and stupid.

[Lola247]

Can anyone explain the budget to me in simple terms please?

Yes, they have full access, that's the point of being the Shadow Chancellor.

But the precise size of the gap is extremely relevant when knowing how to plug it. You yourself seem to admit that the Tories were not honest about the extent of it. How were Labour leaders to know without access to actual details?

Thank you.

hmmm...

Honestly, you should have done yes. Take if from someone else who's parents are in the 8% of estates that are going to be liable for IHT, we would much rather you had spent a bit more, than have to listen to you constantly complaining that some of the money you didn't need is going to be used to fund services used by your grandchildren.

Oh boohoo! The poor widdle rich people are so victimised 🎻

They are right to blame the previous Tory government and the Labour one before that. Successive governments have let us down and mismanaged the economy yet people on the left think the solution to this is to give an unqualified bunch of egotistical MPs more of our money.

I didn't make any comment on the Conservatives, so you can shove your mental gymnastics. I was pointing out that Labour shouldn't have been surprised by this "22bn black hole" because they should have been on top of holding the Tories to account - which would have meant pointing out where they don't have funding for their policies. So it's an excuse by Labour to hide behind this black hole because they weren't doing their job properly in Opposition. Perhaps if they had been, they would have been elected sooner and the country wouldn't have had to suffer years and years of financial fuck up.

I should have known its impossible to have a sensible debate on MN, so many people just blindly follow their own party and lack the ability to think critically.

There are measures in place to help SMEs with this, including a frozen rate for NI which will mean that over a million SMEs will see no increase in the tax they currently pay, and over 800,000 people will continue to pay no tax for the next year. Bigger employers have broad shoulders and frankly should be contributing more. Strange how all the comments about how the Budget will put employers out of business seem to be omitting this.

Plus children will keep 60% of anything above £1million.

They will hardly be destitute!

Isn't it?

Sorry my link didn't attach last time.
An interesting graphic here though about "the state of public services" - NHS waiting lists since 1990:
https://www.helenadollimore.com/post/helena-slams-the-government-s-poor-record-on-nhs-waiting-times

Absolutely this.

how can you genuinely feel hard done by when’s for this to matter, you’ve been able to save, and not need to use, over a million pounds of stuff.
And as LivingDead says, will be used to fund services directly benefitting said grandchildren

https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/jul/30/rachel-reeves-claims-jeremy-hunt-lied-nonsense-what-is-the-truth

"As tends to be the case, things are not entirely clearcut. Reeves cannot claim complete ignorance about the spending pressures and said herself during the campaign that the existence of the independent Office for Budget Responsibility meant it was not necessary to win an election to find out about the state of public finances. But the chancellor’s argument that things were even worse than she expected was bolstered when the OBR’s director, Richard Hughes, said on Monday that he was launching an inquiry into how the departmental spending totals for 2024-25 were prepared. The OBR became aware of the additional spending pressures only last week. Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, says the numbers Reeves produced were new in that they had not been published before and that he found it astonishing that the £6bn bill for housing asylum seekers had not been budgeted for. Even so, it was always obvious Reeves faced tricky decisions, Johnson says."

OK, here's a try at a neutral explanation of "The Budget" in general, if that's what you meant. You can get a million opinions on "The 2024 Budget" elsewhere in the thread. 😉

The Budget sets out how the (any) government plans to finance the major elements of its political programme. So if they have said they want to put more money into the NHS, the Chancellor of the Exchequer (CX) will say how much that is, say an extra £20 billion, and then explain where that money is to come from, which can be a combination of borrowing, taxes, or cutting spending elsewhere.

Sometimes CX will also cut specific taxes while raising others, if they want to encourage — or at least not discourage — some behaviours more than others. Or they might not decrease/increase tax rates directly, but instead raise/lower the amount of money you have to be earning/paying before those taxes kick in. As well as taxes, the Budget may also adjust benefits and other financial rules. For example, yesterday it was announced that the minimum wage will go up by about 7%. That's not a spending decision as such, but it's a number that the Government sets by law.

The extra money being spent tends to overlap with things that other ministers have already talked about, and often takes a while to go through the system. On the other hand, tax changes sometimes come in quite quickly. (But then again, some take quite a while. Air Passenger Duty — a tax you pay when you take a flight from a UK airport — will change a bit in April 2025 because of a decision taken by the outgoing Conservative government which is still waiting to take effect, and again in April 2026 because of an announcement that Rachel Reeves made yesterday.)

@Dotjones Even the usually pro-Labour BBC

....this was the point at which I realised you're not really paying attention....

IMO the right-wing Press (and yes, the Mail in particular) should take much of the blame. They bang on about 'broken Britain', the state of our roads, the NHS, etc. How the fuck do they think governments will find the money to pay for this? Through taxation. But then the duplicitous wankers bang on about "Labour's tax raid on you" ( the poor, long-suffering middle-class voter), and nothing gets done. Politicians are scared to admit they'll put taxes up, whilst this mind-set continues. And as we're seeing, it's not as easy as that. Some taxes, like NI employers contribution, may mitigate against job creation, and put already pressed SMEs under even more pressure. And all of then add to inflation. Same old, same old. Everyone wants a 21st century welfare state, but no-one wants to pay the taxes to fund it. It's always, can't someone else pay?

Nobody is stopping you 'spunking it' now if you feel so inclined.

FGS the dramatics are grating.

It’s been a few months vs 14 years of a Tory shit show 😂 not sure you can trot that line out just yet love.

From the Beth Rigby interview, it seems clear that Labour pledged in their manifesto to raise taxes by £8bn, and the debated blackhole was £22bn, yet the budget was set to raise $40bn from tax rises.

Whichever way you look at it, that is £10bn more than they said they would raise in their manifesto. i.e. a lie

Anyway, it all depends on your politics, if you think this Labour government are best placed to spend your money because they absolutely know what they are doing and will definitely improve public services if only they had more money, I am sure you will be happy about the largest tax raid for decades. If you think that governments are typically terrible at spending money, waste a lot and have no efficiency plans of any description and actually feel like they really have enough of our money already, then you will think that this budget is just another step towards more inefficient Big communist Government and a stagnant at best, declining at worst, economy, then you might feel somewhat angry about what happened yesterday.

Personally, I feel like the contract between tax payer and government was broken yesterday. Not one person voted for £40bn of tax raises, even those who voted for Labour. I have no idea why anyone thinks it is OK for a government to just TELL you what taxes they feel like you should pay. The government is expected to act as a steward of public funds, using taxpayer money responsibly, fairly, and transparently. There was no transparency, and any fool from whatever party line can see that as clear as day.

Me too. I’m hoping the budget will encourage my elderly parents to spend more money now on living more comfortably because they are very lucky and can afford it.

They created the hole by awarding the public sector workers massive pay rises. Do keep up.

Pretty sure they're furious about how the Budget is actually pretty fair. That money has to be raised somehow. The UK's finances won't fix themselves.

It seems that everyone in the UK who sends their kids to private school is on Mumsnet and absolutely livid.

Excellent post.

Who did? I’m public sector and haven’t had a pay rise since 2022.