By stewartb
“I think Rishi Sunak’s credibility is completely destroyed ….” – there is a lot of this ‘credibility destroying’ about!
From the Institute for Government (6 June 2024): ‘Ruling out tax rises undermines Sunak’s and Starmer’s credibility on public services’.
This London-based, establishment-endorsed, centrist think tank states (with my emphasis):
‘… the promises on tax (coupled with promises to limit borrowing and debt) imply tight limits on public spending. It is not plausible to think that the next government can address existing major problems in public services without spending more than is currently pencilled in – or announcing cuts to some areas of services or social security.’
‘The tax pledges seriously undermine the credibility of their public service aspirations: the parties are presumably hoping the electorate will not notice. But recent polling, showing that more than half of people expect tax rises under either a Labour or Conservative government, suggest that voters are not so easily fooled.’
And it repeats its assessment: ‘The promises all the main UK political parties have now made not to raise the rates of the main taxes fundamentally undermines the credibility of their promises on public services. Governing well requires making difficult trade-offs, including between a desire for low taxes and a desire for a range of high quality public services. Ruling out tax rises implies a choice about what spending can be afforded. Such choices should not be made lightly and the electorate should understand the implications.’
Source: https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/ruling-out-tax-rises-undermines-credibility
Talking-up Scotland / Facts on NHS, Crime, ferries and everything else you can think of 
Labour’s statements just don’t make sense, on one hand it can’t promise anything because it doesn’t know the true state of the country but on the other it can confidently say that it won’t increase taxes, the conclusion must be that it will let service levels fall if they cannot be maintained with the present level of funding.
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Seems like an oxymoron, ‘Tories credibility on public services’ has never really been what it says on the tin, and now with Starmer’s Labour party having lurched to the right, their ‘credibility’, even since Blair in fact, has and is also a CON. With ‘freeports’ and ‘charter cities’, these people, Labour or Tories, when at the helm, have no intention of investing in ‘public services’, quite the oppsosite, they have and will continue to sell off the family silver. What would our parents and grandparents say if they were around today, they’d be horrified at how GB/Eng/British runaway capitalism has wrecked everything they fought for, sometimes literally fought for.
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Westminster spending £Billions on Hinkley Point, HS2, Trident, decommissioning nuclear. Instead of funding education, NHS and welfare. Losing £Billions on Brexit and tax evasion.
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Thanks stewart. I don’t know whether it helps, but I read Richard Murphy’s blog, “Funding the Future” every day, and while I don’t pretend to understand some of the more technical parts of his arguments, I find it very informative.
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