Where do we go from here? By we, I mean this great country of ours that is slowly stagnating and is in serious danger of getting stuck in a quagmire.
It’s mired in a potent swill of labour shortages, political lethargy, high taxes and untamed inflation. To cut to the chase, I despair. I see no way out.
An early riser, I have always enjoyed running to the railway station (strikes notwithstanding) while listening to BBC Radio 4’s Farming Today programme. But not any more.
All I hear now are depressing tales of pig farmers continuing to lose money on the animals they take to market, or carcasses being transported from the UK to be butchered overseas – and then coming back into this country to be sold in our supermarkets. How does that make sense on so many levels? If I was an eco-warrior, I’d be spitting feathers.
The Budget, creeping up on the horizon like an ogre, will offer no respite from the financial misery most of us find ourselves in.By the time the Today programme pipes into action I’m already seriously depressed, especially if the first of the two trains I catch into work has been cancelled (50:50). Radio talk about Ukraine, the warmongering Putin, and China’s geopolitical posturing takes my mood down into Dead Sea territory.
Against a backdrop of the UK economy heading to be overtaken by Poland by the end of the decade in GDP per capita terms, I fear we are a country going nowhere.
British Steel sheds 250 jobs in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire as a result of closing its coking ovens and no one bats an eyelid.
Train strikes now seem part of everyday life (no one seems to bother when Mick Lynch, boss of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, calls another series of strikes).
As for vegetable shortages, they are simply greeted with calls from politicians urging us to eat more turnips (I thought turnips were for donkeys or at the very best used in stews when carrots are unavailable).
The Budget, creeping up on the horizon like an ogre, will offer no respite from the financial misery most of us find ourselves in. Chancellor of the exchequer Jeremy Hunt may have brought a bit of calm to financial markets last year with his Autumn Statement, but it hasn’t done many of us any favours.
A whole raft of allowances and thresholds have either been frozen until April 2028 or cut, the most wicked of which pertain to income tax.
It will result in more people being sucked into paying basic or higher rate tax as a result of fiscal drag – while a cutting of the threshold at which additional rate tax kicks in (from £150,000 to £125,140) will see some 250,000 taxpayers start to pay 45 per cent tax on a slice of their income.
Prudence will prevail, which means nothing but hardship for most of us.What with a freezing of the inheritance tax thresholds and a slashing of both the capital gains tax and dividend allowances already earmarked for April 6, Hunt has already played his cards.
Although tax receipts have been healthy in recent months, I just can’t see Hunt overturning any of his Autumn Statement measures.
Prudence will prevail, which means nothing but hardship for most of us.
Maybe the only wriggle room Hunt has is on corporation tax. Some of the country’s top businesses have already told the government that it needs to reverse the plan to increase corporation tax from 19 to 25 per cent from the start of the new tax year.
A failure to do so, they say, will throttle any prospect of the UK economy going into strong recovery mode – as businesses rein back on their investment plans.
I trust Hunt will listen to these calls. They are genuine. They are heartfelt. They should be heard.
Are there any glimmers of light we can cling on to? A new Northern Ireland Brexit deal? Possibly.
We certainly haven’t progressed as a country since the Conservatives came into power in 2010.A robust UK stock market, up nearly 5 per cent this year and more than 6 per cent higher than this time last year? Yes, good news for our pensions and our Isas, but hardly enough to ameliorate the harmful impact of inflation on our finances.
Whether a change of government will make things any better, I’m not so sure. But we certainly haven’t progressed as a country since the Conservatives came into power in 2010.
In the financial space I write in, good news is in short supply. Maybe I’m too much of a pessimist (the DNA of journalists is immersed in pessimism), but the future doesn’t look good.
If you disagree, send me a cheerful email. It would make my day. Reasons to be cheerful; I need to hear them. And not just from Ian Dury and The Blockheads. Reasons To Be Cheerful, Part Four.
Jeff Prestridge is group wealth & personal finance editor at DMGT
