No surprise that Conservative Party leaders, businessmen and the "unbiased" media had nothing good to say about the Budget.
Or that the catty personal "response" of Kemi Badenoch - rudeness unprecedented in the House of Commons - should be followed by a call for the Chancellor to "resign".
The Tory leader and her front-benchers have even reported Reeves to the Institute of Accountancy for "misleading the public" over the state of government finances! Never mind that the "truth" which they claim was deliberately hidden -i.e., that the finances were in better nick than she claimed - represented a good mark for Reeves!
The government's situation is quite tragic, really. Try as it might, Labour is still not accepted as the responsible pro-business party. Financial Times economist, Martin Wolf, wrote post-Budget : "it is, alas, clear that this government does not have the nerve or, surprisingly, despite its apparently huge majority, even the ability to make radical pro-growth reforms. It is, as this Budget also shows, "Old Labour" in its attitudes...(...) The increases in the costs of hiring and the upcoming difficulties in firing are bound to affect both growth and jobs, precisely the things Labour professes to want".
So post-budget, Starmer has tried to remedy this "old Labour" image. To "balance", not the books this time, but the political effect of the abolition of the two-child benefit cap, ("lifting 450,000 children out of poverty") - at a cost of £3bn a year - he straightaway abolished one of the planned reforms to employment law: the right to protection from unfair dismissal from day one in a job!
In fact the hysteria of the bosses over the Employment Rights Bill's very mild reforms - including to firing and rehiring - is, of course, ridiculous. This unfair dismissal right could only have been utilised in highly exceptional circumstances: it seems the bosses don't even understand their own loopholes!
Mere pennies for the poor
However, the main issue around the budget was "tax". For the capitalists and their politicians, tax is at best, a necessary evil. Expenditure on all unnecessary "social" things, especially welfare, must be cut, they say. The "wastrels and shirkers" who live (a life of luxury, haha) on benefits, must get a job! They never say where the jobs may be found - and funnily enough, they're always in favour of cutting jobs wherever possible!
And forget that many of those who're on benefits today are in work. Yes, relying on a government top-up to the starvation wages they get - allowing these same bosses to get away with being Scrooges -while they complain about the welfare bill! And the pathetic statutory wage increases which Reeves also announced, provide yet more reason for their moans and groans!
One BBC commentator called these increases "far too chunky"! Yes, the National "Living" Wage goes up 50p to £12.71, for over 21s; 18-20 year-olds get 85p more, (£10.85/hour) and 16-17 year old apprentices get 45p more - a "rise" to £8.00/hour. "Chunky"??
The first casualty of war is truth
What not one of these political loudmouths has yet complained about, however, is the £21.8 billion which has been given "in support to Ukraine" since February 2022. In fact another £3bn from the Treasury is due to be "gifted" to Zelenskyy in 2025/26 - the exact equivalent of the extra money needed annually to lift half a million kids out of poverty!
This expenditure - including £10.8 billion for weapons - literally goes without saying! The public is misled: we're told that hugging Zelenskyy at least once a month and pouring cash into his pockets - with no accountability required from this corrupt comedian- come-president - will keep everyone safe from "Putin"...
If there is lying and misleading of the public it's certainly not over the domestic affairs of government. It is above all, over the Ukraine war. The British government has been fuelling this war with a "generosity" that knows no bounds. The death and destruction it thus helps to cause, has given an absolutely magnificent boost to the arms industry - and indeed the capitalist economy as a whole... And we're meant to believe it, when it blames "Putin" for the "energy crisis" and the sky-high costs passed on to the rest of us? Let them tell us who really benefits!
This week there are talks aimed at a Trump-led Ukraine-Russia peace deal. Should we be surprised that Starmer et al are only lukewarm? Finally, the lies they have consistently told about this war may be revealed. Of course they'll also have to answer to the bosses of the weapons factories and their bankers...
For the working class across Europe, let alone in Ukraine and Russia, an end to this war cannot come soon enough. The battle we need to be waging isn't against "Putin" or any other scarecrow, but against the capitalist system and its governance. And it starts at home, alongside the Birmingham bin workers, the Docklands Light Railway cleaners and the resident NHS doctors... together, on strike.