good morning. Today is a comprehensive spending review, setting budgets and priorities for the department for the next few years. There’s more to be done about what’s in it tomorrow and days, weeks, months, years. Much of the content has already been kicked out, but I don’t like to write about politics of things that have not yet happened as much as possible.
For now, some thoughts about the two things I’m looking for, and one of the things I don’t.
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Are these appropriate economic and political priorities?
Labour has significantly increased the amount of money Britain spends on infrastructure. It has pledged Parliament to additional capital expenditures of £113 billion. This is welcome, but not all “infrastructure” is created equally. Nuclear power, a proven form of clean energy that the government has already announced, is infrastructure. But so does Heathrow’s third runway. That growth case is very persuasive in my opinion and cannot be reconciled with the UK climate targets.
So I look at the locations and projects, not just numbers.
Do these daily spending settlements seem like a fruit? If not, do they suggest that when may there be a moment of labour calculation?
Today’s spending review essentially sets the government’s overall picture as the final stage of parliament. That is one of the most consequential things governments do politically. But as the Prime Minister has learned since 2015, what you spend (or don’t spend) is one thing, and sticking to it is a whole other thing.
So one thing I see is where cuts in some parts of the state bite and how quickly labor has to retreat. (I don’t think this government will really get it through spending cuts after the winter fuel allowance setback, but “grit-out” is now a Downing Street View of what needs to be done with welfare reform.)
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But in the end, much of this depends on how labor breaks out of the tax hole.
Taxes are ultimately a budget issue and not spending reviews. But the majority of workers’ growth strategies, and the effectiveness of infrastructure spending announced today, is whether workers handled difficulties surrounding taxes and whether they supported, supported or hurt their infrastructure and growth plans.
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I saw Ballerina, a new film set in the John Wick Universe, and it was almost what you wanted of one of these films, an unnecessary artistic shootout and a barely pointless plot. Certainly, the single best sequence is a straight lift from a surprisingly beautiful overhead shot of John Wick 4, but it still looked lovely. Danny Lee says that the playfulness of his previous entries was lacking, but it’s still worth watching if he enjoyed the early films.
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