U-turn if you want to…

This is an adapted version of my analysis from the LabourList email this morning. To receive our email every weekday morning please subscribe here. 

Remember when we found out what was in the budget on budget day?

It used to be the case that while pre-budget speculation was always rife, we actually only got a real sense of what was in the budget on the day the Chancellor stood up and announced it in the commons.

However one of the under-examined impacts of George Osborne’s establishment of the Office of Budget Responsibility is the fact that measures due to be announced at the set piece Parliamentary event are submitted early to the ‘watchdog’ body. And that gets out.

So we now have a revised submission to the body that looks like Reeves has u-turned on suspected changes to Income Tax that would have broken their manifesto promise.

READ MORE: The BBC crisis and our half right, half wrong politics

When not briefing against their own health secretary, everything the government has done in terms of messaging over the last month has been signalling that this would have changed. Reeves even gave a highly unusual press conference setting out the difficult context for the budget. This was widely seen as pitch rolling for manifesto-breaking measures such as a rise in Income Tax. But this latest submission to the OBR suggests that may be off the table.

That doesn’t make the government’s position any easier. They still need to raise a lot of money from somewhere to ensure that the public services we rely on can be fixed and funded.

Luckily, LabourList readers – including the Chancellor – have plenty of ideas to look at. Whether it be a tax on luxury goods, gambling, or wealth (a measure called for by 50 MPs led by Richard Burgon MP).

On the other side of the ledger, there have been heavy hints that the Chancellor would announce measures to scrap the two-child limit on benefits – loathed by many Labour members. Does a change to the Chancellor’s income-raising measures put this at risk?

We wont have definitive answers until the 26th November when the Chancellor delivers the budget. But the OBR process means that we now get far more significant hints than was ever the case in the past.

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