Balls to the Treasury!

It's been coming for a while, but the gloves are well and truly off for Alistair Darling. The Fleet Street diaspora seems to have flat-out decided that Darling is for the chop, his performance summarised by the Torygraph:

Mr Darling has presided over the first run on a high street bank in a generation, the biggest ever loss of personal data, an unprecedented backlash from the business community and, now, the threat of a rapid exodus of some of Britain's most successful and wealthy residents.

Next month's Budget is primed to be the most tortuous for Labour since 1997.

The "safe" Chancellor will have to confirm major about-turns on capital gains tax reform and the taxation of non-domiciles - just six months after announcing them.

He will also have to publicly concede that Northern Rock is officially a Government debt and that the long-cherished economic golden rules have been destroyed.

An interesting line in the right-wing press is that Darling is actually providing air cover for Gordon Brown. If this argument were true, Brown would be surrounding himself with idiots making statements about national identity databases and immigration just to make himself look good, which is clearly rubb...Oh.

Elsewhere in "Darling is rubbish!" news:

Darling retreats on non-dom tax plans: The Torygraph

The Chancellor still plans to charge long-standing non-doms a £30,000 annual levy, but other measures are significantly watered down.

These include no longer asking for detailed information about offshore trusts, not taxing works of art brought into the UK for public display and not taxing money brought into the UK to pay the £30,000 levy.

Ben Brogan reckons Darling will stay:

For what it's worth, this is the view tonight from inside the bunker.

The non-doms plan as set out in the PBR never said anything about forcing disclosure of foreign holdings. "Ambiguity" in the draft legislation published a few days ago suggested HMRC might be giving itself powers to launch fishing expeditions on foreign jurisdictions to snoop around non-doms. "Clarification" today from HMRC boss Dave Hartnett has ruled that out. It's a complicated area, these things happen.

Alistair Darling was put in the Treasury because he was precisely the kind of sanguine, grizzled veteran who could withstand inevitable knocks at this point in the political and economic cycles, provide leadership, stay calm and weather the storm.

As for his future? "Whoever got this job would be tested and he has the strength of personality and leadership to see the Treasury through". Spring reshuffle? Sacking? "Madness. No way".

Oh, and did we mention that Ed Balls wants to be Chancellor?

Written by Lloyd Shepherd on 13 Feb 2008 9:01 AM. Permalink