The Budget will include lots of rhetoric on all the “savings” Labour have made by keeping unemployment low.
Two caveats to remember: Read more
Tories attempt to “crowdsource” the Budget
This should be an interesting experiment tomorrow. The Conservatives are inviting economics experts, business students, City people, FT readers etc to comment on the Budget as it unfolds. Here is an introduction to the site (but not the actual one). The idea is to spot the lies, half-truths and statistical sleights of hand which are not unknown on Budget Day*.
Further Reading
In defence of Geoff Hoon – Daniel Finkelstein
A local critique of Geoff Hoon from his own constituency Read more
Do Labour Budgets prompt a fall in the opinion polls?
This isn’t exactly scientific. But it has amusement value at the very least. Hat-tip to Robert Hutton at Bloomberg.
David Amess: The MP who campaigned against Cake, the fictional drug
On one level you shouldn’t be too surprised to find out that Tory MP David Amess has been embarrassed over his questions on the Maldives. Read more
Byers’ business boss admits the Dispatches programme was: “Not terribly positive”
I’ve just spoken to Tony Mattar, director of Consolidated Contractors International, which pays Stephen Byers as a non-UK consultant (it also owns the unglamorous ACWAT water treatment company* that he chairs).
Mattar tells me that Byers is on an annual consultancy contract. “When it comes up for renewal, whether he would wish to continue or whether we would want to continue it I cannot tell at this stage,” he says. Read more
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Jim Pickard is the FT's chief political correspondent, having joined the lobby team in January 2008. He has been at the FT since 1999 as a regional correspondent, assistant UK news editor and property correspondent.
Kiran Stacey is an FT political correspondent, having joined the lobby in 2011. He started at the FT as a graduate trainee in 2008, working on desks including UK companies and US equity markets before taking over the FT's Energy Source blog.
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