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During 23 years with the BBC, and in a 42 year journalistic career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, always found that politicians would only ever tell the truth PARTIALLY, and this is now highlighted by Rachel Reeves’ amazing U-turn over putting up income tax.
What has just happened is extraordinary, and serves to underline a key point: the slipperiness of politicians!
Three weeks before the budget (due on Wednesday November 26) the Chancellor Rachel Reeves held a highly unusual Media Conference (MC) to pave the way for what was to come.
There would be a two pence rise in income tax.
Indeed Ms Reeves was indicating for weeks that she was prepared to raise income tax for the first time in decades (although the manifesto had said they would not raise taxes on “working people”), in order to plug a big hole in the public finances and reassure the markets that she is committed to fiscal discipline.
But on Thursday night it all changed, and the Financial Times (FT) reported that Ms Reeves had abandoned the idea altogether, because she feared a huge backlash.
Instead of raising income tax rates, the Chancellor decided to freeze thresholds for two years, a move that economists estimate will raise £7.5 billion.
However she has herself argued against exactly such a move, saying in her last budget speech: “Extending the threshold freeze would hurt working people, it would take more money out of their payslips”.
This incredible episode puts centre stage something I have known all along, that politicians rarely actually LIE fearing they will be caught out (it has only ever happened to me once, and the issue was so small I did nothing about it), but they don’t tell the WHOLE truth!
On November 13 UK Government sources told the media that the decision not to raise income tax levels was nothing to do with bad headlines, it was actually in response to improved fiscal forecasts.
This was not a bare-faced lie, but I would suggest other factors were paramount, and that the report in the FT was accurate – there were huge worries in senior Labour circles of major attacks on the UK Government in the papers and elsewhere.
Cabinet ministers are understood to have expressed concerns about the political implications generally of increasing income tax rates.
Lucy Powell, the Deputy Leader, had said she was opposed to raising income tax. Some MPs argued that the late change gave the impression that the government was not in control.
One senior Labour MP said they thought Ms Reeves “will end up having to go after this debacle of a budget” and warned against any further attempt to U-turn on ending the two-child benefit limit, saying that would “lead to a complete revolt”.
Another Labour MP said Sir Keir Starmer had been told by many in the parliamentary party that he was losing their support, but that he “refused to listen to criticism”. “They don’t know what they are doing and there is 10 days left of this mess,” it was said.
Ms Reeves, though, will need a lot more than what has been talked about to fill the £20 billion fiscal hole, and increase headroom to £15 billion, with the market reaction suggesting that investors are sceptical about the ability of a range of smaller measures to fill the gap.
Flip-flopping like this has not been well received, and this market scepticism has led to a sell-off in the bond market.
All of this has put me in mind of what politicians have always said to me in my long journalistic career.
Controversial issues are massaged, and problematic decisions can then be offered in a truthful, but only partial light. You therefore have to check on the context, and make calls to your contacts to discover what the REAL reason is.
I have seen this time and time again.
Unemployment increased, causing terrible hardship – but we were always told that it was only because of a restructuring of the economy and other statistics showed how well the UK was really doing.
Every time a factory closed it threw huge numbers on the dole – but the official message was always that the company as a whole was doing very well, and that UK PLC was in good shape.
Recessions gripped the UK and Wales suffered particularly badly – but apparently it was only because we had to reduce a colossal deficit, or rejig everything, and in the long run the future was bright.
There have been (and continue to be) astonishingly long waiting times to see a consultant in the NHS – but they tell us that this is being tackled, and, anyway, it only shows how popular our health service is.
So you have to interpret what a politician might say, because it may not be an actual lie, yet the context of what has happened should be made clear.
As Ms Reeves could know, but doesn’t like to say!
Details of Phil’s, remarkable decades-long journalistic career (when interviews with image-conscious politicians would often dominate, and they might not lie, but wouldn’t tell the whole truth), as he was gripped by the rare neurological condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in an important book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now.
Tomorrow – how during that career, he spent 23 years with the BBC, so Phil has been left reeling by the shocking events of the last few weeks – as it plays into the hands of those who are traditionally opposed to the corporation.
