Browse content similar to 25/11/2015. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
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the Manchester United game against PSV, and Man City against Juventus, | :00:00. | :00:00. | |
and we meet the teenage weightlifting sensation after the | :00:00. | :00:00. | |
Papers. Hello and welcome to our look | :00:00. | :00:13. | |
ahead to what the the papers With me are Isabel Hardman, | :00:14. | :00:16. | |
assistant editor at the Spectator, and Ben Chu, the Independent's | :00:17. | :00:20. | |
economics editor. The FT says the government's deficit | :00:21. | :00:24. | |
reduction strategy will now depend more on tax rises | :00:25. | :00:30. | |
than on further cuts, as the public appetite | :00:31. | :00:33. | |
for austerity wanes. The Metro echoes the famous | :00:34. | :00:37. | |
declaration of Margaret Thatcher, as it headlines | :00:38. | :00:40. | |
Mr Osborne's two policy reversals. The i has the same play | :00:41. | :00:45. | |
on the Thatcher quote. The Guardian highlights the squeeze | :00:46. | :00:51. | |
on local government, it says councils will see a near halving | :00:52. | :00:58. | |
of their central government grant. The Express says the Chancellor's | :00:59. | :01:01. | |
protection of foreign aid spending is | :01:02. | :01:03. | |
a political gamble when taxes rise. The Telegraph says the U-turn on | :01:04. | :01:15. | |
working tax credit marks the end of austerity. The Daily Mail would like | :01:16. | :01:19. | |
to know, whatever happened to austerity? We will start with the | :01:20. | :01:24. | |
Metro, the Tories are for turning, everyone expected a softening of the | :01:25. | :01:30. | |
cuts to working tax credits, not that they would be completely | :01:31. | :01:35. | |
scrapped, but he has completely scrapped them, surprised everybody. | :01:36. | :01:40. | |
A smart move by the Chancellor, no-one and could pick over the | :01:41. | :01:43. | |
details of the mitigation, saying that there is a problem here or | :01:44. | :01:47. | |
there. Everyone was so surprised that he had managed to scrap those | :01:48. | :01:51. | |
cuts entirely, so even though some people will still be affected by | :01:52. | :01:55. | |
lower tax credit payments when they are rolled into universal credit, it | :01:56. | :01:59. | |
became a good news story for him. And I think it rectified some of the | :02:00. | :02:03. | |
damage that has been done to his reputation, to his character over | :02:04. | :02:08. | |
the past few weeks, to have someone saying, I have listened to concerns | :02:09. | :02:12. | |
and changed my mind is quite important in politics, particularly | :02:13. | :02:16. | |
for George Osborne. He looks reasonable. He had carried on | :02:17. | :02:20. | |
resisting those concerns for too long. The 27, 29 billion stuff down | :02:21. | :02:27. | |
the back of the sofa, when would he have found out about that? In the | :02:28. | :02:33. | |
weeks leading up to the statement. OK, in the weeks leading up to the | :02:34. | :02:38. | |
statement, sober for the vote on working tax credits? I am not sure | :02:39. | :02:43. | |
of the timing, but the Chancellor generally has good sign of what | :02:44. | :02:47. | |
numbers are going into the Autumn Statement, not least because there | :02:48. | :02:50. | |
is too and fro between the Treasury and the OBR about what will go into | :02:51. | :02:55. | |
the document. You would not have thought before and? Not judging by | :02:56. | :03:02. | |
the look on his face when he lost the vote! These headlines are about | :03:03. | :03:07. | |
three quarters right, on tax credits, it is a big reversal, on | :03:08. | :03:11. | |
public spending, the squeeze will be considerably less than was | :03:12. | :03:17. | |
expected, but there is a lot of departments which are still having | :03:18. | :03:21. | |
extremely large squeezes, and he will still get this 10 billion | :03:22. | :03:24. | |
surplus at the end of the Parliament, and this is something | :03:25. | :03:29. | |
that a lot of economists say is not necessary to get the public finances | :03:30. | :03:35. | |
on an even keel. They think you only need a current budget surplus, | :03:36. | :03:38. | |
excluding capital spending. I do not think we should take this too far | :03:39. | :03:43. | |
and say austerity is over, but there will be a lot of public spending | :03:44. | :03:48. | |
cuts to come. Let's go to your paper, do the numbers add up? A Venn | :03:49. | :03:53. | |
diagram, some kind of diagram, like a wheel with lots of black bits and | :03:54. | :03:57. | |
red bits, can we bring that up for the viewers to see? There it is. | :03:58. | :04:02. | |
Now, I am going to let you explain this diagram, do the figures add up? | :04:03. | :04:07. | |
Well, what you're looking at is a Catherine wheel of a income that is | :04:08. | :04:12. | |
the best way to describe it. The red bars are cuts announced today, so | :04:13. | :04:19. | |
very big for transport, justice, local government, Home Office. The | :04:20. | :04:23. | |
protected departments, overseas aid, health, you can see the bars going | :04:24. | :04:28. | |
up, and you can see the pain since 2010, since austerity started, so | :04:29. | :04:32. | |
over the full decade you can see how big some of the cuts have been to | :04:33. | :04:36. | |
places like transport, business, justice, getting on for 50%, perhaps | :04:37. | :04:41. | |
even more. It is really trying to sum up the whole decade of | :04:42. | :04:45. | |
austerity, if you like, you can see how uneven it has been, how some | :04:46. | :04:48. | |
departments are fared relatively well, others have been hit really | :04:49. | :04:52. | |
hard. Some of these departments have a lot of pain to come, local gun | :04:53. | :04:59. | |
and, huge difficulty in meeting their social care requirements. -- | :05:00. | :05:02. | |
local government. Justice, the Home Office, we have not heard much from | :05:03. | :05:05. | |
them, but they will be making very difficult decisions in the weeks | :05:06. | :05:10. | |
and. But at the same time, it seems as if the leader writers have | :05:11. | :05:14. | |
decided that it is the U-turn that is the big thing, if we look at the | :05:15. | :05:18. | |
front pages, which means, as you are saying, he comes across as a | :05:19. | :05:23. | |
reasonable man who listens to the public, a potential leader. I think | :05:24. | :05:32. | |
he has got the headlines he was hoping for four tomorrow's papers, | :05:33. | :05:35. | |
but I think the diagram and the headlines illustrate what sort of | :05:36. | :05:37. | |
Chancellor George Osborne is. A lot of his critics get him wrong and | :05:38. | :05:40. | |
Sadie is ideologically of. He is not, he is politically driven. -- | :05:41. | :05:48. | |
and say he is ideologically driven. Some departments are big and still | :05:49. | :05:53. | |
growing, others have been slashed, and if he were an ideologically | :05:54. | :05:57. | |
driven Chancellor, he would have kept going on tax credits, saying, | :05:58. | :06:02. | |
you are just complaining and making apocalyptic predictions, as you did | :06:03. | :06:07. | |
in 2010. And he would have banked the 29 billion, had a bigger | :06:08. | :06:12. | |
surplus. If he continued to play to the image that a lot of people feel | :06:13. | :06:18. | |
that he exhibits, of a man who is ideologically driven, obsessed with | :06:19. | :06:22. | |
austerity, someone who has got to balance the books at whatever cost, | :06:23. | :06:26. | |
no matter how it might affect all mean to ordinary people at there. | :06:27. | :06:31. | |
You are saying that it is not who he is. I think that is misunderstanding | :06:32. | :06:36. | |
the Chancellor, he is a very strategic man, and the fact that he | :06:37. | :06:40. | |
not only announced he would protect police budget at the end of speech, | :06:41. | :06:44. | |
so that John McDonnell was scribbling away, and mending his | :06:45. | :06:48. | |
response seconds after the Chancellor had sat down, he a | :06:49. | :06:52. | |
political Chancellor, not some dry columnist who would like to sit in a | :06:53. | :06:56. | |
think tank. He thinks about the next move on the chessboard. My sense is | :06:57. | :07:01. | |
that he veers between the pragmatic Osborne that Isabel has been | :07:02. | :07:04. | |
describing and the pragmatic Osborne that Isabel has been describing Andy | :07:05. | :07:12. | |
Moore the wind in his sales, he thought he could move very hard on | :07:13. | :07:22. | |
tax credits. Now he is back in practical mode, and he has tempered | :07:23. | :07:27. | |
austerity, done a reversal on tax credits, thinking more | :07:28. | :07:32. | |
strategically. He goes between the two, he still has an element of | :07:33. | :07:36. | |
ideology, by targeting the surplus, which doesn't really make economic | :07:37. | :07:40. | |
sense. It makes some rhetorical sense, because most people think | :07:41. | :07:44. | |
that a government's budget is the same as a household budget, and if | :07:45. | :07:48. | |
you are not in balance, you are going to go bankrupt, which is not | :07:49. | :07:51. | |
true. It worked for Margaret Thatcher! To the Guardian, the 27 | :07:52. | :07:58. | |
billion U-turn on the front, it talks about councils, Isabel, that | :07:59. | :08:04. | |
local councils are going to see their budgets, their central grant | :08:05. | :08:11. | |
cut drastically. They will have control over corporation tax, and | :08:12. | :08:16. | |
they can raise council tax by 2%, if it is used for social care, but they | :08:17. | :08:21. | |
are one of the big losers out of this. Absolutely, and this is where | :08:22. | :08:26. | |
we will see real opposition to this, not from the Labour Party, which I | :08:27. | :08:30. | |
am sure we will get onto, but from local governments and Conservatives | :08:31. | :08:34. | |
in local government included. Today a Conservative leader of the local | :08:35. | :08:37. | |
gun and association was stinging about the effect of these cuts on | :08:38. | :08:43. | |
local government. We talked about a black hole that they will not be | :08:44. | :08:47. | |
able to plug. -- the Local Government Association. He says they | :08:48. | :08:52. | |
will be in a great deal of trouble and that services that people rely | :08:53. | :08:56. | |
on are going to deteriorate. Now, again, the Tories might say, a lot | :08:57. | :09:01. | |
of these people gave dire warnings in 2010, but it is significant that | :09:02. | :09:05. | |
Conservative councils are criticising this Spending Review, | :09:06. | :09:09. | |
not putting on a show of unity, seriously worried about their | :09:10. | :09:13. | |
services. Conservative MPs that I talk to agree about this, they are | :09:14. | :09:16. | |
worried in a slightly cynical way that the people who vote will start | :09:17. | :09:21. | |
to notice the cuts to services, whereas they have been able to | :09:22. | :09:24. | |
sustain some of them because the cuts may have been born by people | :09:25. | :09:29. | |
who were disenfranchised already. Very briefly, the Financial Times, | :09:30. | :09:34. | |
Osborne swaps axe for taxes, he pivots to the centre, some have | :09:35. | :09:40. | |
suggested this is a tax and spend Spending Review and Autumn | :09:41. | :09:44. | |
Statement, is that how you see it? There is some element of truth in | :09:45. | :09:49. | |
it, a very slight, almost Gordon Brown stealth tax rise by Osborne, | :09:50. | :09:54. | |
saying, no, we will bind our hands going into the general, no income | :09:55. | :10:01. | |
tax, no VAT but a significant chunk of tax rises in the Budget after the | :10:02. | :10:06. | |
election. He has done it again, damp duty is going up for buy to let | :10:07. | :10:09. | |
people with second homes. There is going to be various cuts at | :10:10. | :10:16. | |
renewable energies games, company cars, lots of things like that. The | :10:17. | :10:19. | |
apprenticeships Levy, a big chunk of change will come from that, it will | :10:20. | :10:25. | |
hit companies, the OBR think it will be passed on to employees. The | :10:26. | :10:30. | |
non-tax-raising Chancellor pads up tax. Who would have thought you | :10:31. | :10:34. | |
could compare Gordon Brown and George Osborne? Staying with the | :10:35. | :10:40. | |
Financial Times, Isabel, the Labour response, John McDonnell's great | :10:41. | :10:44. | |
leap backwards, not the best of days, some would suggest in terms of | :10:45. | :10:48. | |
the Labour leadership and how it has responded to the Autumn Statement. | :10:49. | :10:51. | |
It is now much easier to compare Gordon Brown and George Osborne than | :10:52. | :10:57. | |
Gordon Brown and John McDonnell. It is very difficult for a Shadow | :10:58. | :11:01. | |
Chancellor to response to an economic statement, you have seconds | :11:02. | :11:05. | |
to decide what you are going to say, scribbling out a bit as the | :11:06. | :11:08. | |
Chancellor surprises you. John McDonnell has never done this | :11:09. | :11:12. | |
before, but all of that taken into account, his response to the | :11:13. | :11:17. | |
Spending Review was very bad today. Labour MPs were ashen faced to begin | :11:18. | :11:21. | |
with, because they don't want him to be Shadow Chancellor, but when he | :11:22. | :11:26. | |
produced Mao's little red book and started quoting from it before | :11:27. | :11:30. | |
handing it to George Osborne as a gift, he could have wrapped it up, | :11:31. | :11:34. | |
here is a little gift, you could see all of them sinking down into their | :11:35. | :11:39. | |
seats. Actually, journalists enjoy the stories, they are interesting | :11:40. | :11:42. | |
and fun, but there is something very sad about what is happening to the | :11:43. | :11:46. | |
Labour Party at the moment. You have hundreds of thousands of new members | :11:47. | :11:50. | |
who would save they are doing what we believe they should be doing. But | :11:51. | :11:56. | |
not what the electorate believes. Ben, very briefly, can Labour | :11:57. | :12:02. | |
recover? He needs to put the little red book away and start reading from | :12:03. | :12:05. | |
the basic book of politics. If you are going to make a high risk joke, | :12:06. | :12:10. | |
make sure it is funny expert well, we are laughing, but not many of the | :12:11. | :12:15. | |
Labour Party are, I am afraid. We will look at a few more stories in | :12:16. | :12:19. | |
an hour, many thanks for that. Stay with us on BBC News, much more | :12:20. | :12:23. | |
coming up, but now it is time for Sportsday. | :12:24. | :12:28. |