The Chancer

+I do hope that all those entitled to vote in the forthcoming election for the new Chancellor of Oxford University will find the time to type into Google ‘Peter Mandelson’s dodgy friends’ where they will find an abundance of information showing that the noble Baron is not a good and proper person to represent the university. Let’s take the Chancer out of the Chancellor. Sorry about that. I alighted on this definition: Spiv—’a man, typically a flashy dresser, who makes a living by disreputable dealings.’  Legal disclaimer: this blog is an adequate representation of my honestly held opinion.
 
+Keir Starmer has spoken, filling our ears with clichés about ‘tough choices.’ He sounds like a guilty man who pleads ‘I didn’t mean to do it.’ Literally so in this case. He claims the burden of punishment coming in the next budget will fall on the ‘broadest shoulders’ which in the light of his attack on pensioners has a very hollow ring to it. He is our Prosecutor General. He still bangs on about the £22 billion fiscal hole left by the Tories and claims that even the Office of Budget Responsibility didn’t know about it. This is strange. Is the OBR incompetent? Or did the Treasury deliberately conceal this gaping hole? If the latter, is the government launching an inquiry to find who was responsible? In all the pre-election talks and meetings the then Labour opposition had with civil servants did no-one ask about the ‘true’ state of the public finances? Sounds like incompetence all round. Another question I have about this £22 billion is this—if Labour discovered it within a week or two of coming to power, it can’t have been terribly well concealed. Who actually discovered it? Another explanation could be that the Tories had some back of a fag packet, not to be taken seriously unfunded commitments—the cancellation of which would eradicate any hole. It gets messier of course if one asks whether the hole was largely in capital or revenue spending. This government has cancelled some capital projects, e.g. in railway infrastructure, which says a lot about its growth agenda. Perhaps there’ll be no jam tomorrow.