YESTERDAY, we stated what questions George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, needed to have answered when he today unveiled the first "purely-Conservative" budget in 19 years. But even though he has now been freed from the clutches of the Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives' coalition partners for the last five years, Mr Osborne seemed to steal his opponents' policies anyway. The introduction of a 8% extra tax on bank profits came straight from the Lib Dems' recent general-election manifesto, just as Mr Osborne's crackdown on non-doms tax breaks came from Labour's. And in a dramatic outflanking manueovre at the end of his budget speech, the chancellor promised to introduce a "National Living Wage" by 2020, £1 above the wage floor proposed by Labour in its recent manifesto. Mr Osborne described his proposals as harking back to "one nation Conservatism", the attempt by 19th-century prime minister Benjamin Disraeli to make the party appeal to the working classes:
From a one nation government, this is a one nation Budget that takes the necessary steps and follows a sensible path for...Continue reading
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