Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt leaves 11 Downing Street, London, with his ministerial box before delivering his Budget in the Houses of Parliament, March 6, 2024.
PUBLIC services are at still greater risk as Chancellor Jeremy Hunt gambled the Tories’ election hopes on a last-ditch tax-cutting Budget.
Mr Hunt announced a 2 per cent cut in National Insurance in a bid to put more money in workers’ pockets before Britain goes to the polls later this year.
But the price will be a major squeeze in public spending in the next parliament, with many department budgets likely to fall in real terms.
The Chancellor also abolished the non-dom tax rule which lets the wealthiest avoid paying taxes on overseas earnings, a key Labour pledge, and brought more families within the scope of child benefit payments.
The Budget therefore leaves Labour more politically denuded than ever — it will either have to find other ways to raise the money it had planned for public services from scrapping the non-dom loophole, or more likely drop residual spending commitments altogether.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer told MPs that Labour supported the National Insurance cut too, leaving the parties exchanging rhetorical sound and fury on economic policy but with no significant differences.
THE government’s “independent” adviser on political violence and disruption has received funding from pro-Israel groups while pushing for a crackdown on pro-Palestine protests, Declassified UK revealed today.
Former Labour MP John Woodcock — ennobled as Lord Walney for backing Boris Johnson in the 2019 election — was assigned in 2021 to produce a report investigating “the extreme fringes on both ends of the political spectrum” in Britain.
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During his time as a Labour MP, he was appointed chairman of Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) in 2011. He embarked on a trip funded by LFI, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Portland Trust the same year.
Lord Walney also accepted funding from the Australia-Israel Cultural Exchange during his time as an MP.
In January this year, while preparing to deliver his report concerning Palestine protests in Britain, Lord Walney visited Israel as part of a parliamentary delegation organised by the European Leadership Network, with flights and accommodation paid for by the organisation. He kept the trip under wraps and did not post about it on social media.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks during a press conference on February 20, 2024 in Perth, Australia. (Photo: Matt Jelonek/Getty Images)
More than 100 lawyers endorsed the referral, which points to the military, intelligence, and rhetorical support Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has provided to the Israeli government.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is one of several Western leaders who have provided political and material support of the Israeli government and military over the past five months as their bombardment of Gaza has killed more than 30,000 people, but on Monday he became the first to be referred to the International Criminal Court for being an “accessory to genocide.”
More than 100 lawyers supported the referral under Article 15 of the Rome Statute, arguing that Albanese, a member of the Labor Party, as well as members of his Cabinet and of Parliament, have provided Israel with “rhetorical support in their public statements, their press conferences, their speeches” as well as material assistance, as attorney Sheryn Omeri told ABC‘s “News Breakfast.”
Omeri said the aid Australia has “most particularly” provided since Israel began attacking Gaza has been the export of F-35 fighter jet parts as well as military intelligence through the government’s surveillance work at Joint Defense Facility Pine Gap in Australia’s Northern Territory.
While Albanese has recently called on Israel to respect international law, said Omeri, “it’s been months since the 7th of October, 2023, and between then and now there has been very little in the way of urging restraint on Israel and discouraging what the International Court of Justice found on the 26th of January was a plausible case of genocide.”
The 92-page document compiled by the legal team lays out a number of specific ways Albanese and other Australian officials have acted as an accessory to genocide, including:
Freezing $6 million in funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East amid a humanitarian crisis based on unsubstantiated claims by Israel;
Providing military aid and approving defence exports to Israel, which could be used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in the course of the prima facie commission of genocide and crimes against humanity;
Ambiguously deploying an Australian military contingent to the region, where its location and exact role have not been disclosed; and
Permitting Australians, either explicitly or implicitly, to travel to Israel to join the IDF and take part in its attacks on Gaza.
“The Rome Statute provides four modes of individual criminal responsibility, two of which are accessorial,” Omeri explained in a statement.
Along with Albanese, U.S. President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz are among the Western leaders who have repeatedly defended Israel’s actions in Gaza—despite the genocidal intent expressed in numerous public statements by Israeli leaders.
Biden was sued in federal court in January for alleged “complicity in the Israeli government’s unfolding genocide.” That case is still making its way through the U.S. appeals process.
Fewer people think Starmer will make a competent prime minister than those convinced he won’t.
Crunch the numbers whichever way you want, and we still have an opposition that can win by default but without much enthusiasm.
While an element of this is the lack of trust in Starmer that is the inevitable consequence of his mendacity much is down to the failure of the party to make a challenge to the anti-working-class policies that unite neoliberals of all “parties of government.”
Image: The Spring Budget is due to be delivered on 6 March 2024 | Credit: iStock
MPs from Labour, Lib Dems, Green Party, SNP, Plaid Cymru, and Alliance have jointly called for a green investment-friendly Spring Budget on Wednesday
A group of cross-party MPs and peers have called on the Chancellor to prioritise new public investment in net zero infrastructure and skills in this week’s Spring Budget, in a move they argue would help to “futureproof our economy and our energy system”.
In a letter addressed to Jeremy Hunt on Friday, Parliamentarians from across political divides urged the Chancellor to “use the forthcoming Spring Budget to address the ongoing underinvestment crisis the UK is facing” by funnelling more public spending to help deliver on net zero goals.
It also calls on the government to publish a Net Zero Investment Plan in order to “identify and close the gap between actual and required financial flows” and help catalyse increased investment from the private sector.
And the letter calls on the Treasury to work with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) to set out a plan to ensure “every household has access to energy efficiency measures and fossil-free heat via a combination of grants and low-cost loans”.
