Spectator's Notebook
I T'S a little bit odd to find a Labour Chancellor
taking £17 million out of the pockets of improvident punters, doubtless living in furnished rooms and gambling with next week's rent, to put it back into the pockets of those able to afford to buy their own homes; but I'm sure its all very virtuous. I'm sure, too, that I shall sleep much more soundly at night now that I know that the country is going to spend £120 million--the cost of seven years of the new mortgage scheme —on renaming a shilling a five-cent piece. But none of this has the slightest relevance to what really matters: the country's economic position.
Indeed, it's difficult to find much in Mr. Callaghan's mini-Budget speech that did. Not a word about the import surcharge (although, read- ing between the lines, I suspect that when it comes off it will be replaced by controls of steil- ing area investment), not a word about the balance of payments prospect for 1966, not a word about the pressure of demand at the present time (which in fact is giving the Treasury kittens) nor about the planned reduction of that pressure during the course of the year. All tiste had was Big Jim saying that the tax increases in the Budget won't be severe (what does that mean?) and claiming as a great success the fact that his deflationary measures have so far failed to have a deflationary effect (which only means that the squeeze, and accompanying stagnation, will have to go on that much longer).
Mind you, I don't blame Jim: all he was indulging in was a straight piece of old-fashioned electioneering; and much of the script was writ- ten (without fear or favour) by H. Wilson any- way. But it's a pretty depressing comment on the level of economic literacy among the opinion- forming classes that both at Westminster and among the political commentators all this fol:de- rol was hailed as a great success, adding further inches to the Chancellor's stature.
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