The 2010 cuts are no longer politically viable

sanzida963

In good news for the Prime Minister, the announcement comes alongside one of the teaching unions that they will advise their members to vote to accept the offer. The best news is that even if some unions choose not to accept the agreement, I think it is very likely that a large enough minority will support them to make future strikes impossible. We've already seen that dynamic play out with the nurses' strike: Unison voted to accept a similar pay rise, while the Royal College of Nursing rejected the offer. But the RCN then failed to meet the participation threshold requirement for further strikes. My feeling is that that's where most of these labor disputes will end up: some unions will accept the deal in theory and in practice, while some will end up accepting it in practice but not in theory.

Here's another prediction: Rishi Sunak's plan to fund these pay rises through existing departmental budgets will fail. The Treasury said an extra  would be raised over two years by raising visa fees for migrant Job Function Email Database workers and increasing their annual NHS “surcharge” by 66 per cent to £1,035. Delivering these pay rises without raising taxes or borrowing will mean more cuts elsewhere. This is as good an opportunity as any to bring back my favorite chart: The UK has already had a prolonged period of spending cuts, and by 2016 we had reached the point where further reductions became politically impossible. Everything that has happened in British politics since was in some way driven by it:it's part of why Jeremy Corbyn made gains in the 2017 election.



It's why Boris Johnson's 2019 campaign promised more money for schools , hospitals and the police, this is why Sajid Javid quit Johnson's government in 2020 and Rishi Sunak became chancellor, this is why Sunak raised taxes in 2021, this is why Sunak quit Boris Johnson's government, that's why Liz Truss became Conservative leader, that's why Truss delivered tax cuts but not spending cuts, that's why Jeremy Hunt became chancellor, that's why Truss resigned as prime minister, that's why that Sunak is now prime minister. There will be savings of £2 billion from existing departmental budgets this year or £3 billion in subsequent years. It's not going to happen! The only question is whether Jeremy Hunt or Rachel Reeves deliver the inevitable tax increases.