Brace for Hunt's incoming budget, expect voter bribery and fiscal beartraps for Labour! Read all about it in this week's Who's Top, Who's Not!
Flying High: Lindsay Hoyle
Hoyle has handled the heat of last week’s Gaza vote fiasco that saw many calls for his resignation. He has continued to rile the SNP this week after he confirmed he won’t accept their proposed vote on Gaza. Hoyle set out his reasoning for rejecting the debate and SNP Westminster Leader Stephen Flynn didn’t protest further.
The Early Day Motion stating no confidence in the Speaker may have reached 94 Members, but this is hardly a threat to his Speakership and the government has shown no further interest in pushing for Hoyle to resign.
The Speaker will be breathing a big sigh of relief as any immediate threat to his position seems to have dissipated. However, he is on thin ice going forward and any additional bending of the rules could see the ice beneath him begin to crack.
Middle ranking: Jeremy Hunt
Brace yourselves for Hunt’s budget where we will likely serve up financial goodies for the electorate in the form of tax breaks (bribes) and fiscal beartraps for the Labour Party.
With falls in inflation and some fiscal headroom ahead of the Budget, there were discussions of significant tax giveaways like the removal of inheritance tax – appeasing some Tory MPs. However, official figures showing the UK has slipped into recession just months ahead of a general election will be blunting Hunt’s blade.
Hunt will have to find some kind of tax cut next week and throw some meat to the Tory wolves or it will be his blood they’ll be after. So, expect to see changes to employee NI contributions or possibly a small basic income tax cut. This may keep the Tory MPs and parts of the media appeased, but tax cuts of this size are unlikely to make much of a difference to the millions of voters facing a cost-of-living crisis.
With a general election looming, Hunt will want to set some traps for Labour so he could choose to allocate extra funding to the NHS, but will this be enough to impact waiting lists before the general election? There are discussions of Hunt taking the wind out of Labour’s sails by altering non-dom status and allocating the cash elsewhere to remove a major Labour revenue-raiser. But Hunt will have to get the policy past Sunak and his wife first.
Sinking Quickly: Lee Anderson
Lee Anderson continues to capture the headlines as he triples down on his Islamophobic comment about Sadiq Khan… and refuses to apologise for it. Since having the Whip removed, he has even had the cheek to complain and say the Conservative Party “could’ve given me a little bit more backing”.
He even did a defiant media tour telling the Express London Mayor Sadiq Khan is “playing the race card” after Anderson said Islamists had “got control of” Khan.
He has also announced that “I will be standing at the next election” regardless of whether Sunak returns the Whip or not. Additionally, he hasn’t ruled out running for Reform.
Anderson has been on quite a political journey from Labour to the Conservatives, and his next journey could be to Reform and then unemployment following general election defeat. Still, there is always GB News.