Hello everybody. My name is Alastair Darling and I just wanted to take this opportunity to talk to you about the reasoning behind my latest budget.As you all know, there is a General election coming shortly, so naturally I cannot say anything in my Budget speech that would jeopardise the chances of Ed Balls becoming Chancellor in Gordon's next cabinet. Equally, of course, I must give Ed every opportunity to start with a clean slate by being able to use me as a scapegoat.
Unfortunately, public finances are in such a poor state that I have found myself unable to buy the numbers of your votes that I would like, but I have done my best by concentrating on the following key areas :
(1) Fuel tax
In my last budget, I announced that fuel tax would increase by 3p, When I announced this, I hoped that by the time it came into effect, you would all have forgotten the announcement and you would not notice.
Now I have decided that in order to make it look as if I am actually cutting fuel tax, I will phase in the increase more slowly, leaving most of it until after the election.
(2) Alcohol taxes
You were all expecting increases in alcohol duties, so I felt I could get away with this. In addition, I have decided that I will dramatically increase duty on cider as it has been pointed out to me that most people who drink cider are too young to vote.
(3) Inheritance tax
I was forced to do something about inheritance tax for a number of reasons :
- the Tories have said they will reduce it, so naturally I have to do the opposite,
- most Labour supporters do not earn enough - with the exception of Civil Servants and union leaders, obviously - to pay inheritance tax,
- there is little sympathy amongst our core vote for people with lots of money, and
- most importantly, dead people can't protest and don't vote
I have taken measures to ensure that an extra 1 million people have access to bank accounts. This means that there will be and extra 1 million customers for our banks to refuse to lend money to and that money laundering will become much easier. I believe this will be of particular benefit to those of you wishing to divert funds to our party.
(5) Income tax
I have left headline tax rates the same, but have effectively introduced a 60% rate for people earning just over £100,000. Again this only applies in the vast majority of cases to Tory voters with mansions and duck houses.
It is true that I have increased National Insurance, but this really only effects those of you who have jobs. Therefore, I have effectively taken 3 million people out of the National Insurance net altogether. We are the only party that can claim to have done that!
(6) Cost savings
I have to say that this has been an area where I really have to dig deep to find anything good to say. Naturally, any cuts to public spending will lead to large numbers of people not voting for us, so I am going to leave these for Ed's first budget after the election.
Bearing in mind we have bought large numbers of votes by employing lots of extra civil servants since we came to power and have ensured these votes were retained by awarding larger than average wage increases, you will understand that it is difficult to know what else I can do.
But I do believe I have come up with a vote winner! We will relocate 15,000 civil servants out of London, and rest assured you all will be given generous relocation allowances and will all be able to afford to buy much nicer houses. Indeed, if you follow your MPs' examples, you can even avoid paying stamp duty altogether by flipping your purchase to your partner if he/she is a first time buyer.
The only stipulation is that you must be prepared to live in marginal constituencies.
I am sure you will appreciate why these steps are essential to ensure our party's - sorry, I mean our country's - future prosperity.
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