A report out today has calculated that the bankers’ bonus tax will raise around £2 billion more than initially thought.
While this begs a number of questions (who got the initial calculations THAT wrong? Why were the banks so focused on short-term gain that they didn’t delay their bonus payments? Why were the banks able to pay such high bonuses if they were really in such trouble? And so on…) the really big question is this: what will the government do with the money?
Will they put it into the general spending pot? Will they use it in a pre-election bribe budget? Or will they do the responsible thing and use it to start paying down our deficit?
This is something to watch for. It’s an indicator of whether the money markets and voters are able to believe Gordon Brown when he talks about making the right choices.
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Oh look… ‘pre-election budget sweeteners‘, says the Guardian.