After the trashing of the Green Investment Bank and the raid on the independent 0.7% international development fund, the Tories under Boris Johnson plan to go back on another progressive coalition policy, the pensions triple lock. With the guarantee of a 2.5% increase every year, if that was more than the rise in the wage rate index or in the CPI, UK old age pensions were gradually edging towards the more realistic levels on the continent. Now that is going to come to a shuddering halt.
The reason given is that "the policy may become unaffordable due to the economic fallout of the coronavirus outbreak". Typical of the short-term thinking of the Treasury, matching the short mental horizon of the prime minister, the long-term result will not only be more poverty among pensioners but also losses by local businesses, especially corner shops.
Instead of heading towards an ever-deeper recession, in which the weakest will suffer most, the UK could have been resuming normal business if Johnson had got a grip on the virus outbreak in good time, as the leaders in Greece, New Zealand, Taiwan and half-a-dozen other nations have done.
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