British Politics: IMPORTANT NOVEMBER STATEMENT

LIVING in Spain, many British passport holders might be uninterested in what is going on in British politics but today, Thursday November 17 may well be one that affects us all in one form or another.

Having seen the fiasco of the short-lived Truss Government and the incredible naivety of the planned tax cuts which brought her down, reality is going to hit with a bang as Chancellor Jeremy Hunt presents his own mini budget with promises that everyone in the UK will have to pay more tax.

Supposedly he will be making cuts in expenditure and has indicated that he is looking to plug loopholes rather than raise income tax directly but looking back to the 1970s, Labour Chancellor Denis Healy said about taxation that he would ‘squeeze the pips until they squeak’ and this could well be the mantra behind the current Chancellor’s thinking.

So how does that affect us here in Spain?

Firstly, many of us receive UK state pensions and having lost out on the triple lock promise because of the pandemic, it could well be that he will decide that he can only afford the minimum pension increase of 2.5 per cent rather than the 10 per cent that the triple lock promises.

Secondly, some 3.5 million female pensioners, many of whom are living in Spain, continue to fight for recompense for the losses incurred with the rise in pension age, so they are an easy target to ignore.

Thirdly, the Spanish hospitality industry relies on tourism to a great extent and if money is even tighter in the UK, then fewer Brits will be able to afford to take holidays here thus hurting the economy.

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