General Election - Assessing the Parties' Plans. What Accountancy Professor thinks of Labour Manifesto

Last century when I was a Haringey councillor one of my colleagues asked the Borough Finance officer if he deliberately made the budget speech dull and complex. Expecting councillors would fail to understand it and be nervous to ask questions.

Prof Richard Murphy watched the Sky Television debate with Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak. Overall Murphy found  Keir and Rich "disappointing and uninspiring." Being a professor of Accountancy Murphy is not shy of tackling knotty finance questions.

In his blog yesterday Murphy wrote:

"I can only hope that during the remainder of this election campaign there might be an improvement in the quality of debate on this issue. It is clear that both our leading political parties are talking nonsense about tax, with neither presenting any honesty about what levels of tax might be required given their wholly unrealistic appraisals of the scale of costs that they will have to incur to supply the services that the country will undoubtedly need.

"As a result I just hope that debate might now be focused on issues like the health service, social care, education, environmental change and other critical matters."

https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/06/13/tax-is-not-essential...