NOW that the dust is beginning to settle after the first Budget of this new New Labour Government, the picture is becoming clearer. 

While this definitely wasn't a Tory Budget, slashing and burning public services while giving tax cuts to the rich – and for that small mercy we should be grateful – it was distinctly underwhelming.

This was a Budget of missed opportunities and disappointments. 

There was nothing in this Budget to directly tackle the scourge of child poverty, and there was nothing on climate change. The severity of the flash flooding in Spain on the same day as the Budget, which devastated thousands of homes and took over 90 lives can plausibly be linked to climate change. 

These kinds of disasters are only going to get worse and increase in frequency as average global temperatures increase. The need to address the issue is urgent and pressing and the longer serious and meaningful action is delayed, the harder it is going to be to pull back from the brink of catastrophe. 

But in this Budget there was nothing at all, just business as usual for the agents of climate change. 

A real missed opportunity 

Most glaring perhaps was the absence of any serious attempt to end the massive subsidy of wealth in the UK via the tax system, or to tackle the massive and growing wealth inequality in the UK. 

A wealth tax was proposed in 2020 by a commission of experts at the London School of Economics. Their main proposal was for the introduction of a one-off wealth tax payable on all individual wealth above £500,000 and charged at 1% a year for five years. Then it would stop. 

Over the five years it was foreseen to be in force, and allowing for administrative costs and 10% non-compliance, this tax would raise £260 billion for spending on public services and infrastructure. That's a truly eye watering sum of money but even this tax would leave the wealth of the richest substantially intact. 

Yet Starmer's Labour Party, in hock as it is to its wealthy donors, has no intention of going down that route. That's a real missed opportunity. 

A new party of government in the early weeks of its administration, particularly one which enjoys a substantial majority in the Commons, has considerable political capital available to it in order to make decisions which are unpopular in certain sectors. 

A wealth tax would have been met with howls of protest from the right-wing press, the Conservatives, and vested interests. 

The new Labour Government could have used its considerable political capital to do something meaningful to counter inequality. 

Instead, Starmer chose to use it to maintain the two-child benefits cap and axe the universal entitlement of pensioners to the Winter Fuel Payment. 

There was next to nothing on social housing, even though we have an entire generation for whom the dream of having a home of their own rests upon the distant hope of winning the lottery. While £5bn was promised for housing, that will deliver just 20,000 homes – a drop in the ocean compared to what is required. 

Yes, this Budget did deliver some much needed investment in the UK's creaking infrastructure, but the amount delivered fell well short of what is needed. 

A step in the right direction?

Scotland will benefit to the tune of £3.4bn through the operation of the Barnett Formula. The UK Treasury said that the £3.4bn figure consisted of £2.8bn for day-to-day spending and £610m for capital investments. 

However, this sum – welcome as it is – does not take the Scottish Budget back to 2020 levels. 

House of Commons library research, commissioned by the SNP and published on Monday, found that Scotland’s block grant had been falling as a proportion of UK spending. The value of Scottish funding has dropped by more than £6bn since 2020. 

The Scottish Government gave a cautious welcome to the Budget, saying that while it was a "step in the right direction" it still left the Scottish Government facing “enormous cost pressures” in the immediate future. 

Finance Secretary Shona Robison said that an extra £1.5bn from the UK Government in this financial year had “already been factored into our spending plans." 

This makes it unlikely that the Scottish Government can reverse its decision to mirror the cut to the Winter Fuel Payment in England. 

The Treasury has assuaged fears that hiking National Insurance contributions for employers would put additional strain on the Scottish public finances and the stretched budgets of local authorities and health boards, by pledging to cover the expected cost of £500m.

Donald Trump weighs in on independence debate 

Meanwhile, American presidential candidate Donald Trump has weighed in on the Scottish independence debate in a series of typically ill-informed and incoherent remarks during a podcast interview with comedian Andrew Schulz, who, like Trump, has a Scottish mother.

Trump said he hoped that the UK always stays together, adding: “You know, they tried to break up Scotland from the rest of the empire, so to speak. 

“And it made it by about like a half a point. They kept it together. So I hope it stays together. I hope it always stays together.” 

He continued: “But England, as they say, because it used to be England, but England never could. They just, and they were bigger and they had more people. They could never finish it off by capturing Scotland. So it’s really sort of,” Trump said. 

Schulz then interrupted: “They ended up having to marry together." Trump agreed saying: “They married. They became sort of subsidiaries. Right?" 

So Scotland is England's subsidiary and Trump wants Scotland to stay part of the "empire". 

There are many reasons why a Trump victory would be a disaster. He'd destroy American democracy, he'd give Netanyahu free rein and encourage him to destroy the Palestinians, he'd demolish efforts to fight climate change and deliver the world into the hands of the fossil fuel companies. 

He would also be overtly hostile to Scottish independence and would enthusiastically weigh into the debate on the side of the No campaign and make threats against an independent Scotland.