As political parties step up their campaigning ahead of a general election due by June 2010, voters need to know exactly how politicians plan to tackle a projected deficit of 175 billion pounds, says Stephen Herring, senior tax partner at accountancy firm BDO LLP.

In a report titled "Time to Break the Silence" BDO suggests there will not only be cuts in public spending, but substantial business tax increases.

The firm argues that voters have the right to be properly informed about where the changes will be made and says that an additional 25 billion pounds a year in taxes might be required in the medium term to rebuild national finances.

"It may come as little surprise to see that almost every business is expecting to be hit by tax rises next year, but it's disappointing to see that even after the [political] conference season, we're still in the dark over the parties' tax policies," Herring said.

The Conservatives might be wishing they could have held their party conference before Labour.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown's address to his party conference in Brighton on Tuesday has thrown down a flood of new ideas, policies and initiatives from faster cancer diagnosis to choosing how Britain votes in what read more like an mini-election manifesto than a speech.
Brown played to his strengths (policy) and avoided trying to overcome his well-known weaknesses (not much of a political entertainer) in public. Trying to be someone else could have been a disaster for a man way behind in the polls to the Conservatives.
Whether it will be enough to make any difference to the polls remains to be seen -- Labour needs a miracle there after all.
But, for now, going for the policy jugular seems to have done the trick -- giving his browbeaten party something to get excited about and hitting the Conservatives where it hurts.
David Cameron's Conservatives have been accused of not giving enough detail on how they would govern the country if the polls are correct and they are to win power next year.
They will have to start showing their hand soon if they are going to convince voters that they have the ideas to run the country and aren't just a vote for change for the sake of it.

A senior Liberal Democrat has lifted a lid on the murky world of coalition politics - a touchy subject for the party which last tasted national power in Britain in the brief Lib-Lab pact of the late 1970s.

Leader Nick Clegg says he is not wasting a “millisecond” speculating on the outcome of the coming general election, expected next May.

But his Education Spokesman David Laws (pictured) has revealed that, at least until 1999, the party had a standard coalition document ready for use just in case it held the balance of power in a hung parliament.

“I understand it had been going around since 1970,” Laws told a fringe meeting at the party’s autumn conference in Bournemouth.

“It was dusted off feverishly for every general election — the party leaders got extremely excited that they were going to be sweeping into power — and then it was dusted away into the bottom drawer afterwards.

“Although it was dated 1999 I suspect it was redated on a fairly frequent basis.”

Brandishing the thin document, Laws told the Liberal Democrat History Group how he had been given it 1999 when Paddy Ashdown sent him, not yet an MP, up to Edinburgh ahead of the May election that year for the new Scottish parliament to help possible coalition talks.

In the vote Labour under leader Donald Dewar became the largest party with 56 seats, but needed the support of the LibDems’ 17 members for a majority in the new 126 seat chamber at Holyrood.

“There was huge pressure and scrutiny as the Scottish election came to an end, expectations that (coalition) decisions would be taken quickly,” he said.

“The people involved in the campaign were absolutely exhausted. I think one of the challenges for us is to make sure, if future occasions arise, that we move as quickly as possible.”

It took a week of fraught negotiations to seal the coalition deal, which in the end was not based in the old LibDem document, but on the text of a more substantial coalition agreement signed by the parties sharing government on the other side of the world in New Zealand.

Does today’s Liberal Democrat party have a similar pre-prepared coalition agreement ready to hand?

In the video clip below you can hear Laws deny that any such document exists today - but is there the trace of a smile when he says that? You decide.

At 27, the Conservative candidate in the Norwich North by-election Chloe Smith becomes the youngest MP in the Commons.

She turned Labour’s 5,000-plus majority in the seat into a 7,348-vote winning margin and keeps the Conservative bandwagon rolling. The election had been forced by the resignation of Labour MP Ian Gibson, who claimed almost 80,000 pounds in second home expenses on a London flat which he later sold at a knock-down price to his daughter.

What do you make of the result? Was this a clear message to Labour about its policies and its leader Gordon Brown or a protest against the ruling party in the wake of the MPs’ expenses scandal?

Vows by Labour and the Conservatives to protect the NHS from spending cuts will require tax hikes or cuts to other areas, a new report shows.

Promises to “ring-fence” health spending in the lead-up to the next election — to be held before June — might lead to cuts of about 8 percent in other departments over the next six years, say researchers at the King’s Fund and the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Alternatively, sizeable tax hikes could be in store as the next government tries to tackle the largest public deficit since the Second World War.

The deficit, forecast to rise to 175 billion pounds this year, has put public spending at the forefront of political debate.

In its equation, researchers posit that the government would have to raise the equivalent of 340 pounds for each family in the country if it were to restrict spending cuts to other departments to 2 percent, while freezing the NHS budget.

Despite being in the midst of a deep recession, the two main political parties have said they will “ring-fence” most spending.

Does this make sense in the current economic climate? From which departmental budget would you cut public spending?

Gordon Brown is counting on a swift economic turnaround. It’s probably his Labour Party’s only hope of avoiding a humiliating electoral defeat to the Conservatives next year.

The latest news on the economy has certainly got people in Downing Street smiling. The housing market is stabilising and some commentators are even talking about Britain becoming the first major country to pull out of the recession.

Treasury forecasts of reasonable growth that were derided just two months ago suddenly don’t look so bad.

The Number 10 dream scenario is that the economy recovers strongly, Brown takes the credit and the polls turn in time for a May election.

But what happens if the economy does turn around by the end of the year and the polls don’t get any better?

If that happens, some party strategists are wondering whether that might be a good time for Brown to step down, say in January.

He could say he did what he set out to do — get Britain through the recession — and it was now time for a new face.

The honeymoon bounce could end up being Labour’s only hope.

Hosting a shindig conference at one of Britain’s most prestigious racecourses in the genteel spa town of Cheltenham hardly sends out a message that David Cameron’s opposition Conservatives are trying to reach out to the masses.

But the decision to come to the rolling hills of the Cotswolds sheds light on one of the obstacles standing between Cameron and the keys to No. 10 Downing Street.

Britain’s third main party — the Liberal Democrats.

The LibDems won the parliamentary seat of Cheltenham in the 2005 election with a majority of about 2,000 over the Conservative candidate.

It is the kind of seat the Tories will want to win next year if they are going to get a decent majority over Gordon Brown’s Labour and be able to push through their agenda.

They will be hoping that coming to Cheltenham sends a strong message to voters here and tips the balance when the election comes — probably in May or June 2010.

While much of the media battle being waged is purely between Gordon Brown’s Labour and the Conservatives right now, both parties know that when the big day comes they will have to do battle on two fronts.

And convincing Liberal Democrat voters to switch may hold the key to what the make up of parliament looks like.

All we’ve heard for the past few weeks is how little room there is for Labour to pump more money into the economy to fight the recession.

The increasingly popular — and confident — opposition Conservatives have gained ground by blaming Prime Minister Gordon Brown for turning the public purse into a public hearse.

But there are a few reasons to suspect that when finance minister Alistair Darling steps up to the dispatch box tomorrow, he will deliver another blockbuster life-support package.

Yes, there are inklings of a recovery out there — some experts say we have reached the bottom — but Labour has to make sure this recession is long gone before it can hope to win an election.

And it only has until mid-2010 to wait before that day of reckoning must come.

Brown might be willing to chance his arm with some big spending to reassure the public that job losses will be kept to a minimum and that Labour cares more about ordinary peoples’ lives in the here and now than it does about the budget deficit and government debt markets.

If this is the worst economic crisis for decades, then there is no easy way out of it and the best thing to do is to take whatever action is necessary to bring it to an end and worry about the consequences later.

Respected think tank the National Institute of Economic and Social Research has called for a temporary 30 billion pound stimulus aimed at stuffing employers and employees coffers with
cash.

They say the level of government debt is nowhere near where it was at the end of the Second World War and so there is no real panic about getting it back under control eventually. Yes, it may mean higher taxes and less public spending in the future, but that might be a fair price to pay to avoid mass unemployment and social unrest.

All the indications are that Labour won’t risk the ire of experts and opposition alike with another big stimulus, but the truth is they won’t get a second chance to reduce the severity of the downturn.

Besides all that, something interesting was happening in Westminster on Tuesday.

Rather than hounding the Prime Minister’s office with questions about the Budget, Britain’s press pack were jumping all over an emergency announcement on how rules governing the much-maligned MPs expenses system might be changed.

It wouldn’t be the first time that Brown has put up a smoke screen before delivering a knockout, headline-grabbing blow.

Bumper budgets are a tried and tested vote winner … but that might also be just what the economy needs.

He loves the Queen and the British people. Truth be told, President Obama was always going to be a hit on his first overseas trip.

But Gordon Brown probably could not believe his luck. The prime minister just could not stop grinning as he stood next to the new president at a news conference in the Foreign Office ahead of the G20 summit.

He must have always been hoping for a bit of the Obama magic to rub off on him and revive his battered ratings but he can't have expected the ringing endorsement he got.

Tony Blair and George W Bush. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Britain has always liked to make much of the special relationship between it and America and any doubts it was in danger under Obama could be put to rest this week.

Obama looked on intently as Brown made his opening statement, referring to him by title.

But the formality dropped as soon as it was Obama's turn, as he thanked his hosts "Gordon and Sarah" and said he had been discussing dinosaurs with their two sons.

The United States and United Kingdom have always stuck together, he said. That's why he was pleased that his first overseas trip was to visit Brown.

Brown's face immediately lit up. Soon he was calling the president "Barack", joking that he was keen to introduce him to
his friends in the British press.

Even a question about Brown's regular remark that the crisis was made in America passed without a hitch, as Obama readily accepted the United States had to share some of the blame.

Asked what advice he would give to Brown on winning an election, Obama said: "The only advice I would give him Gordon is the same advice I gave myself -- good policies are good politics."

But the presidential hand on Brown's back as the two men left the podium may be the biggest helping hand of all.

President Barack Obama had barely settled into in the White House before he was happy to admit he had “screwed up” over one of his choices for a cabinet job after Tom Daschle withdraw his nomination as health secretary over an income tax controversy.

Even Britain’s leading bankers were moved to apologise to parliament last month over the sector’s indiscretions in the boom years.

But sorry is clearly not a word in Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s political lexicon, even though he was Chancellor for 10 years and arguably his “light touch” approach to the economy created the environment for  the current economic mess we are in.

Brown is happy to talk of the need for humility, but that’s as far as he will go. He reminds you of a cyclist caught doping, endlessly pleading their innocence, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Whether Brown believes an act of contrition is simply unnecessary as he has done nothing wrong or that to say the word “sorry” would provide the opposition Conservatives with a stick to beat him mercilessly ahead of a general election is unclear.

Commentator Jonathan Freedland in Wednesday’s Guardian makes the case that until Brown admits some degree of culpability for Britain’s economic woes the Labour Party will not get a hearing at the next election.

Why are politicians so loath to say sorry? And could Brown revive his electoral hopes if he does accept fault for Britain’s economic crisis?