By Rab Bruce’s Spider

I read with interest that Chancellor Rishi Sunak is set to tell business bosses that he will be cutting corporate tax bills later this year. In exchange for this generosity, he is going to encourage them to invest in the UK, creating jobs and driving innovation to help boost the economy.

That all sounds wonderful if you think like a tory, but what Mr Sunak seems to forget is that the people he is talking to also think like Tories. If they do create any jobs at all, it will be at the lower end of the pay scale, paying as little as they can get away with. Most of their profits will be retained after paying themselves large bonuses and forking out on dividends for their shareholders. Encouragement to act for the greater good of the UK economy is never going to cut it with business leaders.

Sadly, it simply does not seem to have occurred to Mr Sunak that raising business taxes would produce money for the Government which they could then be certain would be invested in the UK. Infrastructure projects could create wealth and the additional tax income could actually be used to help people on low incomes or who rely on social security. But no, let’s use encouragement instead. That’s bound to work.

Perhaps I am being unfair. Perhaps Mr Sunak has looked at the bungling incompetence of his fellow Tories when it comes to managing large projects and decided that he has a better chance of not having billions of pounds wasted if he leaves things up to the beneficence of business leaders. It’s probably got as much chance of helping the sinking UK economy as any other plan this bunch of inept bunglers has ever come up with.