This phrase does not mean what you think it means.
since, for all its clauses, the budget was fiscally neutral.
\”Fiscally neutral\” would mean that there was no net government borrowing. That spending in the year would be the same as taxes raised in that year. Fiscally contractionary that taxes were higher than spending. Fiscally expansionary that spending is higher than taxes and thus that there is a certain amount of borrowing by government to fill the gap.
When we\’re still looking at public sector borrowing of what, £160 odd billion, 12% of GDP, it would not be correct to call this budget \”fiscally neutral\”.
Not, at least, in the English language.
It’d be Ok though (if it is true) to say the new measures within the Budget were fiscally neutral.
Fiscally neutral? More like criminally negligent!
“Not, at least, in the English Language”, or as Polly’s Federastic Fabian Friends would want it, “a redundant, offshore Creole”.
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