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No one had lower taxes on the list.
There has been much more discussion in Great Britain for weeks as to which tax category Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak could raise first in order to finance the costs of the corona pandemic.
But Prime Minister Boris Johnson suddenly strikes a different note.
"We will look at the tax and regulatory environment and everything else we can do to encourage and support the economy in this country," he said in a Q&A with citizens on Facebook in early December.
The companies are "the engine that will make it possible to pay for everything we need in the future".
Economic success is an essential prerequisite for keeping the deficit under control in the future.
The approach: Thanks to the low tax burden, the economy should be buzzing and the wounds of the Corona crisis healed.
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Jacob Rees-Mogg, influential Brexiter and leader of the House of Commons, became even clearer.
Sunak would jeopardize the success of the Conservative Party in the next election if he breaks the promises of the election platform and raises taxes, Rees-Mogg said on his podcast, comparing it to the United States under George Bush Sr.
He had promised not to increase taxes, but was forced to turn around in the Gulf War - and promptly lost the next election in 1992.
"Most will agree with me that the time an economy recovers from an extraordinarily deep crash is not the time to deal another blow with higher taxes."
The clear rejection of tax increases puts the prime minister and his supporters on a course of confrontation with Sunak, currently the minister with the highest approval ratings in the country.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in September that he was not planning a horror show with ever higher taxes, but that the government was facing difficult decisions.
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Capital gains tax and corporation tax were among the levies that have already been brought into play.
Just last week, the influential Wealth Tax Commission proposed a one-off five percent levy on assets, including owner-occupied real estate.
Johnson's solution, Sunak's problems
Such a wealth tax could add £ 260 billion (€ 288 billion) to the state coffers and plug the holes created by the pandemic, according to the commission, which includes academics from Warwick University and the London School of Economics.
Even without recent headwinds from the Prime Minister, Sunak faces a difficult balancing act.
The traditional bastions of the conservatives, the wealthy "Shires", regions in the south around London, are decidedly against higher taxes.
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Even a cut in the promised generous adjustment of the statutory pension is not well received there.
At the same time, the government has promised substantial investments to the long economically behind north of the country, where many voters voted for the Conservatives for the first time last year.
This so-called leveling-up in terms of opportunities on the job market, living standards and infrastructure is likely to require considerable investments in the coming years.
As a result of the pandemic, Britain has amassed record debt of £ 394 billion (€ 436 billion), 19 percent of gross domestic product.
Corona measures have cost 280 billion pounds so far: money for the national health service NHS, to secure jobs and support companies.
The country has thus increased its budget deficit as significantly as few other industrialized countries.
Only Canada ranks higher among the G-7 countries.
The hoped-for successes have remained rare.
According to the latest OECD estimate, the UK economy will contract by 11.2 percent this year.
Only Argentina is facing an even more pronounced slump at 12.9 percent.
For comparison: the German economy sees the international trade organization shrink by 5.5 percent.
And the outlook remains bleak.
The Ministry of Finance expects unemployment to soar to 7.5 percent by mid-2021, twice what it was before the pandemic broke out.
The pre-corona economic output will only be reached again in the fourth quarter of 2022.
For years after the financial crisis, Great Britain had pursued a strict austerity policy, mainly by cutting public spending and freezing public sector salaries.
But in autumn 2018, then Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond announced the end of austerity.
Two years later, the UK is again facing a growing mountain of debt.
But this time the government could use a different strategy.
Interest charges record-breaking low
Current figures from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, on which the finance ministry's plans are based, show that the budget deficit in relation to gross domestic product has grown to a post-war record.
At the same time, however, debt servicing is cheaper than it has ever been since the Second World War.
According to the forecasts, interest payments will fall to less than two percent of budget income, only half as much as the already low value of recent years, thanks to the low interest rates.
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Jagjit Chadha, director of the national economic think tank, National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), gave the all-clear at the moment that the higher public debt resulting from the latest political measures is no cause for concern.
"Interest rates are significantly lower than at the time of the financial crisis and are likely to remain low for some time," he said in an assessment at the end of November.
The residual maturity of government debt is long, low borrowing costs can and should be locked in, and foreign interest in UK government bonds remains solid.
Only Finance Minister Sunak seems concerned that the interest rate environment does not have to stay like this: “The interest we pay on the debt is unusually low, which means that it is affordable.
But that could change again. "
Customs duties on UK goods not unlikely from January 1st
Telephone conferences were unsuccessful in the Brexit negotiations.
Boris Johnson is now traveling personally to Brussels in order to finally reach a deal with EU Commission head Ursula von der Leyen.
But the fronts are hardened.
Source: WELT / David Schafbuch
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