On a cold morning in January a gentleman in his late sixties wearing a grey coat and bowler hat is making his way towards 11 Downing Street. In the clear blue sky the sun casts a long shadow behind him. The gentleman is none other than Junior Treasury Minister, Lord Spectre.
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The past 2 years have been eventful for Ian Spectre. It all started when he developed a good working relationship with the then Chancellor, Richie Sounrak. When a vacancy became available for the top job at number 10, Ian had persuaded Richie to put himself forward. Richie had been pipped at the post by Lisa Trusty.
Richie returned to the back benches, but Spectre wasn’t ready to give up. He worked his way in with Trusty and her Chancellor, an affable man known affectionately as KK. KK wanted to reduce taxes to boost growth. Spectre said that this was a great idea and urged him to go further claiming that he had prepared detailed workings to demonstrate how the cuts would be paid for, these had been vetted by the Office for Budget Responsibility. They were to be made available the day after the budget. With Trusty’s approval KK went ahead and delivered his budget. The next morning instead of delivering his detailed workings to KK, Spectre had secretly checked into a private clinic specialising in treating addictions, in Spectre’s case the addiction was to caffeine and had been caused by excessive drinking of tea. Days passed, no one could find Spectre and no one in the OBR knew anything about Spectre’s calculations.
Trusty sacked KK and appointed Jeremy Hare in his place. It was however too late for Trusty and she was forced to resign a few days later. The way was now clear for Richie Sounrak and he duly became Prime Minister. One of the first things he did as a thank you was to elevate Spectre to the House of Lords and appoint him as Junior Treasury Minister. Spectre quickly settled in and discovered that macroeconomics was his forté.
In his first budget Jeremy Hare reversed most of the cuts that KK had announced. Spectre thought Hare was too cautious and Urged Richie to sack him and bring former Prime Minister Davis Cameroon back into government to replace Hare. Richie did bring Cameroon back into government but as Foreign Secretary. He stuck with Hare as Chancellor.
The Blue Party were lagging well behind the Red Party in the polls, but Spectre believed the economy could be turned round if only Hare was replaced.
Much to Spectre’s dismay Sounrak stuck with Hare and decided to call an early election. When the day came there was heavy rain, Spectre was in number 10 making a last ditch effort to stop Sounrak calling the election. He even hid all of the umbrellas. As the announcement was being made Spectre looked at a wall and saw writing on it. He jumped in a taxi and went straight to Parliament stopping only to pick up his winnings at the bookies.
In the Lords, Spectre had been due to deliver an upbeat speech about the state of the economy. Instead he crossed the floor of the Lords and joined the Red Party. The Red Party duly won the election and Spectre was reinstated as Junior Treasury Minister.
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Spectre was greeted at the front door and shown into the Chancellor’s office. Raquel Rivers was seated at a large desk and she beckoned Spectre to take a seat opposite her.
“I believe you want to speak to me about the black hole” she said.
“Yes” replied Spectre “It’s now up to £2 billion and rising quickly”
“I wish it was only £2 billion” replied the Chancellor, “but its £22 billion and I took steps to deal with it in my budget”.
“I’m talking about the other black hole” Spectre said. “Every year we collect about £100 billion in corporation tax receipts, but significant arrears are building up and I’ve identified £2 billion that will almost certainly never get paid. That’s up from £500 million a year ago.”
“Well what are we doing about it?”
“Very little, we’ve engaged debt collectors and they just send out statements to all concerned telling them that it’s time to clear their corporation tax arrears, the same statement goes out every month but no further action is taken.”
“Surely we should be suing them or putting them into liquidation” the Chancellor replied.
“Does this woman know nothing?” Spectre thought to himself. “We can’t do that, if we do then we have to take the debt off the balance sheet and the deficit increases.”
“But if we’re not getting paid then why aren’t borrowings increasing?” the Chancellor replied.
“I’ve instructed HMRC to delay tax repayments.” Spectre said “In that way I’ve managed to hide the corporation tax arrears and balance the books. But it’s starting to become a problem. Just as an example, Edward Peters at Warr & Co got one of his clients to write to her MP. She’s been waiting for a payment of maternity benefit that we should have paid 4 months ago. Her MP wants answers. If we don’t tackle this problem the rate of interest we pay on the money we borrow will increase. The black hole will then be out of control”
“You came up with the idea of stopping winter fuel payments, haven’t we got any of that left?”
“No Chancellor, you’ve spent it three times over settling public sector pay disputes.”
“You said something about long term benefits of this policy, what are those?”
“Some old people will die each winter so pensions will reduce because average life expectancy will drop. An unintended consequence you could say”
“I can’t present that to Parliament, but what about the other measures in my budget such as increases in employers National Insurance, IHT and CGT?”
“Yes, those will help in the future but we need to do more.”
“And what about VAT on school fees and the non-doms?”
“Those come with unintended consequences” replied Spectre. “Some parents who use private schools are choosing to send their children to state schools so we will have to spend more on state education. As for non-doms, there are only about 2000 individuals who pay the Remittance Basis Charge. Evidence suggests that there is a steady stream of these people leaving the UK. Edward Peters at Warr & Co has set up a side line business providing a relocation service for them. We don’t only lose income tax and CGT, the economy takes a hit when they spend their income outside the UK.”
“The Supreme Leader is very clear on these measures” replied the Chancellor “there are points of principle at stake. He is very clear that the answer lies in growth within the economy.”
“We’re not seeing that at present. Businesses are struggling with the increase in the corporation tax rate introduced by the Blue Party. These businesses are now facing increases in the minimum wage and employers National Insurance. Businesses in hospitality, retail and care are particularly vulnerable. In 2024 13000 retail businesses closed their doors. The client of Edward Peters I referred to before also said that in her village there is now just one nursery remaining in business. They have a 4 year waiting list. This means that not only do parents need to go on the waiting list before their child is conceived, in exceptional cases the parents need to go on the waiting list before they’ve even met each other.”
“So what do you think we should do?” the Chancellor asked.
“We need to increase income tax rates.” Spectre said.
“Well, I suppose I could raise the additional rate from 45% to 50%” said the Chancellor.
“No, that won’t do” replied Spectre “Money is raised by taxing the many not the few. We need to reinstate the reductions in employees National Insurance and increase the basic rate of tax to 25%. This can be announced now and implemented over 5 years. The markets will then have confidence that we can manage the economy properly and the interest rate we pay on debt won’t increase.”
“That’s out of the question” replied the Chancellor “the Supreme Leader is clear that working people will not see increases in the rates of tax they pay for the lifetime of this Parliament. Have you no other ideas?”
“Well, as an interim measure I’ve managed to cut the cost of the NHS by telling them to prioritise younger people over older people. More old people will die before their time, but then they’re a burden to the state so that will help in a small way. In fact the NHS have just declared a critical incident covering the whole of London.”
With that the meeting ended and Spectre left to walk back to the Lords. 5 minutes later he found himself short of breath and had chest pains. He then fell to the ground. A passer-by went to his assistance. It took 10 minutes to get her calls to 999 answered. She calmly described what had happened. “How old is the gentleman?” The voice on the end of the phone asked. “About 70” said the passer by. “OK, I’ll send an ambulance. Please stay with him and try to keep him warm.”
The ambulance took two hours to arrive. It had 2 priority cases to deal with first. Ian Spectre died before he reached the hospital.
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Ian Spectre was the only child of parents who were also only children. He had no living relatives and had not made a will. His entire estate went to the Crown. The Government also made further savings because they no longer had to pay his State and Civil Service pensions nor the £360 per day he claimed by attending the House of Lords.
The funeral was arranged by the Red Party, but no representative attended. In fact the only person present was his old adversary, Edward Peters.