That's an old Canadian adage, that is, but today's emergency budget is set to bring it a lot closer to home -- and so far, we've only seen half the picture, at most.
It's an old rule in politics to get the bad news out of the way early; that way you can blame the previous mob for all the nasty things you're doing. The coalition government has given itself so little time to prepare this budget that it hasn't been able to get all the bad news out at once. Not that there isn't plenty to be going on with. On the tax front: a steep but delayed VAT rise (probably inevitable), a big jump in basic personal income tax allowances (good), higher capital gains tax for higher income earners (likely to provoke squawking from the Tory rank-and-file); tinkering with indexation (sneaky but very productive in revenue terms); and a levy on the banks.
On the spending side, there's a planned £11 billion cut in welfare spending, but that's likely to be only the tip of the iceberg. With the entire benefits programme up for review, there's surely a lot more chopping to come here in the coming months. Likewise on non-welfare spending. After the cuts announced last week, the budget left things unchanged, but with an ominous warning that non "ring-fenced" programmes (that is, everything apart from the NHS and overseas aid) face real cuts of 25% over the next five years. The real pain here will only be felt once the details are announced in the spending review, scheduled for 20 October. (Doesn't seem as if anyone in Whitehall will be getting much time off this summer!)
Then there's public sector pay and benefits. The Chancellor is "asking" public sector unions to accept a two-year pay freeze, but is exempting those earning less than £21,000 per year. He intends to roll back the bonus culture in the public sector by limiting the earnings of top executives to 20 times the wages of the lowest-paid. (Good -- I've never understood why it suddenly became a good idea in the last few years to pay hospital bosses hundreds of thousands of pounds to do a job they had previously done quite contentedly for much less. It's not as if there are lots of employers competing with the NHS for their services). But unless I've missed it, there's nothing very specific about public sector pensions, even after all Nick Clegg's recent rants about them being "gold plated". There is surely "reform" (i.e cuts) to come here too.
Inevitably, last week's much-trumpeted OBR forecasts have had to be revised downwards. GDP is now expected to grow by only 1.2% this year and 2.3% in 2011 -- recall that the Labour government's last budget saw growth of 3.25% in 2011. It would be no surprise at all if growth was higher than the new forecast this year, as consumers rush to beat the VAT increase. That could lead to some surprisingly rosy fiscal numbers for the current fiscal year, followed by a downturn in both the economy and in tax revenues early next year.
Although the OBR sees some revival in growth after 2012, the forecast net effect of the budget is for significantly lower GDP over the life of this Parliament than either Labour or (up until today) the OBR had expected. Yet the deficit is projected to fall much faster than Labour was forecasting, with the "structural" deficit eliminated by 2015 or 2016. It's a risky strategy: as Harriet Harman noted in her initial response in the Commons, the Tories can't claim to be basing their plans on Canada's successful escape from a fiscal mire in the 1990s. Canada benefited from low interest rates and strong growth in its major trading partner, the US. The UK will have no such luck. (I've been saying that for months, so it's good to find someone in Parliament picking up on it. Too bad it had to be Harriet Harman).
Hard times it is then -- and the squeals of pain will only get louder once the details of the spending cuts emerge in October.
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