May's Brexit: An unnecessary conflict between Executive and Parliamentary authority in Britain

At every turn, Theresa May has antagonised Parliament and picked fights unnecessary fights.

Today Theresa May has her authority in the Commons put to the test. So far as Prime Minister she has drawn some very stark lines, creating some poorly considered battles and today's vote seems amongst the least necessary.

The PM made her Brexit Bill intentions pretty clear. She wanted a simple bill, passed quickly. No flourishes, just a straight forward rubber stamping from Parliament to authorise her to trigger the UK's biggest constitutional change in lifetimes.

Considering how May ignored and excluded Parliament rather than engaging from the beginning, the rubber stamp should never have seemed likely to come easily. In fact her determination to keep this to executive authority alone has been almost obsessive.

From the beginning, May has tried to portray the referendum as giving her a personal mandate to wield reserve powers - despite the referendum never being a legally binding vote, whether or not you accept its result as a guide for future policy. That is particularly astounding When you consider that May is trying to change the constitution by executive power alone.

When this position, of cutting Parliament out of the process, was challenged, May's Government went to court - ostensibly to legally exclude Parliament. When the judges faced harassment and media attacks, the response from May's Cabinet - which should have been standing up for judicial independence - was at first absent and then poor.

Then, the Lords sought, in the form of amendments to the court-ordered Brexit Bill, to guarantee the UK's commitment to protecting EU citizens currently resident in the UK and to ensure that the Commons plays a definite role in ratifying any Brexit deal. The PM's response was almost ludicrous.

First she took to the press to virtually order the Lords to comply with her narrow aims on the bill. May then took the unusual and aggressive step of making herself personally present in the Lords to watch over the debate.

To do so, she sat on the steps of throne, a privilege afforded to her as a member of the Privy Council - the Queen's council of advisors. That knowledge expresses a lot about the nature of the dispute over how Brexit is proceeding: the Prime Minister turning to executive authority and reserve powers and privileges to bully and exclude Parliament.

The most obvious question is: why? Why bother? In her quest to treat the referendum as a personal mandate, May seems determined to undermine every other branch of government. She is picking fights in every direction.

Look at her initial approach to negotiating with the EU. She ignored the EU's position - that negotiations would only start when Article 50 was officially triggered and that the EU member states would negotiate collectively - and set off to try and negotiate with each member directly.

Theresa May seems determined to antagonise everyone and everything around her, drawing lines and making fights out of what should be collaborations. And that speaks volumes about the way the Conservatives are governing Britain.

The Budget: Hammond's budget all about tweaks - spending headlines mostly in the millions rather than the billions

Philip Hammond delivered his first budget today. Photograph: NATO Summit Wales 2014 by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (License) (Cropped)

Philip Hammond looked relaxed, even made jokes, as he delivered his first - and apparently Britain's last - Spring Budget. The Chancellor's budget was one tweaks, all framed as adjustments to increase fairness. He began by summarising current economic trends, noting the highest number of women in employment ever. Growth projections are up slightly, but a projected drop in borrowing is only short term.

The long term economic plan of his predecessor George Osborne, to eliminate the deficit and produce a surplus to whittle away the national debt, was much delayed. Its aims where pushed back again by Hammond today. The promised fiscal surplus now not likely be seen until a long way into the 2020s - at least.

As for spending, the numbers he was pitching were all notably in the millions rather than the billions. £200 million for school repairs. £100 million for A&Es. A few hundred million for devolved administrations. £700m for councils to tackle urban congestion. The one exception appeared to £2 billion for Social Care - yet that was immediately qualified as being spread over three years.

Those spending commitments were companied by big companies seeing Corporation Tax fall again, as planned, to 17%. Perhaps as a counter to the criticism Conservatives have faced for their tax cuts for those at the top end, Hammond did however announce a halving of Director-shareholders' tax-free dividend allowance - noting it as a very generous tax break for investors.

For income taxes and wages that affect the overwhelming majority of people, the Personal Income Tax Allowance and the National Living Wage will both increase, to £11,500 and £7.50 respectively. The Universal Credit taper rate will also be reduced from 65% to 63% for earnings over allowances. Yet the overall positive impact of these is likely to be slim.

It is not surprising then that Jeremy Corbyn attacked the Chancellor's budget as one of "utter complacency". Corbyn painted a picture of people in precarious work - unsure of where they'll find work or what money they may make tomorrow, queueing at food banks and one of a million working households getting housing benefit because working pay doesn't cover the rent - for whom there were few measures.

The Labour leader expressed anger that public servants have still seen no pay rise in seven years, due to the Government's freeze on pay, and that no funding security has been given to the NHS despite there being an obvious crisis, despite the fact that corporations are still going to get their year on year tax cut.

The Chancellor's budget has offered only a range of small spending increases, in a very concise series of measures, and it is hard to see them as sufficient. Analysts, such as Kamal Ahmed at the BBC, have characterised the budget as representing 'pain delayed' - taking advantage of the short term boost that Government finances are experiencing this year.

This is not the start of a public investment led drive to build a path out of austerity. With the debt and deficit still hanging heavily over Britain, these feel like stop-gap measures to assuage certain political pressures in the present, and to ease the way to the further austerity that waits ahead.

Budget Preview: Will Hammond act to end Conservative pattern of money being redistributed away from most vulnerable?

With the National Debt is still rising, will the Chancellor be able or willing to find some money to invest in essential services? Photograph: Pound Coins from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

Philip Hammond faces his first budget as Chancellor on Wednesday and he has a lot of pressure to handle. The overall Conservative promise to alleviate the country's debt is still a long way from started and there are spending decisions that Hammond will find it difficult to avoid addressing.

Funding plans for Schools, Social Care and Personal Independence Payments (PIPs) all indicate a troubling pattern of money being redistributed away from the poorest and most vulnerable areas that need it most - not an image that Theresa May, if she is to keep her promise of a Britain that works for everyone, will want to reinforce.

Schools, even those under financial pressure, face up to 3% in budget cuts. Social Care has seen billions cut from the system. And, Theresa May's government is trying to wriggle out of coughing up more money to cover a court-ordered expansion of the PIPs welfare programme.

How the Chancellor addresses these concerns is important. He has already done the press rounds in the past week to assert there will be no big spending and rolled out, the now standard Tory line, that problems are less the result of low funding and more of not following 'best practice' (BBC, 2017). But will that line be maintained through Wednesday?

On Schools, Hammond faces a situation that will be hard to explain away. The government announced plans for a new funding formula in December, that came with the less than reassuring 'assurance' that no school would lose out by more than 3% (Weale, 2016).

That is hardly going to offer succour to schools in poorer areas. As Andy Burnham (Bean, 2017), Labour nominee for Mayor of Greater Manchester, asked the Prime Minister in the Commons: how does the Prime Minister expect to get more working class children to university by cutting schools funding across the North West?

Meanwhile, Social Care has become the particular Tory baggage with which to pummel the government. With £4.6 billion in cuts since 2010 and shortfall predicted (Full Fact, 2016), it is about the hardest area for the government to argue that funding cuts don't make a difference.

In fact, the previous Chancellor George Osborne did begin to respond - but only with an, at best modest, increase in funding, that was planned to come in with this budget, but would only raise around £200 million nationally (Merrick, 2016; BBC, 2016).

The plan also does not actually involve a boost in cash from the government itself, but rather put it onto local councils to raise more in tax - up to 2% extra. However, the one, and particular poignant, flaw in this approach is that wealthier areas will be able to raise more for themselves than the poorest and most vulnerable who need it most.

Across Schools and Social Care, there is a very clear pattern emerging of money being withdrawn from where it is needed most to make tax savings for those from wealthier areas - simply, regressive economics.

That pattern is reinforced in the government's insistence upon not spending the extra £3.7 billion that an expansion of Personal Independence Payments, ordered by the courts, would call for across four years (BBC, 2017{2}) - less than a billion a year to take care of people primarily with mental health problems.

An aide to Theresa May was heavily criticised for his callous remark that funding need to kept to only the "really disabled" (BBC, 2017{3}) - for which he later apologised - but it summed up the Conservative attitude.

Under Conservative government, the services people depend upon in their everyday lives are being squeezed. Money is being siphoned out programmes that serve the most vulnerable and leaving them to find ways to fend for themselves - whether they're young, old or disabled.

There are rumours that the Chancellor will respond with a little more money than is currently planned (Kuenssberg, 2017). However, a lot more investment is needed to convince anyone that the government is moved by a real comprehension of the difficulties people actually face when the public services they rely on are disappearing.