As football is on everyone's minds today, let me borrow a popular metaphor and say that yesterday's Emergency Budget is a game of two halves – of cutting costs and raising revenue.
So the CCC (my acronym for the Cameron Clegg Coalition) have set out their budgetary stall. We knew what to expect and small business organisations seem pleased with the Queen's Speech. But the CCC have studiously avoided the awkward question of VAT.
It's feared that the new coalition government are gearing up for an increase in VAT, which could hurt small businesses, experts warn. Economist at the British Chambers of Commerce, Steve Hughes says any tax increase will feed through into negative consequences...

As expected, the Conservatives want to encourage greater personal and local responsibility rather than more central government. But David Cameron seized the advantage in the publicity war by promising to postpone Labour's proposed National Insurance 1p increase for employers and workers earning less than £35,000. In addition, in terms of SMEs, the Conservatives have plans to:

Can political parties buy the loyalty of small businesses with some pre-election rivalry? To see what the politicos were offering I did a quick scan of the General Election 2010 stories in the Telegraph in the past week.

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