![]() Mr Haji-Ioannou is snared by the legal action since, at the age of 24, he was working with his shipping magnate father, at the time. The charges, brought in Italy and rekindled by the public prosecutor there just three days ago, relate to an oil tanker which sank off Genoa nine years ago, killing a number of crew members and causing serious environmental damager. But then anyone who has had the Luton airport experience will know that Stelios Haji-Ioannou, founder of EasyJet and various other Easy-branded wheezes, is a rare type in the world of business. It is not often that a man facing manslaughter charges seeks to float his business on the London market for around £750m. ![]() The only question is how big they will be. Whatever Labour says now, there will be tax cuts. The idea that the prime minister and his chancellor will use a surplus of perhaps £20bn to pay down the national debt rather than to butter up the electorate is too fanciful for words. Tony Blair would like to hold an election in the spring, which means that the Budget will be the springboard for Labour's campaign. Moreover, the better than expected outcome will not be the result of an overheated economy - as it was in the late 1980s - but derives from a structural improvement in the nation's finances. The chief secretary, Andrew Smith, has been ruling out tax cuts in the next parliament, but the Treasury - and every analyst in the City - knows that the size of the chancellor's budget surplus will be at least three times as large as the £5bn he was forecasting in March. Labour has learned from Lawson's experience. By massaging down the projected size of the Treasury's budget surplus in the autumn, Lawson could then reveal the true picture in the spring, making it seem as though he was as surprised as anybody to find that the government could afford to slice a couple of pence off the basic rate of income tax. ![]() Back in the late 1980s, Nigel Lawson was fond of accompanying increases in public spending in the autumn with forecasts which suggested that this left little opportunity for tax cuts. Politics being politics, things are not quite that simple. ![]()
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