Word: thorneycroft
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Chancellor of the Exchequer Peter Thorneycroft's budget was an unashamed "opportunity" budget, which created new incentives for talented men and enterprising businesses, but Labor's attempt to denounce it as unfair to the "little man" proved a dud. Along with a rise in Macmillan's reputation has come a decline in opposition Leader Hugh Gaitskell...
...rapidly. Anthony Eden was the first British Prime Minister to be a divorceod man and seemed not to have been hurt by the fact. He included in his Cabinet three other divorced men: Sir Walter Monckton, Secretary for Scotland James Stuart, and President of the Board of Trade Peter Thorneycroft. When Harold Macmillan succeeded Eden, he appointed another divorced man to the Cabinet, Minister of Education Lord Hailsham. Minister of Defense Duncan Sandys recently separated legally from Winston Churchill's eldest daughter Diana...
This year the Chancellor, whose single pronouncement could make millions of Britons richer or poorer, was Peter Thorneycroft, 47, a smooth, somewhat over-groomed son of a Tory ironmaster. On his first budget outing, Thorneycroft kept to the traditions by droning a prosaic prognosis of the nation's economic health until 4:30, the hour the Stock Exchange closed. Then, safe at last to let his secrets out, the youthful-looking Chancellor raised his voice and announced bold changes in the country's tax setup...
Time to Relax. Instead of last year's $812 million surplus, Thorneycroft foresaw a whopping $1.5 billion operating surplus from buoyant tax returns and the big savings in defense. He intended to pass out $275 million at once in tax relief. Brushing aside fearful warnings of inflation, he said: "The answer to an over stretched economy is not to tax it but to relax it." He freed firms doing business abroad from all taxes on their overseas trading operations, removed some unpopular domestic levies, e.g., the 1955 "pots and pans" tax and the "Suez shilling" on gasoline, lowered others...
Actually, the Tory gentry with inherited wealth did not gain from Thorneycroft's budget. Its incentives were all directed at the rising middle class, which has contributed so many valuable men to the long lines of emigrants leaving for Australia and Canada. Conservative M.P.s flocked around Thorneycroft afterward with a kind of locker-room enthusiasm unseen in House of Commons lobbies in several years. Said one, noting that Thorneycroft was hanging on to most of his surplus: "If things turn out well, he can give more next year and even more the year after that. Remember, the year after...