Best Of

Note neither Ukraine, nor Europe are part of these negotiations.

Scoop: U.S. secretly drafting new plan to end Ukraine war
https://www.axios.com/2025/11/19/ukraine-peace-plan-trump-russia-witkoff
The Trump administration has been secretly working in consultation with Russia to draft a new plan to end the war in Ukraine, U.S. and Russian officials tell Axios...

Phillips P O'Brien has just put out a rather pessimistic substack suggesting that the Europeans will be told the US will pull out of NATO if they don't agree to the peace plan, whatever it is. We are about to see the maximum leverage available to the US President applied to Ukraine and Europe - when we've all been hoping it might be applied to Russia.

Trump really wants to pull out of NATO; previous US administrations have seen their spending on NATO as worthwhile to ensure peace and keep Europe in the US sphere of influence, but Trump's US has no allies, only marks to milked. His view is that Europe should be paying the US for their presence. Europe isn't going to do that, so no dice.

If you accept the above as fact, then threatening withdraw unless Europe and Ukraine agree to a peace plan is win-win in Trump's view. Either the plan works and Trump is hailed once again as a Great Peacemaker (at least in his own befuddled mind) or a refusal provides cover for something he wants to do anyway.

From Europe's pov, being blackmailed to accept a settlement in Ukraine which puts our future security at serious risk, is Trump effectively abandoning NATO already.

Indeed. And we have had plenty of warning that this is coming. We should call his bluff and refuse to accept his plan.

This is for Ukraine to decide, not us, they have to live with the consequences. But if they choose to resist we must really go all out to help them as must the rest of Europe.

Unpopular suggestions

- Remove winter fuel allowance & other add on benefits.
- Child benefit for first child only
- End the triple lock
- Cut back the number of diversity officers - there are at least 500 in central government according to a recent FoI request and the number has increased since Labour came into power
- Prescription charges: reduce the number of exemptions and increase payments
- Foreign aid: what actually is it being spent on and which countries
- More charges for council services above the bare minimum
- Stop or drastically reduce funding of lobby groups
- No money in current budget for AD - where is the money for that to come from? If people want it they should pay for it themselves.
- Social care - people with savings need to use those first. The rainy day has arrived so that is what the savings are for.

On the tax side -
- raise income tax and extend NI ultimately combining the two
- add council tax bands at the top end rather than faff around with extra taxes
- Extend VAT - we have more exemptions than many other countries
- Get rid of cliff edges
- Reduce pension tax relief to the basic rate
- Freeze thresholds

Once there is a path to a reduced deficit and growth then can think of reducing tax. But I would make the priority proper investment in infrastructure and high quality competent permanent staff rather than endless locums and consultants.

Good thread header. This is the real issue facing this government and it is one that the last government largely dodged. I would add that the increasing cost of our debt burden is another very serious challenge going forward. According to the OBR, " in 2025-26 we expect debt interest spending to total £111.2 billion. That would represent 8.3 per cent of total public spending and is equivalent to over 3.7 per cent of national income."

A lot of our current debt was borrowed at ridiculously low interest rates after the GFC. So a 10 year gilt from 2015, for example, might have had a coupon of 0.2%. When that became repayable this year we obviously did not have the money to repay it so the debt will have been rolled over but at a cost of around 4.5%. A lot of people on here criticised Osborne for not borrowing more to invest and claimed this was shortsighted. This shows how wrong they were. That 8.3% is heading in only 1 direction.

So, we urgently need to cut spending. Much easier said than done of course, especially given the pressures mentioned by Gareth and by me. We need to reduce regulatory costs, we need to reduce the head count in the public sector substantially, we need to stop wasting money on never ending inquiries which tell us the same things again and again (and which, as @Cyclefree points out, we normally ignore). Its a huge challenge for any government and politically it is a particular challenge for Labour. But it needs to be done.

For anyone suggesting cuts - please point out where they can come from

Seriously the only way to cut things would be to stop doing X, so tell me what things you don't want the public sector to do..

According to a Green friend, we should cut/stop paying debt interest, not forever, but for say ten years.

Absurd... but as a thought experiment, that would just about balance the books next year (absent an increase in public spending), but how would it help us ?
We'd compromise forever our ability to borrow - our reputation for paying our debts having being a couple of centuries in the making - and wouldn't significantly reduce the debt total over that period.

Meanwhile the pressures to increase spending on the back of the money "saved" would be irresistible.

It would also destroy the City (which provides a substantial percentage of government income) in the process.
And trash pensions.