Best Of

Conference season ends and I believe the unexpected happened

Kemi Badenoch delivered the best speech, rolled out an array of policies, and stamp duty the 'rabbit out of the hat'

She energised her supporters and have given them something to sell on the doorstep

And she did what I prayed she would, sent out a positive [conservative] message and barely mentioned Starmer or Farage

Labour and Farage fell into the trap of hurling insults at each other to the detriment of both

The added bonus is Jenrick is the biggest loser

I do not know how the polls will react, but today was a start on the long road to relevance

Rabbit out of a hat, or bollocks out of her arse?

Pound shop Liz Truss.

No Kemi identified welfare and spending cuts to fund her tax cut

It wasn't just welfare but cuts in climate change subsidies and increasing north sea production with associated tax income, as well as welcoming back millionaires, entrepreneurs, and wealth creators

She also will scrap IHT on farmers and abolish vat on private school fees

Add in banning doctor strikes

This is conservative policies and is a direct challenge to Labour and Reform

This is pennies BigG. No spending cuts plan is credible without some sort of control on pensioner benefits and health spending. They are are growing so quickly - from a very high base - that any other cut or even steady economic growth is completely overwhelmed by them. Literally by design in the case of the triple lock.

Labour haven't set out a plan either but let's not pretend the Conservative plan is fiscally prudent. DavidL's take on this is correct.

Google tells me that the number of UK civil servants has increased since 2016 by 132,000 and that the median salary is £34k.

That would imply a saving of £4.5bn under the Tory plan.

Not commenting on whether it is feasible or not but it’s not “pennies”

It is worth remembering that a number of competences were repatriated from Brussels, and which require civil servants.

Which competences (if that’s a word you can use for recent governments) would require that many staff?

Negotiating trade deals.

Also all of the functions previously done by or shared with, the EU and its agencies, from customs, trademarks, statistics, food safety, Erasmus, aviation control, ESMA, Euratom (now only an associated state, not a member), medicines, maritime safety, Europol, and about 3 dozen other fields .

We saved a lot of money by being an EU member. If you were serious about improving the UK economy, you would be talking about far more alignment or even Brejoin.

I see that Nottingham, London and Birmingham are taking, or planning to take, unofficial flags down.

Does anyone have a wider knowledge?

They have to take them down. Otherwise they are inviting everyone and anyone to hijack the public realm with their own pet causes. If people want to plaster their own property with England flags that's their prerogative, but they can't do it on public property.

The local council took down the Welsh flags over the Little Orme for them to be replaced with larger Welsh and Union Jacks flags higher up and social media telling the council 'You take them down, we will put them back up' !!!!

Shame people are willing to waste council taxpayers money on these silly displays of nationalism (often organised by far right activists, who know exactly what they are doing).

Hardly far right with the Welsh Flag being flown

It depends on why it has been put up on a day other than match day. If it is used like some people use the flag of St George as a symbol that "foreigners" aren't welcome it could be.

Personally, I quite like the England and UK flags. It just feels nice to have my flag flown. This must be what gay people feel like in June and August. Hurray, some people don't despise me.
Only in the UK do we get hot and bothered about people flying national flags. Go to Greece, for example: the Greek flag is everywhere.

I always presumed this was your flag:

Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.

As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".

Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!

One can make an argument that the group most undeserving of state largesse are people in their late 60s who are still fit and healthy, but getting pensions and other benefits. Should the pension age be further raised?

Pension age should be graduated. Starting at a lower age than current, 63?,at maybe £2k or £3k per year then increasing til maybe 73 to the current rate.

What's the rationale here? That people are expected to be moving to part-time working?

People do move to work part time. And some people retire at 55, others at 80. The days of a single retirement age for everyone are long gone.

People who retire at 55 tend to be very rich people who can afford to, but others need to retire early for health reasons. People who retire at 80 tend to have better paying white collar jobs. So, how does the system handle all these differences? Putting everyone on a graduated system going from 63 to 73 is still a one size fits all solution.

Do we instead need more means testing and/or health status testing?

Be useful and don't abuse your body and you'll have to work longer will be a hard sell.

Over a third of the boomer retired generation say no party represents them says new YouGov poll.

As Stephen Bush points out - these are the guys that "takes up most government spending".


Frankly, they are being handed ever increasing state largesse on a massive silver plate!

Lol. Every party represents these people!

As a comfortably off boomer retired, the big reasons no party really represents me are:

No party has a platform of running what the state takes to itself to run really brilliantly well but no stunts.
All parties tend to appeal to a sectional interest.
No party has spokespeople who answer questions. You get too old for the waffle.
Boomers like me have children and grandchildren and know all sorts and conditions of people, rich and poor, only 'one nation' approaches are any use.
All parties go in for short termism.

We either get the comfortably off boomer retired to recognise that allowing things they don’t like is a necessary prerequisite to growing GDP which they ultimately rely on for their own welfare or this country is pretty much doomed to a no GDP growth future with ever increasing strife driven by inter-generational conflict over resource allocation.

Yes. This comfortably off boomer retired thinks that NI should be abolished and pensioners pay tax at the same rate as working people. That employed, under age 66, working is the highest taxed form of activity is scandalous.

However, comfortably off boomers retireds' capacity to 'allow things they don't like' is less than you think. We all have exactly one vote, like all adults, and most people with the vote are much younger than comfortably off boomers retired. Remarkably few of them use it. It is insane to expect old people to do all the voting for them, though I am doing my best.

Re stamp duty, perhaps I'm being thick but if the supply of houses doesn't increase and buyers now have more money with which to buy, won't this just lead to an increase in house prices which will make things even harder for those trying to get on the property ladder?

House prices will increase to absorb any stamp duty cut, absolutely. But the point of eliminating stamp duty is not to cut house prices, it’s to reduce the friction imposed on the economy that stamp duty imposes. Stamp duty massively increases the transactional costs of moving house: That means that people are less likely to move to get a better job, or downsize to a smaller property as they get older.

Taxes always have a negative effect on your economy because they alter the prices of goods away from their natural level. But stamp duty has more pernicious effects than any other tax - it is by far the worst tax economically. If you ask economists which tax they would most like to get rid of then stamp duty is at the top of the list. We would be far better off if we eliminated stamp duty & replaced it with almost any other tax.