Best Of

So, if it’s true that this farm tax will only affect several hundred people per year, and only raise several hundred million in extra tax (before the accountants and lawyers have a good go at it), why are the government prepared to waste so much political capital on such a small change?

Surely you save your political capital for major taxation changes that raise tens of billions? It comes across as ideological as a result, that the government are at best ambivalent to farming and rural communities. I suspect there will a revival of the Countryside Alliance as there was under Bair’s government, but this time with some newly very famous farmers leading the protests.

It's precisely the same situation as we saw with the Winter Fuel Payments. It's all about desperately scraping around for small change here and there, because they've ruled out most of the big ticket items (either in the manifesto or by filing them in the bin marked "too difficult.") They're burning through all their political capital on tax rises that are questionable or simply wrong headed, failing to raise enough money to shore up the state and provide the benefits and services that will help to convince people they're worth a second term, and relying on their image of toughness looking like decisive action in the national interest, when it often looks more like clumsy errors compounded by a stubborn refusal to admit as much.

This Government is in real danger of falling between two stools: making changes that are just enough to irritate the wealthy whilst being wholly insufficient (and, in the case of the NI raid and the refusal to support local government, positively harmful) to the interests of the less well off. The obvious risk is that, on five years' time, we shall have seen modest improvements in the health service whilst living standards continue to decline and the rest of the public realm keeps on decaying and shutting down. The Government risks going to the country trying to get re-elected on the basis that granny now only has to wait one year rather than three for a hip replacement, only to find itself condemned for making most of the country poorer, against a backdrop of cratered roads, closed libraries and bankrupt councils that collect the bins once every two months and spend everything else on social care services that still fail because of the weight of demand.

The nation requires emergency surgery; what it's going to get is another box of Elastoplast. If this all ends with Drs Badenoch and Farage diagnosing gangrene and cutting off both legs and an arm a few years down the road then the lack of decisive action now will have been to blame.

I think the political capital argument is the best one as to why SKS has a good chance of falling.

I have been trying to wrap my head around the approach, which many will answer there isn’t one. But SKS sticks doggedly to one approach as we saw with his role as LOTO.

My feeling is that they know there are no popular decisions to make so they are trying to get them all out the way in one go.

The idea then I guess is to get positive stories over the next five years around immigration and house building.

It seems very high risk to me. And tends towards failure.

There is next to chance of a change in house building, without using drastic measure (primary legislation for new towns, say)

This is because if you announce a new town now, the "planning process" (actually a whole bunch of things, but put it in the general bag of "planning") will take 5 years. Plus. The if you wanted to do something stupid, like provide public transport, you might want a railway connection. Ha Ha ha....

So, unless Starmer does something really radical, there no chance of a change.

And using primary legislation to bludgeon a plan through is nearly unthinkable for a lawyer. It means abrogation of the entire process. There would be howling. Accusations of Trumpian behaviour.

At the moment their idea seems to be calling in existing applications and approving them. But I assume these numbers wouldn’t even touch the sides.

Immigration is something he could make more tangible moves on. Based on a report I read the other day, they know they are vulnerable on that.

Is there anything they could do in five years that they can point to as being better? Ultimately that’s why they’ll get voted out, if people say “no”.

On the basis that I want my Government to be competant even if I disagree with them on a lot of things, the Starmer reign so far really does worry me.

Three big tax policies have resulted from the Budget - Removing the Winter Fuel allowance (which I know was announced prior to the budget), Inheritence tax on family run businesses and farms, and increasing Employer's NI.

The first two of these are being done for explainable reasons (The state should not be giving money to those who don't need it just because they are old, and rich investors are using the IHT arrangments to avoid paying tax) but both have been completely ballsed up with their implementation - not the PR but the actual planned implementation.

It would have been easily possible to have devised a system to properly means test the WFA removal rather than using the blunt tool of Pension Credit and it was certainly possible to devise an IHT system that did not threaten the future of family farms and businesses whilst still closing the investment loophole. I just get the impression that, because they don't actually understand (or care?) about the collateral damage, they plough on with the most basic sledgehammer applications of their plans safe in the knowledge that they can always point to the intended target as an excuse. They are the Bomber Harris of politics.

(On the third policy of employers NI we have yet to see the effects of that but I suspect a lot of smaller businesses will be laying off staff or shutting down entirely and again there seems to be no effort to differentiate between larger companies and the small businesses which run on very low profit margins)

Meanwhile we still don't have an effective or fair tax regime for multinationals.

It's rare I agree with you but you've nailed this with some serious nails.

That's the thing with public policy - you need to think the thing through from start to finish and discover the loopholes and potential problems before announcing the policy. Yes, there will always be "losers" and they will shout loud and long while the winners keep quiet but that's the nature of politics and sometimes, in politics, you have to face down those who shout and argue your case firmly and with conviction.

There will also be those who argue with the principle of the policy itself rather than its impacts - there are those who are opposed to IHT in any form - and they will never be satisfied.

Which is why competent governments think things through and plan properly whilst in opposition.

Its increasingly clear that Labour kept quiet about their plans not just for political reasons but also because the necessary work hadn't been done.

Yes and it might have been the case (at least in 2020-21) Labour thought they had no realistic chance of winning but the implosion of the Conservative Government from mid 2022 must have made them think they not only might but would be elected.

I also think back channels exist with the civil service who would normally look at the initial policy proposals and vet them (when I was in local Government we always looked at what the Opposition was planning just in case we had to implement it).

Did the civil service warn Reeves of the potential problems? If not, why not? The service isn't neutral or impartial as most believe - it is or should be a friendly critic to all.

Even so, the Reeves team seems strangely bereft of some serious thinkers but you could equally argue the Conservative side wasn't strong on straegic thinking either.

Torsten's Bell tweet is idiotic. Agricultural land is a tool of a trade. A house is not.

What has been less noticed is that the tax changes affect all family owned businesses. Not just farms. So the idea that this is just about closing off a loophole is nonsense. It is a tax change which will harm all family owned businesses. What is the justification for doing so?

The justification is that these people should be paying IHT just like the the rest of us: Why should they escape being taxed just because they can wrap the family wealth up in a box marked “family business” ?

As to why people aren’t outraged: a couple can pass on £2.6million tax free (combination of family business & the nil rate band). The kinds of “family business“ that ordinary people feel shouldn’t be taxed are going to worth less than that as a going concern - you don’t pay £2million for a corner shop do you?

Farmers have better PR basically.

Torsten's Bell tweet is idiotic. Agricultural land is a tool of a trade. A house is not.

What has been less noticed is that the tax changes affect all family owned businesses. Not just farms. So the idea that this is just about closing off a loophole is nonsense. It is a tax change which will harm all family owned businesses. What is the justification for doing so?

The answers are all over the place: one minute it's "well very few will be affected" and the next "well the NHS will collapse without the money". These are incoherent and inconsistent. And frankly - though I imagine I will get a lot of grief for saying so - I don't think the purpose of our economy or tax policy should be to keep the NHS afloat. Even if it were other Budget decisions completely undermine that anyway - not least the NIC changes which will harm GP surgeries and care homes. A proper social care policy would do more to help the NHS than anything else - but on that we have once again got tumbleweed and a tax change which will, if anything, make matters worse.

On social care it could be even worse than you describe. The current plan seems to be set a mechanism to allow higher/fairer levels of pay across the whole sector, yet with no indication whatsoever how local councils will fund the whacking increase in fees required.

Laura K claims there is a big meeting scheduled for this coming Monday between chancellor, PM and NHS ministers to finally thrash this out.

I expect more tumbleweed sadly.

I know you, like me, are knee deep in this.

An illustration of the waste:

My father is still at home with regular carer visits. He falls from time to time. Inevitable given his condition. No biggee. Check he's OK, help him up on sofa and make him a cuppa you might think.

But no. The carers will not apply common sense. They immediately call 999. Ambulance is booked but may be 4 - 6 hours. Dad expected to sit on floor for all this time, waiting to be helped up.So I (in another part of the country) get a call from the care agency, looking to be relieved. WTF do they expect me to do? I ring around best I can and - with luck - get a neighbour on phone who goes and helps him up. So I tell carer to cancel the ambulance. 'No' I'm told they can't do that. So now we have an ambulance coming at some point for an emergency which never existed. This has happened six times over last couple of months.

What a waste of time for the ambulance service. How many times is this scenario being played out across the country?

Ukraine builds a bridge to Trumpland
Gone are appeals to democratic values. Ukraine’s new strategy for surviving Trump’s America centers on deals, strategic assets, and a surprising China card.

https://euromaidanpress.com/2024/11/19/ukraines-trump-strategy-inside-kyivs-plan-b/
..The Financial Times, citing its sources, reported that two points in Zelenskyy’s “victory plan” were written for that exact purpose and with Trump’s possible coming to power in mind. One idea involves replacing some of the US troops stationed in Europe with Ukrainian troops after the war is over.

The second point was proposed by Trump’s ally Senator Lindsey Graham and refers to joint control of Ukraine and the West over the country’s most important natural resources. According to sources, Trump became interested in these two points after reading the plan when Zelenskyy presented it to American top officials, including Trump, in late September...

Torsten's Bell tweet is idiotic. Agricultural land is a tool of a trade. A house is not.

What has been less noticed is that the tax changes affect all family owned businesses. Not just farms. So the idea that this is just about closing off a loophole is nonsense. It is a tax change which will harm all family owned businesses. What is the justification for doing so?

The answers are all over the place: one minute it's "well very few will be affected" and the next "well the NHS will collapse without the money". These are incoherent and inconsistent. And frankly - though I imagine I will get a lot of grief for saying so - I don't think the purpose of our economy or tax policy should be to keep the NHS afloat. Even if it were other Budget decisions completely undermine that anyway - not least the NIC changes which will harm GP surgeries and care homes. A proper social care policy would do more to help the NHS than anything else - but on that we have once again got tumbleweed and a tax change which will, if anything, make matters worse.

On social care it could be even worse than you describe. The current plan seems to be set a mechanism to allow higher/fairer levels of pay across the whole sector, yet with no indication whatsoever how local councils will fund the whacking increase in fees required.

Laura K claims there is a big meeting scheduled for this coming Monday between chancellor, PM and NHS ministers to finally thrash this out.

I expect more tumbleweed sadly.

Social care is the real destroyer of inheritances, not IHT.

I disagree. First of all, she needs to shore up the base. And, by the way, it's worth noting that the Lib Dems are also opposing both tax raids.

Opposing yes, but no pledge to reverse. That's what opposition parties do, oppose policies will hurt people who they would quite like to vote for them. I would be amazed if reversing this made the next Lib Dem manifesto. I would be mildly surprised if winter fuel allowance made the next Lib Dem manifesto (although I could see some complex tapering of support for those on the margin of eligibility.)

What's marking Kemi out as naive at this stage is making huge public spending commitments for a General Election in 2028/9. The landscape then will be hugely different to what it is now and all she's doing is boxing herself in. Either she can't pledge what she actually needs then, her manifesto will be less plausible than Corbyn's or she'll have to publicly screw over Britain's farmers and pensioners and look untrustworthy. What a choice.

I had no idea that farms were inheritance tax-free until the last few weeks. Never really thought about it. I guess that if there's one piece of advice to give someone it's to be born rich, and two pieces it's to be born to a rich farmer. If the farmers are smart they'll do some hard PR to us ignorant townies on how hard farming is, as it's all tax breaks in the headlines.

The main reason public sector productivity is so poor is the inability to move unproductive people out. The ultimate tool for increasing output per worker is to shit can the least productive ones which is something that private sector businesses do all the time. Until that attitude is brought to the public sector no amount of "investment" will help. The lazy and the feckless are attracted to the public sector because they know once they're in it's impossible to be removed regardless of how shit they are at the job.

Change this and suddenly public sector productivity will shoot up as those lazy buggers start to fear for their next salary.

Let’s presume for one moment Angela Rayners wheeze of allowing public sector workers to do the same job for four days a week comes to pass. How would this impact productivity ?

Massively increase it, because labour productivity is measured as output per hour worked.

LOL. That must be one of those wild wheezes that academics come up with.

We are getting less done but because we have cut the hours worked our productivty has gone up! Surely be that reckoning if we want to have soaring productivity we should just cut to a 1 day week. We would have the best productivity in the Western world by that measure.

That's precisely what happened over the course of the 19th/20th Century. We used to have a 6 day working week with people down mines for 12 hours a day.

It's an important distinction. Productivity growth is brilliant because it can both improve economic output and improve our standards of living - the balance between the two varies over time.

The main reason public sector productivity is so poor is the inability to move unproductive people out. The ultimate tool for increasing output per worker is to shit can the least productive ones which is something that private sector businesses do all the time. Until that attitude is brought to the public sector no amount of "investment" will help. The lazy and the feckless are attracted to the public sector because they know once they're in it's impossible to be removed regardless of how shit they are at the job.

Change this and suddenly public sector productivity will shoot up as those lazy buggers start to fear for their next salary.

Let’s presume for one moment Angela Rayners wheeze of allowing public sector workers to do the same job for four days a week comes to pass. How would this impact productivity ?

Massively increase it, because labour productivity is measured as output per hour worked.

LOL. That must be one of those wild wheezes that academics come up with.

We are getting less done but because we have cut the hours worked our productivty has gone up! Surely be that reckoning if we want to have soaring productivity we should just cut to a 1 day week. We would have the best productivity in the Western world by that measure.

To try to bring some context to the debate, a lot of local Government workers (often female) work part time so they might do an 18 hour week rather than the standard 36 but it's my experience their managers often cram a week's work into half a week and I've witnesses some heated exchanges in meeting where part time staff can feel they are being over worked.

Productivity isn't just about working long hours which might be how it works in the culture of some private sector companies where if you're not working a 60 hour week you're not considered "loyal" to the company (I know it's not like that). How people work and how they are managed is a much bigger factor in determining productivity than the number of hours.