Best Of

Interesting exercise if you type the favourable rating for the 3 main party leaders into Electoral Calculus as their voteshare but leave the other minor parties at 2024 levels.

You end up with Reform 242 seats, Labour 181, the Tories 90 and LDs 75.

So Farage could be PM of a minority government with Tory confidence and supply. At the moment however Reform is still polling clearly below Farage's favourable rating and below the Tories and Labour still, even if up a bit on July

https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=N&CON=21&LAB=23&LIB=12&Reform=28&Green=7&UKIP=&TVCON=&TVLAB=&TVLIB=&TVReform=&TVGreen=&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=&SCOTLAB=&SCOTLIB=&SCOTReform=&SCOTGreen=&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=&display=AllChanged&regorseat=(none)&boundary=2024

Why do you persist with this utter nonsense?

And on topic Kemi has a real opportunity to take advantage of the awful early months into Starmer's government, and it is telling that Starmer and Reeves are taking a real hit in the favourable ratings but it was entirely predictable when they told the country their manifesto was fully costed when it clearly wasn't

They boxed themselves in to get elected, and are unable to use the best means of raising tax through income tax, vat, and NI

I really am dismayed how bad they have been and certainly far more Corbyn than Blair in character

Before I start my work day... I just wanted to chip in very briefly on the IHT and farms issue.

When I was a fund manager, two of my older colleagues bought farms. Partly this was because they were obsessive fans of shooting small birds out of the sky ("the humane harvesting of organic free range produce" claimed one). But mostly it was to enable them to take advantage of the inheritance tax break. This will - of course - have pushed up the price of farmland, because people like my colleagues will have acquired farms solely for tax reasons.

I am not a fan of exemptions. Why should passing on a shoe shop to one's daughter be subject to inheritance tax, but not a a corn field? And why should a town house be subject to tax, but a farm house be not.

On the other hand, inheritance tax is easily dodged by the wealthy and the well prepared. The use of trusts, gifts, and ensuring assets are held by corporate bodies is such that if you don't want to pay IHT, you don't need to.

I would therefore abolish it, and replace it with a very small (say 0.1%) gross assets levy.

As we need family farms for our food.

Labour could have kept the exemption for 3 generations or more of family farmers but refused as it is a measure of socialist class war

I don't understand.

Is corn from a family owned farm different to corn from a farm owned by a company?

A family owned farm will produce more food than a field sold to build houses.

Oh, so farmers never sell land to developers.

Well, I'm glad we've cleared that up then.

Interesting line from the Labour 2024 manifesto, they want to pay compensation for compulsory purchased land which is “fair compensation rather than inflated prices”. Which may only be agri market value when the policy is implemented. There is another bun fight coming down the line

Before I start my work day... I just wanted to chip in very briefly on the IHT and farms issue.

When I was a fund manager, two of my older colleagues bought farms. Partly this was because they were obsessive fans of shooting small birds out of the sky ("the humane harvesting of organic free range produce" claimed one). But mostly it was to enable them to take advantage of the inheritance tax break. This will - of course - have pushed up the price of farmland, because people like my colleagues will have acquired farms solely for tax reasons.

I am not a fan of exemptions. Why should passing on a shoe shop to one's daughter be subject to inheritance tax, but not a a corn field? And why should a town house be subject to tax, but a farm house be not.

On the other hand, inheritance tax is easily dodged by the wealthy and the well prepared. The use of trusts, gifts, and ensuring assets are held by corporate bodies is such that if you don't want to pay IHT, you don't need to.

I would therefore abolish it, and replace it with a very small (say 0.1%) gross assets levy.

As we need family farms for our food.

Labour could have kept the exemption for 3 generations or more of family farmers but refused as it is a measure of socialist class war

I don't understand.

Is corn from a family owned farm different to corn from a farm owned by a company?

A family owned farm will produce more food than a field sold to build houses.

Oh, so farmers never sell land to developers.

Well, I'm glad we've cleared that up then.