Home buyers face severe restrictions on the amount they can borrow, as rocketing interest rates force banks to limit mortgage offers.
In some cases customers could be able to borrow £90,000 less than previously expected.
Great, that means prices will come down. One good thing from the mad duo.
Not really suddenly a lot of recent purchasers are going to be in negative equity....
All investments can go down as well as up.
If you rule out negative equity, then you're abolishing that principle and putting a one way ratchet on prices, with horrendous consequences.
My home isn’t an investment. It is my home.
Well precisely, so long as you don't intend to move, if your home's value goes down then it doesn't affect you one jot, you still have your home.
If you buy your home for £x and then in a few years time its worth £2x then you still have your home, not 2 homes. If its worth £0.5x then you still have your home, not half a home.
If you intend to move, you may have less money invested for a new purchase, but that's possible for all investments.
Eh? My mortgage is pretty much unaffordable at 7% interest rates. I therefore have to sell it. If I can’t sell it for high enough to cover the outstanding mortgage, what do I do then?
“Doesn’t affect me one jot”.
In recent times 90% of new mortgages have been at fixed rates. Which for most people will give a buffer.
Plus house prices are generally up by something like 20-25% over a couple of years, which gives a different type of buffer.
That's very true:
Albeit most of the fixes are for relatively short (2 to 5 year) periods. You will therefore have a meaningful number dropping off the fixed rate each year. (FWIW, there is a similar phenomenon in the US, where an increasing proportion of the mortgage market is on five year fixeds.)
There is no doubt, Starmer is starting to look the part, in part helped by the clowns running the tory party, but I do think some credit must be given to Starmer as well, he has certainly knocked the labour party into shape.It is well worth remembering the state of disarray, Corbyn left it in, also does anybody think the Labour party would be anywhere near this position, if Rebecca Long Bailey had won
TLDR, the argument boils down to this. Peoples have a right to self determination. We are a people. Hence we have that right. The Scotland Act 1998 should be construed in a way that does not interfere with that right. A referendum allows the views of the Scottish people to be determined. The reserved matters therefore cannot constrain this.
Therefore all local councils have the right to run concurrent referenda for their people to remain or leave, or apply to join the EU, or whatever. County councils in England can run secede referenda at will etc etc
Hmmm.
How does "we are a people" stack up with denying a vote to all the members of the 'people' who don't reside in the defined area?
SNP view is that anyone who lives in Scotland is a Scot.
Regardless of their citizenship?
Who among those who don't live in Scotland are Scots in the SNP's view? Do they see Tony Blair as a Scot, for example, by dint of having been born in Scotland?
TLDR, the argument boils down to this. Peoples have a right to self determination. We are a people. Hence we have that right. The Scotland Act 1998 should be construed in a way that does not interfere with that right. A referendum allows the views of the Scottish people to be determined. The reserved matters therefore cannot constrain this.
Therefore all local councils have the right to run concurrent referenda for their people to remain or leave, or apply to join the EU, or whatever. County councils in England can run secede referenda at will etc etc
Hmmm.
How does "we are a people" stack up with denying a vote to all the members of the 'people' who don't reside in the defined area?
SNP view is that anyone who lives in Scotland is a Scot.
(Thanks for the reply.)
Precisely.
For the purposes of voting, there *is* no other practical legal definition of a Scot; you might have missed the discussions we had on PB some years back now.
But, tbf, this is based on DavidL's summary - which may not be intended to bear the burden you and then I have placed on it.
Edit: unless you want to go all blood and soil, like Mr Cameron did in 2014? But only in his speeches: He didn't himself claim a vote by virtue of his parentage, grandparentage, whatever.
Who among those who don't live in Scotland are Scots in the SNP's view? Do they see Tony Blair as a Scot, for example, by dint of having been born in Scotland?
I understand exactly what the SNP are saying. There is the wider Scottish diaspora - Scottish people who live outside Scotland. Then you have Scottish citizens - people from Scotland and other nations who live in Scotland.
So as an immigrant I am Scottish as a citizen but not Scottish as a nationality. Not that it matters, because nobody will grant Nippie the referendum she would lose, so she gets to fight on...
That quote isn't from me it's from that Russian (loving if I'm being generous) Troll....
Superb speech from Starmer . I’m counting the days till this wretched government is shown the door .
Disagree with the former, agree with the latter.
He is a terrible orator, very short on bold ideas
I tend to agree, Jonathan Blake on BBC 5Live saying Starmer is very boring, but your boy Burnham disagrees.
He wants to be Candidate for Rosie Coopers seat presumably.
Won't be allowed of course by the right wing factionalists in charge. Far too dangerous
I think Andy was speaking more from the heart when he said earlier in the week that Labour needs to be bolder, less so in his soundbite just now although he did say let's see the detail of this UK Energy proposal, think it will turn out to be less than he would like.
Government after government has failed to do nearly enough about the supply side of the British economy. Reams have been written, far more eloquently than I can manage, about how this inaction has trapped us, time and time again, into choices we don’t want to have to make, on public services and elsewhere. It has trapped us into falling ever further behind America in our living standards. And it has nudged us into accepting relative decline as the norm and the future of Britain.
Until now, nobody has truly dared tackle this head-on. But we have finally found a PM and chancellor willing to do so. And yet for whatever reason — perhaps simply because we cannot get our heads around the reorganisation they have in mind — we are risking making it politically impossible before they have even begun to try.
That, at least, is a load of waffle just because there were no supply side reforms, just a bunch of tax cuts which will push up demand.
I'm all in favour of supply side reforms and pushing up business investment, there's was very little in the Friday statement that actually achieves any supply side fix.
He does address that if you read the whole piece:
This is a long list, and even then it is only really a start on the work that the economy needs. It is also vague: it equivocates about the most important supply-side reform of all — housing reform — promising merely that more detail will be announced soon.
But it is a start. And if it is implemented properly (and followed up with more), it would allow Kwarteng’s plan to succeed, and with it, bring to end the awful bind that British policymaking has been stuck in since 2008.
The plan is therefore a do-or-die moment.
To commit to the Growth Plan’s tax-and-spend decisions without the structural reforms to go along with them would be a disaster. It would represent the worst of the status quo, but with a new layer of ‘bad’ added on top.
And there are lots of reasons for pessimism. Getting a supply-side reform through Parliament is much more difficult than doing new spending, especially with special interest groups doing their absolute utmost to block progress. Truss is already light on political capital, given how few MPs originally voted for her, and the response to our currency trouble will only have made that worse. Worst of all, there is very little time: it is less than two years until a general election.
Which is why it's waffle. The writer is just projecting onto Kwasi what he wants to happen. There's been no detail or moves to boost supply just vague ideas and ambitions. What we actually have is a series of tax cuts which are intended to boost demand. Rather than defending them based on something he hopes they will do in the future, they need to be chastised for not doing what is necessary to reform the economy by boosting supply (and investment).
The Friday event, when you take it for the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, is aimed at producing a short term gain in demand by borrowing loads of money. In a high inflation environment it's going to cause interest rates to shoot up and the currency to tank, unsurprisingly that's what has happened.
When you take in the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, almost all of what happened was pre-announced and the 45p changes "cost" £2 billion supposedly, but the real cost to the Exchequer will of course be far less than that and may even by negative.
So the hysteria that has followed is just ridiculous. Yes you are completely right that the vague ideas and ambitions need meat on the bones to follow through with, I totally agree with you on that, but at least they're targeting the right issues and saying the right things even if its not yet in action. They need to follow through with credible actions on reforms, but those are things that aren't simply announced in a statement.
If I were the Chancellor (and I am not), then I would have made two changes:
(1) I would have removed all the bonkers distortions around the removal of the tax free rate, childcare tax allowance, etc.
(2) I would have raised the thresholds at which people paid tax, benefitting those who are being most squeezed by rising energy prices.
The floating voters of middle England AND the financial markets gagging for a Labour government! - I think we're in "carrying a ming vase across a slidy floor" territory.
That's very simplistic: prices can drop because (a) lenders don't expect to be repaid, or (b) because inflation and rising interest rates mean they need to earn a slightly higher return.
The government will reject claims circulating in Whitehall that the meeting between Ms Truss and Mr Kwarteng was "argumentative" and descended into a "shouting match".
Superb speech from Starmer . I’m counting the days till this wretched government is shown the door .
Disagree with the former, agree with the latter.
He is a terrible orator, very short on bold ideas
I tend to agree, Jonathan Blake on BBC 5Live saying Starmer is very boring, but your boy Burnham disagrees.
He wants to be Candidate for Rosie Coopers seat presumably.
Won't be allowed of course by the right wing factionalists in charge. Far too dangerous
I think Andy was speaking more from the heart when he said earlier in the week that Labour needs to be bolder, less so in his soundbite just now although he did say let's see the detail of this UK Energy proposal, think it will turn out to be less than he would like.
The floating voters of middle England AND the financial markets gagging for a Labour government! - I think we're in "carrying a ming vase across a slidy floor" territory.
Government after government has failed to do nearly enough about the supply side of the British economy. Reams have been written, far more eloquently than I can manage, about how this inaction has trapped us, time and time again, into choices we don’t want to have to make, on public services and elsewhere. It has trapped us into falling ever further behind America in our living standards. And it has nudged us into accepting relative decline as the norm and the future of Britain.
Until now, nobody has truly dared tackle this head-on. But we have finally found a PM and chancellor willing to do so. And yet for whatever reason — perhaps simply because we cannot get our heads around the reorganisation they have in mind — we are risking making it politically impossible before they have even begun to try.
That, at least, is a load of waffle just because there were no supply side reforms, just a bunch of tax cuts which will push up demand.
I'm all in favour of supply side reforms and pushing up business investment, there's was very little in the Friday statement that actually achieves any supply side fix.
He does address that if you read the whole piece:
This is a long list, and even then it is only really a start on the work that the economy needs. It is also vague: it equivocates about the most important supply-side reform of all — housing reform — promising merely that more detail will be announced soon.
But it is a start. And if it is implemented properly (and followed up with more), it would allow Kwarteng’s plan to succeed, and with it, bring to end the awful bind that British policymaking has been stuck in since 2008.
The plan is therefore a do-or-die moment.
To commit to the Growth Plan’s tax-and-spend decisions without the structural reforms to go along with them would be a disaster. It would represent the worst of the status quo, but with a new layer of ‘bad’ added on top.
And there are lots of reasons for pessimism. Getting a supply-side reform through Parliament is much more difficult than doing new spending, especially with special interest groups doing their absolute utmost to block progress. Truss is already light on political capital, given how few MPs originally voted for her, and the response to our currency trouble will only have made that worse. Worst of all, there is very little time: it is less than two years until a general election.
Which is why it's waffle. The writer is just projecting onto Kwasi what he wants to happen. There's been no detail or moves to boost supply just vague ideas and ambitions. What we actually have is a series of tax cuts which are intended to boost demand. Rather than defending them based on something he hopes they will do in the future, they need to be chastised for not doing what is necessary to reform the economy by boosting supply (and investment).
The Friday event, when you take it for the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, is aimed at producing a short term gain in demand by borrowing loads of money. In a high inflation environment it's going to cause interest rates to shoot up and the currency to tank, unsurprisingly that's what has happened.
When you take in the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, almost all of what happened was pre-announced and the 45p changes "cost" £2 billion supposedly, but the real cost to the Exchequer will of course be far less than that and may even by negative.
So the hysteria that has followed is just ridiculous. Yes you are completely right that the vague ideas and ambitions need meat on the bones to follow through with, I totally agree with you on that, but at least they're targeting the right issues and saying the right things even if its not yet in action. They need to follow through with credible actions on reforms, but those are things that aren't simply announced in a statement.
If I were the Chancellor (and I am not), then I would have made two changes:
(1) I would have removed all the bonkers distortions around the removal of the tax free rate, childcare tax allowance, etc.
(2) I would have raised the thresholds at which people paid tax, benefitting those who are being most squeezed by rising energy prices.
I would not have abolished the 45% rate tax.
@MaxPB suggested removing the distortions round £100,000 and introducing a single 43% rate at that point instead.
I think they've calculated that it would actually generate revenue even before people stopped playing games at £90,000 or so to avoid being hit by the rules..
Who among those who don't live in Scotland are Scots in the SNP's view? Do they see Tony Blair as a Scot, for example, by dint of having been born in Scotland?
I understand exactly what the SNP are saying. There is the wider Scottish diaspora - Scottish people who live outside Scotland. Then you have Scottish citizens - people from Scotland and other nations who live in Scotland.
So as an immigrant I am Scottish as a citizen but not Scottish as a nationality. Not that it matters, because nobody will grant Nippie the referendum she would lose, so she gets to fight on...
That quote isn't from me it's from that Russian (loving if I'm being generous) Troll....
Apologies - I couldn't get it to post without a massive edit. Clearly an inaccurate massive edit...
That's very simplistic: prices can drop because (a) lenders don't expect to be repaid, or (b) because inflation and rising interest rates mean they need to earn a slightly higher return.
It’s a sign of just how troubled our media is when even Bloomberg doesn’t understand what drives the price of credit.
There is no doubt, Starmer is starting to look the part, in part helped by the clowns running the tory party, but I do think some credit must be given to Starmer as well, he has certainly knocked the labour party into shape.It is well worth remembering the state of disarray, Corbyn left it in, also does anybody think the Labour party would be anywhere near this position, if Rebecca Long Bailey had won
Yes, he's done an excellent job.
Late middle age white male lawyers are probably a good fit for a need to reset to being normal again.
The government will reject claims circulating in Whitehall that the meeting between Ms Truss and Mr Kwarteng was "argumentative" and descended into a "shouting match".
Government after government has failed to do nearly enough about the supply side of the British economy. Reams have been written, far more eloquently than I can manage, about how this inaction has trapped us, time and time again, into choices we don’t want to have to make, on public services and elsewhere. It has trapped us into falling ever further behind America in our living standards. And it has nudged us into accepting relative decline as the norm and the future of Britain.
Until now, nobody has truly dared tackle this head-on. But we have finally found a PM and chancellor willing to do so. And yet for whatever reason — perhaps simply because we cannot get our heads around the reorganisation they have in mind — we are risking making it politically impossible before they have even begun to try.
That, at least, is a load of waffle just because there were no supply side reforms, just a bunch of tax cuts which will push up demand.
I'm all in favour of supply side reforms and pushing up business investment, there's was very little in the Friday statement that actually achieves any supply side fix.
He does address that if you read the whole piece:
This is a long list, and even then it is only really a start on the work that the economy needs. It is also vague: it equivocates about the most important supply-side reform of all — housing reform — promising merely that more detail will be announced soon.
But it is a start. And if it is implemented properly (and followed up with more), it would allow Kwarteng’s plan to succeed, and with it, bring to end the awful bind that British policymaking has been stuck in since 2008.
The plan is therefore a do-or-die moment.
To commit to the Growth Plan’s tax-and-spend decisions without the structural reforms to go along with them would be a disaster. It would represent the worst of the status quo, but with a new layer of ‘bad’ added on top.
And there are lots of reasons for pessimism. Getting a supply-side reform through Parliament is much more difficult than doing new spending, especially with special interest groups doing their absolute utmost to block progress. Truss is already light on political capital, given how few MPs originally voted for her, and the response to our currency trouble will only have made that worse. Worst of all, there is very little time: it is less than two years until a general election.
Which is why it's waffle. The writer is just projecting onto Kwasi what he wants to happen. There's been no detail or moves to boost supply just vague ideas and ambitions. What we actually have is a series of tax cuts which are intended to boost demand. Rather than defending them based on something he hopes they will do in the future, they need to be chastised for not doing what is necessary to reform the economy by boosting supply (and investment).
The Friday event, when you take it for the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, is aimed at producing a short term gain in demand by borrowing loads of money. In a high inflation environment it's going to cause interest rates to shoot up and the currency to tank, unsurprisingly that's what has happened.
When you take in the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, almost all of what happened was pre-announced and the 45p changes "cost" £2 billion supposedly, but the real cost to the Exchequer will of course be far less than that and may even by negative.
So the hysteria that has followed is just ridiculous. Yes you are completely right that the vague ideas and ambitions need meat on the bones to follow through with, I totally agree with you on that, but at least they're targeting the right issues and saying the right things even if its not yet in action. They need to follow through with credible actions on reforms, but those are things that aren't simply announced in a statement.
If I were the Chancellor (and I am not), then I would have made two changes:
(1) I would have removed all the bonkers distortions around the removal of the tax free rate, childcare tax allowance, etc.
(2) I would have raised the thresholds at which people paid tax, benefitting those who are being most squeezed by rising energy prices.
I would not have abolished the 45% rate tax.
@MaxPB suggested removing the distortions round £100,000 and introducing a single 43% rate at that point instead.
I think they've calculated that it would actually generate revenue even before people stopped playing games at £90,000 or so to avoid being hit by the rules..
Great minds think alike.
Personally, I absolute loathe silly marginal tax rates. We have them at the lower end of the income spectrum with the withdrawal of benefits, and we have them in the £90-110,000 range with the removal of the tax free allowance, etc.
Who among those who don't live in Scotland are Scots in the SNP's view? Do they see Tony Blair as a Scot, for example, by dint of having been born in Scotland?
I understand exactly what the SNP are saying. There is the wider Scottish diaspora - Scottish people who live outside Scotland. Then you have Scottish citizens - people from Scotland and other nations who live in Scotland.
So as an immigrant I am Scottish as a citizen but not Scottish as a nationality. Not that it matters, because nobody will grant Nippie the referendum she would lose, so she gets to fight on...
To be fair I think the SNP are right on “who gets to vote” (by residence, not by age) and someone born in Scotland but left as a child like me, shouldn’t, nor should long term New York residents like Alan Cumming who thought buying himself a flat would also buy himself a vote in 2014. He was disappointed.
I do wonder what the current market tribulations of sterling is doing to the “thinking” of those who fondly imagine setting up a new currency with significant current account and external deficits will be a doddle. Perhaps the Whisky export duty will come to the rescue? Pity they can no longer exploit the hidden oil fields.
The government will reject claims circulating in Whitehall that the meeting between Ms Truss and Mr Kwarteng was "argumentative" and descended into a "shouting match".
Good News from the Middle East: high gas prices are leading Israel and Lebanon to agree maritime borders, so as to enable the export of gas from fields in the area:
Who among those who don't live in Scotland are Scots in the SNP's view? Do they see Tony Blair as a Scot, for example, by dint of having been born in Scotland?
I understand exactly what the SNP are saying. There is the wider Scottish diaspora - Scottish people who live outside Scotland. Then you have Scottish citizens - people from Scotland and other nations who live in Scotland.
So as an immigrant I am Scottish as a citizen but not Scottish as a nationality. Not that it matters, because nobody will grant Nippie the referendum she would lose, so she gets to fight on...
To be fair I think the SNP are right on “who gets to vote” (by residence, not by age) and someone born in Scotland but left as a child like me, shouldn’t, nor should long term New York residents like Alan Cumming who thought buying himself a flat would also buy himself a vote in 2014. He was disappointed.
I do wonder what the current market tribulations of sterling is doing to the “thinking” of those who fondly imagine setting up a new currency with significant current account and external deficits will be a doddle. Perhaps the Whisky export duty will come to the rescue? Pity they can no longer exploit the hidden oil fields.
The French example sometimes touted by Unionists seeking to nobble indyref ( as they see it) doesn't work as there is a clear definition of French nationality and currently active documentation aka passport.
So typical of Starmer to come close to a good idea while absolutely missing the target.
We do not need to nationalise renewable energy production. We just need to set out the right fiscal and regulatory regime and the very kind private sector will build it for us.
Where there is an argument for state intervention is in the hydrocarbon market, which is still sorely needed during the energy transition but is being starved of investment and financing, as the private sector increasingly shies away from the sector. Nationalise the uk based oil refineries and get competent firms to run them. Setup a British Infrastructure bank to lend to junior oil and gas firms in the North Sea so they don’t have to pay double digit bond coupons. And use the same bank to guarantee the liabilities of sunrise industries like tidal lagoon power.
Government after government has failed to do nearly enough about the supply side of the British economy. Reams have been written, far more eloquently than I can manage, about how this inaction has trapped us, time and time again, into choices we don’t want to have to make, on public services and elsewhere. It has trapped us into falling ever further behind America in our living standards. And it has nudged us into accepting relative decline as the norm and the future of Britain.
Until now, nobody has truly dared tackle this head-on. But we have finally found a PM and chancellor willing to do so. And yet for whatever reason — perhaps simply because we cannot get our heads around the reorganisation they have in mind — we are risking making it politically impossible before they have even begun to try.
That, at least, is a load of waffle just because there were no supply side reforms, just a bunch of tax cuts which will push up demand.
I'm all in favour of supply side reforms and pushing up business investment, there's was very little in the Friday statement that actually achieves any supply side fix.
He does address that if you read the whole piece:
This is a long list, and even then it is only really a start on the work that the economy needs. It is also vague: it equivocates about the most important supply-side reform of all — housing reform — promising merely that more detail will be announced soon.
But it is a start. And if it is implemented properly (and followed up with more), it would allow Kwarteng’s plan to succeed, and with it, bring to end the awful bind that British policymaking has been stuck in since 2008.
The plan is therefore a do-or-die moment.
To commit to the Growth Plan’s tax-and-spend decisions without the structural reforms to go along with them would be a disaster. It would represent the worst of the status quo, but with a new layer of ‘bad’ added on top.
And there are lots of reasons for pessimism. Getting a supply-side reform through Parliament is much more difficult than doing new spending, especially with special interest groups doing their absolute utmost to block progress. Truss is already light on political capital, given how few MPs originally voted for her, and the response to our currency trouble will only have made that worse. Worst of all, there is very little time: it is less than two years until a general election.
Which is why it's waffle. The writer is just projecting onto Kwasi what he wants to happen. There's been no detail or moves to boost supply just vague ideas and ambitions. What we actually have is a series of tax cuts which are intended to boost demand. Rather than defending them based on something he hopes they will do in the future, they need to be chastised for not doing what is necessary to reform the economy by boosting supply (and investment).
The Friday event, when you take it for the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, is aimed at producing a short term gain in demand by borrowing loads of money. In a high inflation environment it's going to cause interest rates to shoot up and the currency to tank, unsurprisingly that's what has happened.
When you take in the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, almost all of what happened was pre-announced and the 45p changes "cost" £2 billion supposedly, but the real cost to the Exchequer will of course be far less than that and may even by negative.
So the hysteria that has followed is just ridiculous. Yes you are completely right that the vague ideas and ambitions need meat on the bones to follow through with, I totally agree with you on that, but at least they're targeting the right issues and saying the right things even if its not yet in action. They need to follow through with credible actions on reforms, but those are things that aren't simply announced in a statement.
If I were the Chancellor (and I am not), then I would have made two changes:
(1) I would have removed all the bonkers distortions around the removal of the tax free rate, childcare tax allowance, etc.
(2) I would have raised the thresholds at which people paid tax, benefitting those who are being most squeezed by rising energy prices.
I would not have abolished the 45% rate tax.
@MaxPB suggested removing the distortions round £100,000 and introducing a single 43% rate at that point instead.
I think they've calculated that it would actually generate revenue even before people stopped playing games at £90,000 or so to avoid being hit by the rules..
Great minds think alike.
Personally, I absolute loathe silly marginal tax rates. We have them at the lower end of the income spectrum with the withdrawal of benefits, and we have them in the £90-110,000 range with the removal of the tax free allowance, etc.
Yep the problem at the lower end is that they are utterly unavoidable given that the only other options are giving them to everyone as a universal benefit or reducing the taper level and suddenly finding millions more people are suddenly eligible for a small amount...
So typical of Starmer to come close to a good idea while absolutely missing the target.
We do not need to nationalise renewable energy production. We just need to set out the right fiscal and regulatory regime and the very kind private sector will build it for us.
Where there is an argument for state intervention is in the hydrocarbon market, which is still sorely needed during the energy transition but is being starved of investment and financing, as the private sector increasingly shies away from the sector. Nationalise the uk based oil refineries and get competent firms to run them. Setup a British Infrastructure bank to lend to junior oil and gas firms in the North Sea so they don’t have to pay double digit bond coupons. And use the same bank to guarantee the liabilities of sunrise industries like tidal lagoon power.
Truss would have green lighted everything that Kwarteng announced so what’s the argument about ?
Apparently she didn't want to issue any statement.
I’m confused what statement are you talking about ?
Liz Truss had to be convinced to issue a government statement yesterday to calm the markets, Sky News understands.
Faced with market turmoil, spiking borrowing costs, and the drop in the value of the pound in the foreign exchange markets, the prime minister's initial instinct was to stand firm and say little or nothing, unwilling to look like she might be shifting position.
The government will reject claims circulating in Whitehall that the meeting between Ms Truss and Mr Kwarteng was "argumentative" and descended into a "shouting match".
So typical of Starmer to come close to a good idea while absolutely missing the target.
We do not need to nationalise renewable energy production. We just need to set out the right fiscal and regulatory regime and the very kind private sector will build it for us.
Where there is an argument for state intervention is in the hydrocarbon market, which is still sorely needed during the energy transition but is being starved of investment and financing, as the private sector increasingly shies away from the sector. Nationalise the uk based oil refineries and get competent firms to run them. Setup a British Infrastructure bank to lend to junior oil and gas firms in the North Sea so they don’t have to pay double digit bond coupons. And use the same bank to guarantee the liabilities of sunrise industries like tidal lagoon power.
100% correct.
Too difficult for CHB to understand though.
I am going to laugh when Keir goes 20 points clear.
Truss would have green lighted everything that Kwarteng announced so what’s the argument about ?
Apparently she didn't want to issue any statement.
I’m confused what statement are you talking about ?
Liz Truss had to be convinced to issue a government statement yesterday to calm the markets, Sky News understands.
Faced with market turmoil, spiking borrowing costs, and the drop in the value of the pound in the foreign exchange markets, the prime minister's initial instinct was to stand firm and say little or nothing, unwilling to look like she might be shifting position.
Truss would have green lighted everything that Kwarteng announced so what’s the argument about ?
Apparently she didn't want to issue any statement.
I’m confused what statement are you talking about ?
Liz Truss had to be convinced to issue a government statement yesterday to calm the markets, Sky News understands.
Faced with market turmoil, spiking borrowing costs, and the drop in the value of the pound in the foreign exchange markets, the prime minister's initial instinct was to stand firm and say little or nothing, unwilling to look like she might be shifting position.
Thanks for that . But surely she needs to come out and say something .
Government after government has failed to do nearly enough about the supply side of the British economy. Reams have been written, far more eloquently than I can manage, about how this inaction has trapped us, time and time again, into choices we don’t want to have to make, on public services and elsewhere. It has trapped us into falling ever further behind America in our living standards. And it has nudged us into accepting relative decline as the norm and the future of Britain.
Until now, nobody has truly dared tackle this head-on. But we have finally found a PM and chancellor willing to do so. And yet for whatever reason — perhaps simply because we cannot get our heads around the reorganisation they have in mind — we are risking making it politically impossible before they have even begun to try.
That, at least, is a load of waffle just because there were no supply side reforms, just a bunch of tax cuts which will push up demand.
I'm all in favour of supply side reforms and pushing up business investment, there's was very little in the Friday statement that actually achieves any supply side fix.
He does address that if you read the whole piece:
This is a long list, and even then it is only really a start on the work that the economy needs. It is also vague: it equivocates about the most important supply-side reform of all — housing reform — promising merely that more detail will be announced soon.
But it is a start. And if it is implemented properly (and followed up with more), it would allow Kwarteng’s plan to succeed, and with it, bring to end the awful bind that British policymaking has been stuck in since 2008.
The plan is therefore a do-or-die moment.
To commit to the Growth Plan’s tax-and-spend decisions without the structural reforms to go along with them would be a disaster. It would represent the worst of the status quo, but with a new layer of ‘bad’ added on top.
And there are lots of reasons for pessimism. Getting a supply-side reform through Parliament is much more difficult than doing new spending, especially with special interest groups doing their absolute utmost to block progress. Truss is already light on political capital, given how few MPs originally voted for her, and the response to our currency trouble will only have made that worse. Worst of all, there is very little time: it is less than two years until a general election.
Which is why it's waffle. The writer is just projecting onto Kwasi what he wants to happen. There's been no detail or moves to boost supply just vague ideas and ambitions. What we actually have is a series of tax cuts which are intended to boost demand. Rather than defending them based on something he hopes they will do in the future, they need to be chastised for not doing what is necessary to reform the economy by boosting supply (and investment).
The Friday event, when you take it for the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, is aimed at producing a short term gain in demand by borrowing loads of money. In a high inflation environment it's going to cause interest rates to shoot up and the currency to tank, unsurprisingly that's what has happened.
When you take in the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, almost all of what happened was pre-announced and the 45p changes "cost" £2 billion supposedly, but the real cost to the Exchequer will of course be far less than that and may even by negative.
So the hysteria that has followed is just ridiculous. Yes you are completely right that the vague ideas and ambitions need meat on the bones to follow through with, I totally agree with you on that, but at least they're targeting the right issues and saying the right things even if its not yet in action. They need to follow through with credible actions on reforms, but those are things that aren't simply announced in a statement.
If I were the Chancellor (and I am not), then I would have made two changes:
(1) I would have removed all the bonkers distortions around the removal of the tax free rate, childcare tax allowance, etc.
(2) I would have raised the thresholds at which people paid tax, benefitting those who are being most squeezed by rising energy prices.
I would not have abolished the 45% rate tax.
@MaxPB suggested removing the distortions round £100,000 and introducing a single 43% rate at that point instead.
I think they've calculated that it would actually generate revenue even before people stopped playing games at £90,000 or so to avoid being hit by the rules..
Great minds think alike.
Personally, I absolute loathe silly marginal tax rates. We have them at the lower end of the income spectrum with the withdrawal of benefits, and we have them in the £90-110,000 range with the removal of the tax free allowance, etc.
Yep the problem at the lower end is that they are utterly unavoidable given that the only other options are giving them to everyone as a universal benefit or reducing the taper level and suddenly finding millions more people are suddenly eligible for a small amount...
So typical of Starmer to come close to a good idea while absolutely missing the target.
We do not need to nationalise renewable energy production. We just need to set out the right fiscal and regulatory regime and the very kind private sector will build it for us.
Where there is an argument for state intervention is in the hydrocarbon market, which is still sorely needed during the energy transition but is being starved of investment and financing, as the private sector increasingly shies away from the sector. Nationalise the uk based oil refineries and get competent firms to run them. Setup a British Infrastructure bank to lend to junior oil and gas firms in the North Sea so they don’t have to pay double digit bond coupons. And use the same bank to guarantee the liabilities of sunrise industries like tidal lagoon power.
100% correct.
Too difficult for CHB to understand though.
I am going to laugh when Keir goes 20 points clear.
Home buyers face severe restrictions on the amount they can borrow, as rocketing interest rates force banks to limit mortgage offers.
In some cases customers could be able to borrow £90,000 less than previously expected.
Great, that means prices will come down. One good thing from the mad duo.
Not really suddenly a lot of recent purchasers are going to be in negative equity....
There have been massive winners and losers from housing the last decade. Surely fairer to swap them over at some point, than just consecutive governments ensuring the winners keep winning and the losers keep losing?
Trouble is that the most recent buyers when the music stops get to be losers twice over - they buy at the top, then get bent over by the mortgage interest rate as the value of their house plummets.
Most of the gains from the house prices have gone to either OAPs or the kids who've inherited from them - in neither case is there much prospect of them losing out from a crash.
Truss would have green lighted everything that Kwarteng announced so what’s the argument about ?
Apparently she didn't want to issue any statement.
I’m confused what statement are you talking about ?
Liz Truss had to be convinced to issue a government statement yesterday to calm the markets, Sky News understands.
Faced with market turmoil, spiking borrowing costs, and the drop in the value of the pound in the foreign exchange markets, the prime minister's initial instinct was to stand firm and say little or nothing, unwilling to look like she might be shifting position.
Thanks for that . But surely she needs to come out and say something .
Depends what she’s going to say. I’d have no confidence she would avoid making it worse.
Truss would have green lighted everything that Kwarteng announced so what’s the argument about ?
Apparently she didn't want to issue any statement.
I’m confused what statement are you talking about ?
Liz Truss had to be convinced to issue a government statement yesterday to calm the markets, Sky News understands.
Faced with market turmoil, spiking borrowing costs, and the drop in the value of the pound in the foreign exchange markets, the prime minister's initial instinct was to stand firm and say little or nothing, unwilling to look like she might be shifting position.
Thanks for that . But surely she needs to come out and say something .
Better to stay silent and be thought a fool rather than speaking and putting the matter beyond doubt?
Not so long ago the Tories had a 15% lead over labour, now Labour have a 15 % lead over the Tories, I dont actually think either are or were true.Things are fluid, when it settles down it will more likely be a 5% lead for Labour we see consistently, just because we are interested in politics, we falsely assume the whole country is , which couldnt be further from the truth, in reality the vast majority of the population only switch on around GE time, if you are lucky. So when Uncle Rupert declares in the Sun in 2024, that the Tories are the party to get us out of this mess, that precarious labour lead will fall further
9 times out of 10 I’d agree with you. But I dunno, this really does feel very different. It’s the very real economic pain that will prevent the normally highly dependable swingback.
Maybe the Con DKs won’t end up voting Labour, but I expect a late LD surge and a heck of a lot of Con2019 abstentions. Meanwhile, Lab, SNP and LD abstentions from 2019 are likely to be back with a bang. Especially the Lab ones (Corbyn bounceback).
Time will tell, but without Labour making big inroads in Scotland, I will not be rushing to back them to win an overall majority
Profoundly unlikely on current polling: the SNP has a consistent lead of 21-24 points.
So typical of Starmer to come close to a good idea while absolutely missing the target.
We do not need to nationalise renewable energy production. We just need to set out the right fiscal and regulatory regime and the very kind private sector will build it for us.
Where there is an argument for state intervention is in the hydrocarbon market, which is still sorely needed during the energy transition but is being starved of investment and financing, as the private sector increasingly shies away from the sector. Nationalise the uk based oil refineries and get competent firms to run them. Setup a British Infrastructure bank to lend to junior oil and gas firms in the North Sea so they don’t have to pay double digit bond coupons. And use the same bank to guarantee the liabilities of sunrise industries like tidal lagoon power.
100% correct.
Too difficult for CHB to understand though.
I am going to laugh when Keir goes 20 points clear.
I don’t care what party or individual is in charge so long as they engage their brains and work in the national interest. If they do a good job I’ll vote for them too. But this is just pointless gesture politics.
The government will reject claims circulating in Whitehall that the meeting between Ms Truss and Mr Kwarteng was "argumentative" and descended into a "shouting match".
FUDHY is a very odd Tory. He has paeans of praise for General Franco, the Sweden Democrats, Meloni, Farage and Scottish Labour, but none for his own leader.
He's an authoritarian, bordering on what gets called "far right".
Truss is a dry as dust, socially liberal Conservative. Some people here used to say the believed in that, but not him.
It is you who are the hardline libertarian who has backed a strategy which has taken the Tories to 28% in the polls, not me
Yes it is, and your point is?
I would rather see the Tories lose with a libertarian time in office, than win with an authoritarian one.
Maybe but if this strategy sees the Tories face heave defeat at the next general election that will kill off libertarianism within the Tory party for a generation
Apparerntly 1000 years for beech trees in Epping Forest.
Huh? Are you sure? I always thought that Fagus sylvatica was one of the shorter-lived of the large forest broadleaves.
Or maybe that only applies outwith its natural range, eg in Scotland, where it is a notoriously fragile and sick pest.
Although the Forestry Commission is a bit snooty about whether beech is native to Scotland, the ones at Craigevar seem to be anything but fragile and are apparently over 200 years old. Mind you the Oaks are much more impressive and they can easily be double that age.
The beech is not native to Scotland. It was only introduced in the late 17th century, and is notorious for being diseased, weak and prone to falling to bits. Worse, it kills pretty much everything under its canopy. Almost as big a pest as Rhododendron ponticum.
200 years is nothing for a healthy forest species.
So typical of Starmer to come close to a good idea while absolutely missing the target.
We do not need to nationalise renewable energy production. We just need to set out the right fiscal and regulatory regime and the very kind private sector will build it for us.
Where there is an argument for state intervention is in the hydrocarbon market, which is still sorely needed during the energy transition but is being starved of investment and financing, as the private sector increasingly shies away from the sector. Nationalise the uk based oil refineries and get competent firms to run them. Setup a British Infrastructure bank to lend to junior oil and gas firms in the North Sea so they don’t have to pay double digit bond coupons. And use the same bank to guarantee the liabilities of sunrise industries like tidal lagoon power.
100% correct.
Too difficult for CHB to understand though.
I am going to laugh when Keir goes 20 points clear.
Prime Minister Ed Miliband went 20 points clear too.....
It would definitely be better for the climate and safety to light it. How is the repair normally done? Cut the pipe and fit a new section? Can't be easy.
As an aside I remember at school we used to feed methane from the gas taps into a water/washing up liquid mix and light it as it floated up as bubbles. I'm not entirely sure health and safety would approve of such goings on these days but it did show how quickly methane will rise through the atmosphere.
Truss would have green lighted everything that Kwarteng announced so what’s the argument about ?
Apparently she didn't want to issue any statement.
She’s not very visible, is she?
Surely she should come out every three or four days, allow someone from the reporter pool a few questions, whilst she stands in front a factory that farms battery’s for cars, or something
I'm very worried with what's happening now. I bought my first house quite late, in my late 30s, six years ago. Since I bought the value of my house has gone up 25%+, which I find extraordinary. My loan to value ratio is currently pretty much 50/50.
My mortgage is fixed for five years, until September next year. I know it's some time away, but I am very concerned about what I'm going to be faced with when I re-mortgage.
There was never much prospect of me voting Tory, but if they have done this on purpose, to give them an excuse to slash public spending, if they have gambled with millions of people's lives in the name of ideology, then they are truly the vermin Bevan warned us about.
So typical of Starmer to come close to a good idea while absolutely missing the target.
We do not need to nationalise renewable energy production. We just need to set out the right fiscal and regulatory regime and the very kind private sector will build it for us.
Where there is an argument for state intervention is in the hydrocarbon market, which is still sorely needed during the energy transition but is being starved of investment and financing, as the private sector increasingly shies away from the sector. Nationalise the uk based oil refineries and get competent firms to run them. Setup a British Infrastructure bank to lend to junior oil and gas firms in the North Sea so they don’t have to pay double digit bond coupons. And use the same bank to guarantee the liabilities of sunrise industries like tidal lagoon power.
100% correct.
Too difficult for CHB to understand though.
I am going to laugh when Keir goes 20 points clear.
Prime Minister Ed Miliband went 20 points clear too.....
Very true, but it didnt feel like a era changing moment. It felt like the gov could get a grip, and did. Now?
AZ gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake went on Tucker Carlson Tonight to talk about how “excited” she is over the recent election in Italy, praising and comparing herself to fascist Giorgia Meloni. “This is somebody I can relate to,” Lake says. https://twitter.com/az_rww/status/1574565703566340096
The YouGov details are all fairly predictable and of course dire for the Tories in every respect. Two things to note:
There is as much as usual self interest in the views about tax - supporting all the stuff that advantages the majority, and opposing everything that gives to someone else.
And the figure for those who "Cannot afford my costs and often have to go without essentials....." is, at 5% lower than I would have thought.
Maybe that's why I am told, counter intuitively, that our local foodbank is remarkably quiet at the moment.
So SNP down from the 45% they got in 2019, SLAB up from 18%
MoE
Yesterday, Mike and the whole of PB were excited by a 17 point Labour lead, yet I’m supposed to be worried by a 23 point SNP lead? Err… no.
SLab need a 12 point swing from the SNP to make any decent gains. A 2 point swing in a sub-sample of a poll where they are miles ahead in England is profoundly unimpressive.
The whole of PB were not excited about a Labour poll lead. Yet another gross exaggeration and typical.of the site.
The Herd were filling their breeks yesterday. Thank goodness one or two of you have regained your composure today. I want you to be alert and clear-headed when you face the electoral firing squad on polling day.
I remember the good old days of Jezza when it took months, even years, to suspend people who publicly said something on the record that was racist / anti-semitic...due process and investigations required or something according to the rule book.
Comments
Albeit most of the fixes are for relatively short (2 to 5 year) periods. You will therefore have a meaningful number dropping off the fixed rate each year. (FWIW, there is a similar phenomenon in the US, where an increasing proportion of the mortgage market is on five year fixeds.)
But, tbf, this is based on DavidL's summary - which may not be intended to bear the burden you and then I have placed on it.
Edit: unless you want to go all blood and soil, like Mr Cameron did in 2014? But only in his speeches: He didn't himself claim a vote by virtue of his parentage, grandparentage, whatever.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn227-swallowing-ships/
"The day the Tories lost their reputation for economic competence. Again."
Won't be allowed of course by the right wing factionalists in charge. Far too dangerous
I think Andy was speaking more from the heart when he said earlier in the week that Labour needs to be bolder, less so in his soundbite just now although he did say let's see the detail of this UK Energy proposal, think it will turn out to be less than he would like.
(1) I would have removed all the bonkers distortions around the removal of the tax free rate, childcare tax allowance, etc.
(2) I would have raised the thresholds at which people paid tax, benefitting those who are being most squeezed by rising energy prices.
I would not have abolished the 45% rate tax.
In fairness Truss probably would be quite boring if not for sparking compete and utter chaos with an air of gentle befuddlement.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63041447
"Labour opposes junk food ban as living costs soar"
(Still think his social media history will get him fired at some point though).
https://news.sky.com/story/liz-truss-had-to-be-convinced-to-issue-govt-statement-to-calm-markets-after-meeting-with-chancellor-12706352
Where does labour go if he doesn't....?
I think they've calculated that it would actually generate revenue even before people stopped playing games at £90,000 or so to avoid being hit by the rules..
"You fool! You did what you said you would!"
"You fool! You did what you promised not to!"
"You liar! You told me you had an 'A' level in Economics!"
The mind boggles.
Personally, I absolute loathe silly marginal tax rates. We have them at the lower end of the income spectrum with the withdrawal of benefits, and we have them in the £90-110,000 range with the removal of the tax free allowance, etc.
I do wonder what the current market tribulations of sterling is doing to the “thinking” of those who fondly imagine setting up a new currency with significant current account and external deficits will be a doddle. Perhaps the Whisky export duty will come to the rescue? Pity they can no longer exploit the hidden oil fields.
This is a shocker
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/27/business/energy-environment/israel-lebanon-natural-gas-europe.html
Nothing yo do with the funding from Private Health company owners of course
We do not need to nationalise renewable energy production. We just need to set out the right fiscal and regulatory regime and the very kind private sector will build it for us.
Where there is an argument for state intervention is in the hydrocarbon market, which is still sorely needed during the energy transition but is being starved of investment and financing, as the private sector increasingly shies away from the sector. Nationalise the uk based oil refineries and get competent firms to run them. Setup a British Infrastructure bank to lend to junior oil and gas firms in the North Sea so they don’t have to pay double digit bond coupons. And use the same bank to guarantee the liabilities of sunrise industries like tidal lagoon power.
https://twitter.com/WarfareReports/status/1574745587525816325?s=20&t=TePntffXPCynzq9AE9KHUQ
Not coming back on stream any time soon.
Now it just needs Russian oil export facilities to have a bizarre gardening accident.....
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/damage-nord-stream-pipelines-unprecedented-may-have-been-sabotaged
Too difficult for CHB to understand though.
Faced with market turmoil, spiking borrowing costs, and the drop in the value of the pound in the foreign exchange markets, the prime minister's initial instinct was to stand firm and say little or nothing, unwilling to look like she might be shifting position.
Most of the gains from the house prices have gone to either OAPs or the kids who've inherited from them - in neither case is there much prospect of them losing out from a crash.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-63042145
Eurovision song contest 2023 to be hosted in Liverpool or Glasgow
It was always going to be one of those two.
200 years is nothing for a healthy forest species.
As an aside I remember at school we used to feed methane from the gas taps into a water/washing up liquid mix and light it as it floated up as bubbles. I'm not entirely sure health and safety would approve of such goings on these days but it did show how quickly methane will rise through the atmosphere.
Surely she should come out every three or four days, allow someone from the reporter pool a few questions, whilst she stands in front a factory that farms battery’s for cars, or something
My mortgage is fixed for five years, until September next year. I know it's some time away, but I am very concerned about what I'm going to be faced with when I re-mortgage.
There was never much prospect of me voting Tory, but if they have done this on purpose, to give them an excuse to slash public spending, if they have gambled with millions of people's lives in the name of ideology, then they are truly the vermin Bevan warned us about.
https://twitter.com/az_rww/status/1574565703566340096