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A brutal chart for Labour from the FT – politicalbetting.com
A brutal chart for Labour from the FT – politicalbetting.com
This chart in the FT shows how badly Labour have started, with business confidence in Labour falling like Hans Gruber from Nakatomi Plaza. The only positive for Labour is that they have a long time to turn things around.
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Spare a thought for all those for whose Christmas won’t be that, many people will be working and some places like Ukraine will barely pause to celebrate.
Me, I’m off out to a local party this afternoon and to the pub tomorrow, have my most Christmassy of Christmas t-shirts ready to go! 🎅🎄
Something must be wrong with the very fabric of the universe for TSE to mention Die Hard on Christmas Eve.
Ms Cadwalladr is among several freelancers and casual staff who have been contacted by senior management to say their current contracts will “end” once the Observer is formally sold.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/12/23/guardian-axe-pulitzer-nominate-writer-carole-cadwalladr/
To be honest, I am surprised she lasted so long, with the seemingly weekly legal bills that Guardian have been incurring for years and required corrections / apologies. But the legal bills not over yet....
"She is understood to be considering legal action alongside dozens of casual staff."
Yvette Cooper possibly, but given her seniority coupled to the fact she is much younger than he is, he may be reluctant to promote a potential leadership rival.
Also if he has to fire Tulip Siddiq that will destabilise the Treasury team anyway, and he won’t want to cause more angst than necessary.
It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known. (not sure about the rest bit, ed).
Or. perhaps more appropriately, I may be some time.
Counter that to how Cameron got out in front of expenses scandal.
Keir is showing it is easy to be a bad one.
No Carole, contractors and freelancers are most definitely not employees, and most definitely won’t be getting severance pay or TUPE provisions.
Utter morons!
She’s reportedly a contractor to the guardian. Good luck with that.
Utter Morons as you say.
The budget implemented none of them. Just raised taxes.
From the graph Business Confidence was dropping from the day after the GE, so nothing to do with NI changes etc as that wasn't until November.
Starmer did not do this. Which means he had to set 'first impressions' whilst he was in government and having to make hard decisions.
Of course, Blair had the advantage of having a lot of relatively capable and competent prospective ministers. I don't think Starmer does...
If she became chancellor it would be an opportunity for a deep dive into her PB career (before my time). Cooper must have said something scandalous or ill judged which would make her more interesting than the on message drone she now appears to be.
Well done Rachel.
Interest rates higher for longer. Mortgage holders will be so appreciative 😂😂😂😂
So the same people who claimed Truss crashed the economy, she didn’t, will make the same claim about Reeves ?
Course not.
https://x.com/hawkeye_74/status/1871140530673082551?s=61
Hmmmmm
First Reeves talked confidence away and then she hit us with the tax rises.
They could see the chickens coming home to roost.
I am surprised that our business leaders were too stupid to see it. We all could and we are a bunch of armchair pundits.
She won’t challenge it and if she did she wouldn’t get a penny.
One Russian paper today: “Assad’s fall confirms the indisputable fact that the percentage of votes won by a dictator/autocrat/usurper at an election before he falls means absolutely nothing. None of that ‘95% support’ came out to defend him.”
https://x.com/BBCSteveR/status/1871450688095756629
Glad to note the subtle Dickens/Scott expedition references.
There is a whole raft of structural decline to be reversed, be it roads, health, housing - just the nuts and bolts of a country. The idea that 'the market will fix it' is the mantra from a purists point of view but the Thames Water debacle shows that markets can be manipulated as politics and politicians constantly show themselves to be less able than the financial buccaneers.
Also where are economic cycles in all this? Germany looks like a classic case of on the downslope along with France so it's no surprise there would be a softening here due to the effects on our main trading partners. (42% of all exports)
... or did Gordon Brown actually achieve the demise of 'boom and bust'?
Not much Christmas spirit for Starmer or Reeves on here it would seem and not much for Luxon and Willis here with the NZ economy contracting 1% in Q2 after a 1.1% fall in Q1.
Rather like Starmer, Luxon came in after a disastrous defeat in the previous election and has followed traditional policies of public spending cuts including to key infrastructure such as the Interislander Ferries.
While I won’t argue mistakes have been made by the Labour Government in the last six months, they pale into insignificance beside the ineptitude of the Conservative years.
Whether you call it austerity, rebalancing or whatever, the public finances need to be brought under control. Tax cuts and borrowing are no solution - they are basically economic methadone. No one wants to pay more taxes and see public services reduced but something needed to be done and the Conservatives were never going to do it.
That’s not to say how Labour has comported itself in Government has been far from ideal - the presentation and communication of policies was initially awful and has only just started to improve but valuable time was lost and valuable trust broken.
That could be changed I suppose (as the Lord Chancellor's role was eventually) but it wouldn't be as straightforward as just ennobling Balls and appointing him (as Blair found when he tried to abolish the post of Lord Chancellor via a reshuffle).
Speaking of stupid decisions, there's a consultation over changing the phasing out of petrol/diesel cars from 2035 (already daft) to 2030.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y7x3jgw7no
"In 2024, EVs must make up 22% of a carmaker's car sales, and 10% of van sales. This target is set to rise. Firms failing to meet these targets face a £15,000 fine per sale."
That is, of course, a continuation of the previous government's stupid decision.
And not claiming their commute as a business expense.
So the critics of the NI rises have to deal with the question they are avoiding: What are the replacement tax rises which would do no damage, take no money out of the economy, be popular with everyone and actually raise between 40-100 billion. (We are going to need loads more than the current rises)?
Personally I would put it on VAT, with much higher rates on luxuries and a low rate on food, further breaking the promises, but I imagine no-one on the planet would cheer.
You tax that which you wish to discourage, if you directly jack up taxes on employment/work you are discouraging work and NI is direct taxation on employment in the same way as fuel duty is direct taxation on fuel.
In a counterfactual world what Labour could have done is come in and taken the brave decision to merge National Insurance and Income Tax which would eliminate the 12% extra taxes that those who work for a living have to pay over those who don't.
That would be a 12% increase in Income Tax (without changing Income Tax rates) for those who aren't working on PAYE, while leaving PAYE workers tax rates unchanged. There's your tax rise for the nuts and bolts you want, if that's what you believe in, without hammering businesses or workers or people's pay for going to work.
And it would have been just as consistent with the manifesto as what they did.
Instead, sterling's trade-weighted exchange rate hasn't budged since the election, while our credit default swaps, which measure the riskiness of government debt, are down 41% on a year ago, lower than the US, France, Italy and Canada and about the same as Japan. Only Australia, Germany and - of course - Switzerland are much better:
https://uk.investing.com/rates-bonds/world-cds
In fact, low long-term interest rates can be a danger sign, as in Japan and China now, if they reflect low long-term growth potential. That's the real danger, and where Labour are screwing us.
(Not that the last government was much better, but at least it had to fund the once-in-a-century panademic, and the inflationary shocks from the war in Ukraine, not just spend money we don't have to pay for its lazy public union mates and white elephant infrastructure projects).
This does mean, however, that for those WFH, it is up to the individual when they decide it is time to down tools. Is 09:00 too early?
https://x.com/doge/status/1860211822722449910
It’s not too difficult to see why gilt yields are up.
You added extra caveats though, it doesn't need to be "popular with everyone" but it does need to be good for the economy.
Jacking up NI is bad for the economy.
Merging NI and Income Tax may be unpopular with those who are currently undertaxed compared to people who go to work to earn their income, but it won't be increasing taxes on employment and won't be bad for the economy.
(For a couple of years, I actually worked the three days between Christmas and New Year, rather than taking them off as holiday. As the office was empty and there were no meetings, I could get loads of work done that involved intense concentration.)
Most people, even those a bit interested in these things would be unable to name the Lord Chancellor, the speaker of the House of Lords, the Attorney General, the Solicitor General and the DPP.
These were big cheeses not all that long ago.
New tech jobs incoming...ChatGPT poisoning for ecommerce....
I'm also unsurprised thast Sandpit believes something coming out of 'DOGE'. ffs...
The reality is the Conservatives in (certainly later) government painted a picture that taxes could be cut and services would improve. Labour didn't call out this lie and went along with it. This is why they are so well and truly mullered.
One of my colleagues is returning to work on Dec 30th in order to escape from their in-laws.
Outside IR35 - ltd company. no employment rights,, can only claim travel to temporary, not main, work site. Control over pay, dividends and pension payments.
Inside ir35 - no employment rights, money has to go through unregulated umbrella company (best situation just incompetent not actively defrauding you) no control over pay or pension but full liability for any tax nonpayment issues. This is quite literally having your money paid to someone like Doug Barrowman to take his cut, relying on them to make tax deductions and pay them to HMRC, then pay you.
Fixed term contract - basically staff, some employee benefits but not full employment rights. Probably staff rate.
1 and 3 are OK. 2 is a totally fucked up situation that just created a bigger space for a redundant middle-party to take a cut. Typical Fucking Tories.
Unreliable and anecdotal research suggests that most people cannot name any one of: shadows foreign sec, home sec, chancellor.
The Tories are a bit short of memorable characters apart from the eccentric fringe.
Considering NI is a tax paid to the state it should have absolutely nothing to do with "employment rights" which are paid by the employer, not the state.
The only certainty is that if she want's to instantly turn the graph around all they need to do is announce that the UK are starting talks to fully rejoin the EU thus addiing an estimated 4-5% to our GDP.
......and also making the UK a much more cheerful place.
assumed nane that seems rather apt now.
(I think you might be extrapolating from "Roger" to "people" here).
IMO a good sign of a 'key worker' should be "Role needs to be able to work on Christmas Day."
Investors gave a minimum of $77,593, per the filing (97 participated, but the document doesn’t reveal their identities). xAI later announced (confirming some earlier reporting) that Andreessen Horowitz , Blackrock, Fidelity, Kingdom Holdings, Lightspeed, MGX, Morgan Stanley, OIA, QIA, Sequoia Capital, Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Nvidia, AMD, and others numbered among them.
The new cash brings xAI’s total raised to $12 billion, adding to the $6 billion tranche xAI raised this spring. CNBC reported in November that xAI was aiming for a $50 billion valuation — double its valuation of six months prior.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/23/elon-musks-xai-lands-billions-in-new-cash-to-fuel-ai-ambitions/
That meme AI for twitter users is becoming worth some proper money.
That hasn’t changed.
(You thought you'd fool us by not putting "fucking" in caps)
It was an incompetent technocratic fix that showed no understanding of how business works, was designed to solve a largely non-existent problem and caused far more damage than it solved.
Typical fucking Labour. Typical fucking Brown.
Litigation would be the only route. It would not happen.
BTW, we are going to need a second chamber with a non elected element increasingly. More and more as the political quality declines PMs will have to look to appointments to get ministerial jobs done. Lord Salisbury would find this quite amusing.
(He routinely uses SpaceX staff for Tesla, Tesla staff for Twix, etc, etc. Despite them being separate, and in Tesla's case a public, company.)
In 2024 Labour only got 20% of the votes of over-70s, with 46% going to the Tories and 15% going to Reform.
Labour won because they got the votes of working age people.
The incoming Labour government could and should have prioritised working age people who are heavily overtaxed and underfunded. Abolishing WFA was a tiny step in the right direction but then jacking up NI more than undid all the good of that, and won't win them any favour from the 80% of over-70 voters that were already not voting for them, or those that did that have already left them due to WFA.
They should have merged NI and Income Tax. Yes the pensioners would object, but that wouldn't change many votes since they were already not voting Labour anyway!
A credible program for reforming the country would tackle all the shibboleths the prior government couldn't because of the threat of the grey vote. Abolish unnecessary welfare life WFA, abolish unjustified tax breaks like not paying NI on pensions, and tackle issues like planning restrictions that prevent young people getting a home because it might affect the view of a pensioner - or their house prices.
There will be precious few non-hybrid ICE cars available from volume manufacturers in 2030 and even less demand.
Don’t also forget the many hotels, bar staff, taxi drivers etc who are also working, keeping the wheels of the service economy greased and saving families everywhere from having arguments about the washing-up!
But for business confidence to be as low as during the pandemic, or the aftermath of the Trusstershambles... Maybe that's a bit of an overreaction?
Labour shouldn't be kowtowing to the grey vote. If they do, they deserve to lose the next election.
Definitely not the fault of the Scottish government. It’s the fault of the English. Or the council. Whatever, it’s not the Scottish government. Despite housing being devolved and the Scottish government having a death grip over councils and what they can spend their meagre handouts on.