FPT overall population density is not a great metric for measuring how much room there is in a country. People in Scotland live in closer proximity to each other than people in England, despite a much lower population density.
The Netherlands actually has very high number of people living in houses rather than flats, though unlike England they are more likely to be terraced rather than detached. There is plenty of room to go around if only we didn't build these land inefficient detached houses - my tenement was built directly onto farmland in the 19th century and houses 20 people on a footprint that is now taken up by one divorced dad or a widow.
Not everyone wants to live cheek by jowl with people above and below them , we are not chickens. Any self respecting person would aspire to being detached from the great unwashed.
I'd love to have a big mansion on Barnton Avenue and a small castle in the Highlands too - but that's not going to be possible for 5.6 million people.
You can hardly call the New Town's apartments or Morningside tenements slums. Indeed, countries like Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland all have higher standards of living than we do, and a much higher proportion of people living in flats.
So you are pushing palatial apartments for the rich and rabbit hutches for the masses. Very few decent high rise / blocks of flats built in UK in last 70 years at least that would persuade people to be desperate to aspire to one.
FPT overall population density is not a great metric for measuring how much room there is in a country. People in Scotland live in closer proximity to each other than people in England, despite a much lower population density.
The Netherlands actually has very high number of people living in houses rather than flats, though unlike England they are more likely to be terraced rather than detached. There is plenty of room to go around if only we didn't build these land inefficient detached houses - my tenement was built directly onto farmland in the 19th century and houses 20 people on a footprint that is now taken up by one divorced dad or a widow.
Not everyone wants to live cheek by jowl with people above and below them , we are not chickens. Any self respecting person would aspire to being detached from the great unwashed.
I'd love to have a big mansion on Barnton Avenue and a small castle in the Highlands too - but that's not going to be possible for 5.6 million people.
You can hardly call the New Town's apartments or Morningside tenements slums. Indeed, countries like Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland all have higher standards of living than we do, and a much higher proportion of people living in flats.
I stayed with a colleague in a Morningside tenement for a few months when I started work in Edinburgh in 1961 and it was a very pleasant area at that time
There was a discussion yesterday about the relevance of what Labour politicians said about Tory misdemeanours in opposition to behaviour of Labour in govt. Many said it was irrelevant, but I think it is actually the most important thing
Your man in the street wouldn’t normally be that bothered by somebody avoiding stamp duty in the way Rayner has because, let’s face it, we’d all do it if we could. The crime in the eyes of voters is the chasm between the morally superior, pious tone adopted in the last parliament by ‘Mr Rules & Integrity’ and the realisation that they’re all at it. It has been shown for what it always was - a hammily acted pretence designed to fool voters. That’s where the anger comes from
There was a discussion yesterday about the relevance of what Labour politicians said about Tory misdemeanours in opposition to behaviour of Labour in govt. Many said it was irrelevant, but I think it is actually the most important thing
Your man in the street wouldn’t normally be that bothered by somebody avoiding stamp duty in the way Rayner has because, let’s face it, we’d all do it if we could. The crime in the eyes of voters is the chasm between the morally superior, pious tone adopted in the last parliament by ‘Mr Rules & Integrity’ and the realisation that they’re all at it. It has been shown for what it always was - a hammily acted pretence designed to fool voters. That’s where the anger comes from
Maybe it has changed, but I had the impression that in Britain most people choose to obey the rules, that this is one reason why we're such curtain-twitchers anxious to ensure that everyone else is also following the rules, and that this is something that sets us apart from countries like Greece, which struggle to collect taxes, because in those countries people take it for granted that following the rules is optional.
Isn't there a complete lack of evidence as to what they were, whether that's armed pirates or narco terrorists?
Piracy is a word for a felony committed at sea, so narco terrorists are also pirates.
I have seen no-one suggest they were merely enjoying the right of innocent passage.
Irrespective of that, I have seen no argument that justifies extra-judicial execution in this manner.
This is the relevant US statute: 18 U.S. Code § 1651 - Piracy under law of nations "Whoever, on the high seas, commits the crime of piracy as defined by the law of nations, and is afterwards brought into or found in the United States, shall be imprisoned for life."
Tice has quite often been OK in interviews, by using the tactic of answering the question, at least up to a point. This morning on R4 Today he was terrible and reverted to very obviously evading dealing with them. His diversions away from the questions were clumsy and illtempered; Robinson was using a somewhat unfair quick fire gotcha approach, but OTOH that's how it goes, and top politicians who want to run the country have to deal with it.
It was interesting comparing the interview with Danny Alexander who was being questioned on Rayner with Tice who was being questioned on Farage. It was chalk and cheese. DA was so adept you almost wanted to applaud. Tice by contrast was destroyed. Helped as you suggest by Robinson who was in a different class to the Alexander interviewer
Tice was destroyed and yet he and Reform are winning the popular vote
LDM 41.3% [-36.3] Reform 36.2% [New] Labour 11.1% [-11.3] Con 6.7% [New] Grn 3.8% [New] Ind 0.8% [New]
On the face of it virtually all Reform's votes came from the Lib Dems
I assume someone can explain this
Looks like LDs were the NOTA and/or anti-Labour option last time as the Tories weren’t standing. Good to have retained the seat in what on the face of it isn’t a very Lib Demmy looking ward.
Next time I expect the Labour vote will shrink to near zero if it’s perceived as a LD-Ref fight.
Morning all. Stopsley is very Lib Demmy vote wise. There were boundary changes priot to 2022 but Lib Dems have held the ward named Stopsley throughout the 21st century with big majorities. That said its a good hold but shows the LD anti Reform sauce is much more effective in the more Lib Dem friendly demographic areas of leafy sleepy shiretown Its poor for Labour and its a shocker for the Tories - under the old boundaries theyd slways at least beat Labour and get a decent % towards 30%. Dont take a cycle off!
It goes to show how fickle the voters are - okay, some will have moved in from other places and former residents have moved out - but the notion of two immutable tribes of voters who would always vote the same whatever, whenever and wherever has gone for ever. Every vote has to be earned whether that's through local activity or through riding a wave of general discontent or disllusion and past loyalties are proving ephemeral.
As it was for the LDs, the question for Reform will be whether they can hold the gains achieved when the tide is rising when the tide goes out or slackens but that's for another day.
Isn't there a complete lack of evidence as to what they were, whether that's armed pirates or narco terrorists?
Piracy is a word for a felony committed at sea, so narco terrorists are also pirates.
I have seen no-one suggest they were merely enjoying the right of innocent passage.
The main suggestion is that having 13 people on a smallish boat would be very odd if they were smuggling drugs. It's possible that they were people smugglers or even refugees from the Venezuelan regime that Trump & co are so vociferously negative towards. Of course we'll probably never know and will just have to take the word of that paragon of truthiness, Hegseth.
The Guardian are getting in on the act. Not much of a story but it gives some context to the way different people are treated by nasty rags like the Telegraph who loathe the idea of Rayner having a second home in Hove but don't blink at Farage saving the odd few hundred thousand on a tax wheeze
Have you not noticed from the US example that such blatant double standards need not be detrimental to the electoral success of individuals like Trump or Farage, Roger ?
I have noticed but my hope is that we are due a zeitgeist change and revolting characters like the two you mentioned by constant exposure become as repulsive to the public as they are to many of us at the moment. Talking of revolting people Richard Tice on a visit from Dubai is being eviscerated by Nick Robinson as I type
Reform are winning all the headlines and no matter how much anyone tries to guilt trip them it is not working
Reports from Rayner's Ashton constitutuency voters are turning against her and seem to want Reform
The reason Reform are winning is the stark fact both the conservatives and labour have failed them, and the perception is they are all the same but Reform are new
Your final paragraph is the heart of the matter.
Except...
What would success look like? I think we all agree "not like this". The catch is that it really doesn't feel clear what a realistic path to success looks like. And bluntly, Faragism looks likely to make things worse. In a "I hate this hangover so I'm going to down a bottle of gin, easy on the tonic" way.
But I don't know how to make that message in the current environment.
I read an argument recently that I found interesting and wondered what other people made of it. There are a lot of people who feel worse off, and so they're looking for reasons why, even though income growth hasn't been that bad. The explanation? Car finance.
The PCP car finance model has encouraged people to buy new cars that they can't afford. This squeezes their remaining disposable income and makes them feel a lot worse off than they are, because they've saddled themselves with a crushing debt for a depreciating asset.
This has clearly been a victory of marketing for the car manufacturers, but there have been negative consequences for society as a whole, just as there were when gambling companies worked out how effective FOBTs could be at creating gambling addicts.
I think that if the government could spin down the PCP car finance model then the voters would find they had more disposable income and would feel better for it, even if they had a lower status motor.
The car market baffles me. Despite how it feels, objectively, I'm pretty well off. I always tick one of the top two boxes in surveys. There are a lot worse off than me. And yet as a family, we run a fairly bog standard VW and an ancient Ford. Both of which we bought with money rather than finance. If you were to judge how well off we were by our cars, we would be distinctly mid range at best. It used to be that you could tell how affluent a neighbourhood you were in by the cars as much as the houses - as you crossed into Wythenshawe the cars got notably older, rustier and smaller. But no longer - walk down the street in Wythenshawe and Ardwick and you will see half a dozen newer or shinier or posher cars than I think I could afford. It's encouraging to see signs of wealth in areas like this. But also surprising that people would choose to allocate so much of their resources to a car.
Agree. We're in the top 5% highest income households but are genuinely a bit concerned about how much a decent replacement is going to be. Just hope it passes the MOT in a couple of weeks, otherwise we'll be in the market for a Mazda 2.
OTOH, it's extraordinary engineering that something so large and so fast can cost as little as £5k.
FPT overall population density is not a great metric for measuring how much room there is in a country. People in Scotland live in closer proximity to each other than people in England, despite a much lower population density.
The Netherlands actually has very high number of people living in houses rather than flats, though unlike England they are more likely to be terraced rather than detached. There is plenty of room to go around if only we didn't build these land inefficient detached houses - my tenement was built directly onto farmland in the 19th century and houses 20 people on a footprint that is now taken up by one divorced dad or a widow.
Not everyone wants to live cheek by jowl with people above and below them , we are not chickens. Any self respecting person would aspire to being detached from the great unwashed.
I'd love to have a big mansion on Barnton Avenue and a small castle in the Highlands too - but that's not going to be possible for 5.6 million people.
You can hardly call the New Town's apartments or Morningside tenements slums. Indeed, countries like Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland all have higher standards of living than we do, and a much higher proportion of people living in flats.
I grew up in Denmark, in the nicest hom,e I've ever had - 5 rooms on two floors on the top of a 8-story block with two full-time porters, nestled between a village and a town with a railway station offering fast access to the centrte (https://www.boligsiden.dk/postnummer/2800/vej/lehwaldsvej/tilsalg/ejerlejlighed). The British passion for separate houses at any price has always puzzled me, even though it's now my home, and coupled with agonising over urban sprawl it just seems strange.
Despite the attempts by a lot of very sinister bodies to boost Reform, I'm not sure the bandwagon is going to do more than cancel out any Tory recovery. While Banks and others are out there fund raising for Reform and Dorries and others give fealty to Nigel, it all feels a bit fake somehow.
Silicon Valley shows that if you put enough money behind an enterprise and keep throwing it in, you can create a self-sustaining bandwagon that carries you all the way to world domination. So I’d not be so relaxed.
The 21st century is the era of oligarchy, with corrupt business leaders hand in glove with corrupt politicians to squeeze ever more out of the ordinary folk.
Reform is a con trick to raise culture wars issues to the fore so that the oligarchs can continue to fleece us. It is why Faragism, Trumpism and Putinism all look so alike.
The last twenty years of Labour & Tory government have transformed the country beyond recognition via mass immigration that was in no manifesto, had young boys and girls told they were in the wrong body and given puberty blockers with no pushback from mainstream politicians, not to mention the unmentionable, and people still think that any reaction to it is part of some shadowy evil plan pushed by big corporations rather than perfectly natural & understandable behaviour from people who’ve been let down and ignored by politicians who took them for granted.
And, don’t forget, told anyone who questioned it they were ‘Far right’ and a ‘bigot’.
Jeeze, chip on shoulder or what?
I begin to think left and right are equally driven by how hard-done-by they feel.
They need to get off their arses and work for the common good. Then we wouldn’t have to listen to their whining.
Tice has quite often been OK in interviews, by using the tactic of answering the question, at least up to a point. This morning on R4 Today he was terrible and reverted to very obviously evading dealing with them. His diversions away from the questions were clumsy and illtempered; Robinson was using a somewhat unfair quick fire gotcha approach, but OTOH that's how it goes, and top politicians who want to run the country have to deal with it.
I met Tice recently. He has a surface affability but speaks in broad brush cliches for the most part and frequently gets things wrong - I had to pick him up on a couple of his factual inaccuracies which I don't think he liked very much. Gives the impression of spending too much time exchanging talking points with other golf club bores rather than engaging in actual debate or getting better acquainted with the facts. Also seemed happy to create space between his own views and Farage’s, which was interesting, I thought.
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
She told Starmer she had other advisors apart from that conveyancer . Would she just lie to the PM ?
Probably not, but she might have been ... economical with the actualité. “I had a quick chat with a trust lawyer, but didn’t tell them the full details, nor did I get a written opinion from them” could easily slide into “I consulted a trust lawyer”.
This is, of course, why lawyers (or at least the sensible ones) take detailed notes of conversations with their clients.
Yes, “advice” is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here, it feels to me.
To me I think the thing that gets her to safety is a written email or piece of advice from a lawyer she has personally engaged to provide it, saying she is in the clear. The fact that nobody so far has said that she was in receipt of full written advice from a retained solicitor suggests to me this might be something more casual (obviously I don’t know). That would be more of a problem for her and leads to a possible conclusion of - she asked some questions, but wasn’t robust enough in confirming the situation or ensuring she had the benefit of written formal advice from a retained lawyer.
When I sold my old flat, i got the accountant handling the tax side to file my tax return for that year, on my behalf. That way it was 100% clear that I was following his advice (which was also available in formal written form).
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
Rayner's problem is that she didn't learn from the old rental income issues from before she became an MP.
Or rather the lesson that she 'learned' was that she could not declare things properly and then obfuscate her way through difficulties by vaguely refer to 'advice'.
In a way Rayner has followed Boris in not realising that at a certain level you've got to do things properly.
Yes, if you are a public figure relying on reputation for probity, it doesn't matter who your advisers are, when dealing with the HMRC over difficult stuff the important thing is that you have early and clearly told the HMRC all the facts of the case and put them on notice that there is an issue to resolve.
The HMRC are not the final judge of tax liability for any of us and you can argue to matter out to your heart's content. But the principle is clear: if there is something you have not told the HMRC it is a working presumption there is something you don't want them to know and you are preferring to be the judge of your own cause.
It also needs to be on the record that you have been fully transparent with your own advisers. Once you blame the adviser, legal or financial, then you can no longer rely on the usual rules of privilege.
The Guardian are getting in on the act. Not much of a story but it gives some context to the way different people are treated by nasty rags like the Telegraph who loathe the idea of Rayner having a second home in Hove but don't blink at Farage saving the odd few hundred thousand on a tax wheeze
Have you not noticed from the US example that such blatant double standards need not be detrimental to the electoral success of individuals like Trump or Farage, Roger ?
I have noticed but my hope is that we are due a zeitgeist change and revolting characters like the two you mentioned by constant exposure become as repulsive to the public as they are to many of us at the moment. Talking of revolting people Richard Tice on a visit from Dubai is being eviscerated by Nick Robinson as I type
Reform are winning all the headlines and no matter how much anyone tries to guilt trip them it is not working
Reports from Rayner's Ashton constitutuency voters are turning against her and seem to want Reform
The reason Reform are winning is the stark fact both the conservatives and labour have failed them, and the perception is they are all the same but Reform are new
Your final paragraph is the heart of the matter.
Except...
What would success look like? I think we all agree "not like this". The catch is that it really doesn't feel clear what a realistic path to success looks like. And bluntly, Faragism looks likely to make things worse. In a "I hate this hangover so I'm going to down a bottle of gin, easy on the tonic" way.
But I don't know how to make that message in the current environment.
I read an argument recently that I found interesting and wondered what other people made of it. There are a lot of people who feel worse off, and so they're looking for reasons why, even though income growth hasn't been that bad. The explanation? Car finance.
The PCP car finance model has encouraged people to buy new cars that they can't afford. This squeezes their remaining disposable income and makes them feel a lot worse off than they are, because they've saddled themselves with a crushing debt for a depreciating asset.
This has clearly been a victory of marketing for the car manufacturers, but there have been negative consequences for society as a whole, just as there were when gambling companies worked out how effective FOBTs could be at creating gambling addicts.
I think that if the government could spin down the PCP car finance model then the voters would find they had more disposable income and would feel better for it, even if they had a lower status motor.
The car market baffles me. Despite how it feels, objectively, I'm pretty well off. I always tick one of the top two boxes in surveys. There are a lot worse off than me. And yet as a family, we run a fairly bog standard VW and an ancient Ford. Both of which we bought with money rather than finance. If you were to judge how well off we were by our cars, we would be distinctly mid range at best. It used to be that you could tell how affluent a neighbourhood you were in by the cars as much as the houses - as you crossed into Wythenshawe the cars got notably older, rustier and smaller. But no longer - walk down the street in Wythenshawe and Ardwick and you will see half a dozen newer or shinier or posher cars than I think I could afford. It's encouraging to see signs of wealth in areas like this. But also surprising that people would choose to allocate so much of their resources to a car.
Agree. We're in the top 5% highest income households but are genuinely a bit concerned about how much a decent replacement is going to be. Just hope it passes the MOT in a couple of weeks, otherwise we'll be in the market for a Mazda 2.
OTOH, it's extraordinary engineering that something so large and so fast can cost as little as £5k.
I feel I must (inadequately) pick up the Dura Ace mantle as he's away.
An unusually straight-from-the-shoulder podcast discussing Nigel Farage from the News Agents, sitting on the sea front at Clacton, including a selection of vox pops as well as Emily Maitlis & Co being unusually blunt.
I hadn't twigged that Farage is actually over there to promote GBNews, and the appearance at the Republican controlled committee in Congress was a sideshow; he walked out before his own question session had finished, and was willing to obfuscate about banning journalists from events and communication with Reform led councils.
It is notable that Paul Marshall is also in the USA, also putting out a "please save us from the UK Government" type line.
It will be interesting how Free Speech Nigel handles it at the Reform Conference this weekend. We may not hear, because his Party have banned some journalists who do not have opinions they like.
I'll update a couple of points on my view:
1 - I said I thought Reform would have to take action against their people or branches which are keen on Tommy Robinson & Co. Judging by his Washington performance, they could potentially jump the other way. 2 - He could get defenestrated by his own constituency, since he's never seen there
If Nigel's performance had been reported on TV he would have lost votes. It was a car crash, and he was humiliated by Raskin.
The only BBC coverage I saw was Newsnight where Derbyshire attempted to tear Raskin a new one because of his history with Farage and his insolence to the PM in waiting. Derbyshire has developed into an effective "gotcha" interviewer, but she always seems to start with an agenda. I have no doubt Derbyshire believes Farage to be a clear and present a danger as I do, but a defence of Farage it was nonetheless. Raskin was on his brief and remained untroubled, but why the hostility to him and the defence of Farage's disingenuous "free speech" agenda?
The News Agents analysis from Clacton was far, far better, but do floating voters all indulge themselves in left wing podcasts by dismissed BBC journalists?
No - however it's the first decent thing I have personally heard from the News Agents in months.
They repteatedly try to do things that they for which do not (imo) seem to have the hinterland.
The Guardian are getting in on the act. Not much of a story but it gives some context to the way different people are treated by nasty rags like the Telegraph who loathe the idea of Rayner having a second home in Hove but don't blink at Farage saving the odd few hundred thousand on a tax wheeze
Have you not noticed from the US example that such blatant double standards need not be detrimental to the electoral success of individuals like Trump or Farage, Roger ?
I have noticed but my hope is that we are due a zeitgeist change and revolting characters like the two you mentioned by constant exposure become as repulsive to the public as they are to many of us at the moment. Talking of revolting people Richard Tice on a visit from Dubai is being eviscerated by Nick Robinson as I type
Reform are winning all the headlines and no matter how much anyone tries to guilt trip them it is not working
Reports from Rayner's Ashton constitutuency voters are turning against her and seem to want Reform
The reason Reform are winning is the stark fact both the conservatives and labour have failed them, and the perception is they are all the same but Reform are new
Your final paragraph is the heart of the matter.
Except...
What would success look like? I think we all agree "not like this". The catch is that it really doesn't feel clear what a realistic path to success looks like. And bluntly, Faragism looks likely to make things worse. In a "I hate this hangover so I'm going to down a bottle of gin, easy on the tonic" way.
But I don't know how to make that message in the current environment.
I read an argument recently that I found interesting and wondered what other people made of it. There are a lot of people who feel worse off, and so they're looking for reasons why, even though income growth hasn't been that bad. The explanation? Car finance.
The PCP car finance model has encouraged people to buy new cars that they can't afford. This squeezes their remaining disposable income and makes them feel a lot worse off than they are, because they've saddled themselves with a crushing debt for a depreciating asset.
This has clearly been a victory of marketing for the car manufacturers, but there have been negative consequences for society as a whole, just as there were when gambling companies worked out how effective FOBTs could be at creating gambling addicts.
I think that if the government could spin down the PCP car finance model then the voters would find they had more disposable income and would feel better for it, even if they had a lower status motor.
The car market baffles me. Despite how it feels, objectively, I'm pretty well off. I always tick one of the top two boxes in surveys. There are a lot worse off than me. And yet as a family, we run a fairly bog standard VW and an ancient Ford. Both of which we bought with money rather than finance. If you were to judge how well off we were by our cars, we would be distinctly mid range at best. It used to be that you could tell how affluent a neighbourhood you were in by the cars as much as the houses - as you crossed into Wythenshawe the cars got notably older, rustier and smaller. But no longer - walk down the street in Wythenshawe and Ardwick and you will see half a dozen newer or shinier or posher cars than I think I could afford. It's encouraging to see signs of wealth in areas like this. But also surprising that people would choose to allocate so much of their resources to a car.
It's a function of not being able to afford to buy, in many cases. Rather than saving for a deposit etc. People living in small shitty rentals want a bit of glamour in their lives.
LDM 41.3% [-36.3] Reform 36.2% [New] Labour 11.1% [-11.3] Con 6.7% [New] Grn 3.8% [New] Ind 0.8% [New]
On the face of it virtually all Reform's votes came from the Lib Dems
I assume someone can explain this
Looks like LDs were the NOTA and/or anti-Labour option last time as the Tories weren’t standing. Good to have retained the seat in what on the face of it isn’t a very Lib Demmy looking ward.
Next time I expect the Labour vote will shrink to near zero if it’s perceived as a LD-Ref fight.
Morning all. Stopsley is very Lib Demmy vote wise. There were boundary changes priot to 2022 but Lib Dems have held the ward named Stopsley throughout the 21st century with big majorities. That said its a good hold but shows the LD anti Reform sauce is much more effective in the more Lib Dem friendly demographic areas of leafy sleepy shiretown Its poor for Labour and its a shocker for the Tories - under the old boundaries theyd slways at least beat Labour and get a decent % towards 30%. Dont take a cycle off!
It goes to show how fickle the voters are - okay, some will have moved in from other places and former residents have moved out - but the notion of two immutable tribes of voters who would always vote the same whatever, whenever and wherever has gone for ever. Every vote has to be earned whether that's through local activity or through riding a wave of general discontent or disllusion and past loyalties are proving ephemeral.
As it was for the LDs, the question for Reform will be whether they can hold the gains achieved when the tide is rising when the tide goes out or slackens but that's for another day.
Another day indeed, but for a stab in the dark - when the time comes for Reform to run defence they'll have a nightmare working out how, and where
Acting Deputy Chief of Special Operations at the Department of Justice, Joseph Schnitt, was secretly filmed saying that "thousands and thousands of pages of files" exist about Epstein, and that, “They’ll redact every Republican or conservative person in those files, leave all the liberal, Democratic people in those files”. Also that Ghislaine Maxwell's transfer to a minimum-security prison was because, “They’re offering her something to keep her mouth shut.”
The video has been confirmed as real, but Schnitt has said he was just showing off to what he thought was a date, and the DoJ say that Schnitt has nothing to do with any internal review of Epstein materials.
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
It seems she clearly didn't seek out the best legal advice as presumably that would have been to wait a few months / rewrite the trust so that she wasn't liable for the additional 2nd home tax.
FPT overall population density is not a great metric for measuring how much room there is in a country. People in Scotland live in closer proximity to each other than people in England, despite a much lower population density.
The Netherlands actually has very high number of people living in houses rather than flats, though unlike England they are more likely to be terraced rather than detached. There is plenty of room to go around if only we didn't build these land inefficient detached houses - my tenement was built directly onto farmland in the 19th century and houses 20 people on a footprint that is now taken up by one divorced dad or a widow.
Not everyone wants to live cheek by jowl with people above and below them , we are not chickens. Any self respecting person would aspire to being detached from the great unwashed.
I'd love to have a big mansion on Barnton Avenue and a small castle in the Highlands too - but that's not going to be possible for 5.6 million people.
You can hardly call the New Town's apartments or Morningside tenements slums. Indeed, countries like Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland all have higher standards of living than we do, and a much higher proportion of people living in flats.
So you are pushing palatial apartments for the rich and rabbit hutches for the masses. Very few decent high rise / blocks of flats built in UK in last 70 years at least that would persuade people to be desperate to aspire to one.
Not at all. I'm as unhappy as you that there are so few high quality, medium density flats available in the UK.
The real rabbit hutches are the tiny Barratt detached houses with no storage, a plastic lawn, miles away from any public services or stuff to do. They are actually smaller than a nice Scandinavian-style apartment with a coffee shop below and a tram taking you into town.
Boris wouldn't defect and nor would Farage want him as he is too big a rival.
Like Churchill Boris was of course a Liberal for a time so his joining an even harder right party than the Tories is unlikely. Boris was in the SDP at Oxford and had their support to be Union President
Tice has quite often been OK in interviews, by using the tactic of answering the question, at least up to a point. This morning on R4 Today he was terrible and reverted to very obviously evading dealing with them. His diversions away from the questions were clumsy and illtempered; Robinson was using a somewhat unfair quick fire gotcha approach, but OTOH that's how it goes, and top politicians who want to run the country have to deal with it.
It was interesting comparing the interview with Danny Alexander who was being questioned on Rayner with Tice who was being questioned on Farage. It was chalk and cheese. DA was so adept you almost wanted to applaud. Tice by contrast was destroyed. Helped as you suggest by Robinson who was in a different class to the Alexander interviewer
Nah, I listened to that, DA was just avoiding giving answers. It might have worked 10 years ago but now folks are just fed up with political prevarication.
The Guardian are getting in on the act. Not much of a story but it gives some context to the way different people are treated by nasty rags like the Telegraph who loathe the idea of Rayner having a second home in Hove but don't blink at Farage saving the odd few hundred thousand on a tax wheeze
Have you not noticed from the US example that such blatant double standards need not be detrimental to the electoral success of individuals like Trump or Farage, Roger ?
I have noticed but my hope is that we are due a zeitgeist change and revolting characters like the two you mentioned by constant exposure become as repulsive to the public as they are to many of us at the moment. Talking of revolting people Richard Tice on a visit from Dubai is being eviscerated by Nick Robinson as I type
Reform are winning all the headlines and no matter how much anyone tries to guilt trip them it is not working
Reports from Rayner's Ashton constitutuency voters are turning against her and seem to want Reform
The reason Reform are winning is the stark fact both the conservatives and labour have failed them, and the perception is they are all the same but Reform are new
Fortunately we have Brexit. Something no whitewash can remove. It'll take a bit of time but the unpopularity and stench of Brexit is there and despite short term amnesia its something that Farage can't wipe away. Ultimtely I'm certain enough voters will vote against him to make sure he can never win. A decent ad campaign nearer the election and Farage will be toast.
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
It seems she clearly didn't seek out the best legal advice as presumably that would have been to wait a few months / rewrite the trust so that she wasn't liable for the additional 2nd home tax.
Once her child turns 18 she wouldn’t have been liable for the increased stamp duty . If she didn’t want to risk losing the flat in Hove she could have paid it and got a refund later.
Um I think they do. It was outside the US and in international waters, and no American citizens were involved. Nixon invoked something similar for the bombing of Cambodia, and Bush with Guantanamo and extraordinary rendition.
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
She told Starmer she had other advisors apart from that conveyancer . Would she just lie to the PM ?
Probably not, but she might have been ... economical with the actualité. “I had a quick chat with a trust lawyer, but didn’t tell them the full details, nor did I get a written opinion from them” could easily slide into “I consulted a trust lawyer”.
This is, of course, why lawyers (or at least the sensible ones) take detailed notes of conversations with their clients.
Yes, “advice” is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here, it feels to me.
To me I think the thing that gets her to safety is a written email or piece of advice from a lawyer she has personally engaged to provide it, saying she is in the clear. The fact that nobody so far has said that she was in receipt of full written advice from a retained solicitor suggests to me this might be something more casual (obviously I don’t know). That would be more of a problem for her and leads to a possible conclusion of - she asked some questions, but wasn’t robust enough in confirming the situation or ensuring she had the benefit of written formal advice from a retained lawyer.
When I sold my old flat, i got the accountant handling the tax side to file my tax return for that year, on my behalf. That way it was 100% clear that I was following his advice (which was also available in formal written form).
Yes, HMRC is generally far more likely to be lenient with errors in tax returns for people who have taken professional advice, so long as you haven’t lied to the professional in question.
They’re also much less likely to pull your file for investigation in the first place - accounts signed off by a registered professional are put in the “low risk of tax shenanigans” box by default.
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
Rayner's problem is that she didn't learn from the old rental income issues from before she became an MP.
Or rather the lesson that she 'learned' was that she could not declare things properly and then obfuscate her way through difficulties by vaguely refer to 'advice'.
In a way Rayner has followed Boris in not realising that at a certain level you've got to do things properly.
Yes, if you are a public figure relying on reputation for probity, it doesn't matter who your advisers are, when dealing with the HMRC over difficult stuff the important thing is that you have early and clearly told the HMRC all the facts of the case and put them on notice that there is an issue to resolve.
The HMRC are not the final judge of tax liability for any of us and you can argue to matter out to your heart's content. But the principle is clear: if there is something you have not told the HMRC it is a working presumption there is something you don't want them to know and you are preferring to be the judge of your own cause.
It also needs to be on the record that you have been fully transparent with your own advisers. Once you blame the adviser, legal or financial, then you can no longer rely on the usual rules of privilege.
I would have gone with a single firm of lawyers capable of handling the tax and trust issues - and probably the purchase itself. A firm with a history and reputation for good work. Got a big file, from them, on exactly what they were going to do and why. Then *got them to do it*.
That way there would be no risk of slips due to miscommunication - and you would have the law firms reputation on your side.
FPT overall population density is not a great metric for measuring how much room there is in a country. People in Scotland live in closer proximity to each other than people in England, despite a much lower population density.
The Netherlands actually has very high number of people living in houses rather than flats, though unlike England they are more likely to be terraced rather than detached. There is plenty of room to go around if only we didn't build these land inefficient detached houses - my tenement was built directly onto farmland in the 19th century and houses 20 people on a footprint that is now taken up by one divorced dad or a widow.
Not everyone wants to live cheek by jowl with people above and below them , we are not chickens. Any self respecting person would aspire to being detached from the great unwashed.
I'd love to have a big mansion on Barnton Avenue and a small castle in the Highlands too - but that's not going to be possible for 5.6 million people.
You can hardly call the New Town's apartments or Morningside tenements slums. Indeed, countries like Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland all have higher standards of living than we do, and a much higher proportion of people living in flats.
I grew up in Denmark, in the nicest hom,e I've ever had - 5 rooms on two floors on the top of a 8-story block with two full-time porters, nestled between a village and a town with a railway station offering fast access to the centrte (https://www.boligsiden.dk/postnummer/2800/vej/lehwaldsvej/tilsalg/ejerlejlighed). The British passion for separate houses at any price has always puzzled me, even though it's now my home, and coupled with agonising over urban sprawl it just seems strange.
When I lived in Geneva my partner wanted a house outside the city so I never got to live in the centre but I was always envious of my friends who lived in apartments in Geneva.
They were all good sized either beautiful period places with high ceilings and big floor space or large modern (60s onwards). All very soundproof. All had balconies or terraces where you could place a table and chairs for several to eat and enjoy the outside world, blocks weren’t huge high developments but blocks of 8 to ten flats with usually a big of garden around, parking underneath and often shops or cafes/restaurants on the ground floor.
Areas like Champel just outside the centre were full of these and highly sought after. I haven’t been to enough of the UK to compare the availability of these sort of residential blocks - maybe they are there and it’s just a different mental attitude that makes them less desireable in the UK. Possibly back to our Anglo-Saxon individualism.
Opponents of Farage (and I count myself among them) need to focus less on the media’s treatment of Farage and more on how to combat him.
I get that it can be annoying that it sometimes feel that he is getting an easy ride, but that is why it is so important for others to work to change the narrative. He is the manifestation of a lot of genuine grievance out there among voters right now. Perception of the issues needs to change if people like Farage are going to be seen in a different light; regardless of how many times the BBC mentions him.
Is the unpatriotic angle working? Why does Farage want to give money to the Taliban? Why was Farage encouraging another country to impose sanctions on the UK? These seem to have some weight on social media and (with the former) in polling.
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
Rayner's problem is that she didn't learn from the old rental income issues from before she became an MP.
Or rather the lesson that she 'learned' was that she could not declare things properly and then obfuscate her way through difficulties by vaguely refer to 'advice'.
In a way Rayner has followed Boris in not realising that at a certain level you've got to do things properly.
Yes, if you are a public figure relying on reputation for probity, it doesn't matter who your advisers are, when dealing with the HMRC over difficult stuff the important thing is that you have early and clearly told the HMRC all the facts of the case and put them on notice that there is an issue to resolve.
The HMRC are not the final judge of tax liability for any of us and you can argue to matter out to your heart's content. But the principle is clear: if there is something you have not told the HMRC it is a working presumption there is something you don't want them to know and you are preferring to be the judge of your own cause.
It also needs to be on the record that you have been fully transparent with your own advisers. Once you blame the adviser, legal or financial, then you can no longer rely on the usual rules of privilege.
My guess is that she simply didn’t realise she was in the “difficult stuff” box. She had transferred her remaining share of her old property to her son’s trust & then bought a house: What’s the problem? In reality if there is a trust involved anywhere in your financial affairs the answer to every question ought to be “talk to a lawyer familiar with all the relevant areas of law, at considerable expense” but, given Raynor’s background, it’s not entirely surprising that this wasn’t front & centre of her financial thinking.
The great irony is, had she waited six months or so she would have been entirely correct - her son would have been 18 & she would have had no extra stamp duty to pay. This whole affair seems to be due to a genuine misunderstanding of the relevant tax law - I really don’t believe she ever intended to avoid whatever taxes were due to be paid. If she had known about them, she would have waiting six months and saved herself £40k!
If Rayner is found to have misbehaved today, is a recall petition possible ?
I find it hard to see how, in the time available, the Ethics Advisor, Sir Laurie Magnus (a City financier who has spent time on the boards of various cultural institutions) will be able to establish the facts with sufficient certainty to enable him to determine whether she's breached the Ministerial Code.
That she underpaid stamp duty is clear. The question to be determined is why she did so. Was it deliberate? Or was it because she was incorrectly advised? It is not enough to say that she got advice from a lawyer. First, he needs to see that advice and whether it was given professionally for a fee and when. And, the crucial question is what he or she was told by AR ie the factual basis for his advice. If she told him "I do not own any other property" then that is not enough, IMO, to get her off the hook. Because it simply pushes the question further back: "Were you told by your trust advisors when the trust was set up that you would be deemed its owner until your son was 18?"
It is possible that she was not told that - but to establish that you'd need to speak to the trust lawyers who did the work for her at the time and/or review their files.
If she was not told that so that she genuinely thought she did not have a property interest in her old home then it is possible that this was all a SNAFU. But I find it odd that, when setting up a trust for an under-age child, those advising her - and her ex-husband - who also faces the same Stamp Duty issues (has he bought property somewhere, paid the higher rate, realised his ex has not and got his own back?) - would not have explained all the consequences of the arrangement, regardless of whether they knew about any future property purchases. It is possible that it is in a written document somewhere, written in 2020, and that it never got carefully read then or later when the Hove flat was being acquired.
It will be interesting (to me, at least) to see what facts - and how - Sir Laurie will be able to establish.
Um I think they do. It was outside the US and in international waters, and no American citizens were involved. Nixon invoked something similar for the bombing of Cambodia, and Bush with Guantanamo and extraordinary rendition.
There are a bunch of legal hoops to jump through first.
It might just seem like lawyer talk, to you and me, but without these, things like the cruise missile/drone strikes that Clinton and Obama were so prolific with are illegal under US law.
Despite the attempts by a lot of very sinister bodies to boost Reform, I'm not sure the bandwagon is going to do more than cancel out any Tory recovery. While Banks and others are out there fund raising for Reform and Dorries and others give fealty to Nigel, it all feels a bit fake somehow.
Silicon Valley shows that if you put enough money behind an enterprise and keep throwing it in, you can create a self-sustaining bandwagon that carries you all the way to world domination. So I’d not be so relaxed.
The 21st century is the era of oligarchy, with corrupt business leaders hand in glove with corrupt politicians to squeeze ever more out of the ordinary folk.
Reform is a con trick to raise culture wars issues to the fore so that the oligarchs can continue to fleece us. It is why Faragism, Trumpism and Putinism all look so alike.
The last twenty years of Labour & Tory government have transformed the country beyond recognition via mass immigration that was in no manifesto, had young boys and girls told they were in the wrong body and given puberty blockers with no pushback from mainstream politicians, not to mention the unmentionable, and people still think that any reaction to it is part of some shadowy evil plan pushed by big corporations rather than perfectly natural & understandable behaviour from people who’ve been let down and ignored by politicians who took them for granted.
Short answer, no.
Most people were reasonably content as long as the economy delivered - you can get away with a lot if you are delivering growth and prosperity, if people feel they are better off and doing well and their children will be better off as a result.
That was delivered, more or less, with a few interruptions, for three generations after 1945 but the wheels came off that wagon in 2008 and you can chart a lot of what has happened from those events.
Mass immigration has become an issue as much because the wave of cheap labour has failed to deliver the economic growth previous such examples provided. Five of the last three economic booms have been delivered by cheap labour and as long as everyone has work and is making good money no one really cares from where their co-worker originates.
The GFC was the failure of the economic model we had followed since the 1970s and there's been no replacement as of yet. We have stagnated (largely) for the last 17 years and the key part of it is not that people don't feel better off themselves (most people are pretty resilient) but they have no confidcnce the world their children will inherit will be any better. We all want our children to have a better life than we had (and will sacrifice enormously to achieve that if we can). The breaking of that promise has got us where we are.
Get back to 4-5% annual growth and a lot of the culture issues and concerns about immigration will melt away but no one has a route to that economic nirvana currently and in the absence of prosperity, everyone is looking for someone to blame, the Government, the immigrants etc, etc.
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
It seems she clearly didn't seek out the best legal advice as presumably that would have been to wait a few months / rewrite the trust so that she wasn't liable for the additional 2nd home tax.
Once her child turns 18 she wouldn’t have been liable for the increased stamp duty . If she didn’t want to risk losing the flat in Hove she could have paid it and got a refund later.
That is not how it works - your stamp duty liability depends entirely on your situation at the time of purchase. You don’t get a refund when your child turns 18 in this situation.
Opponents of Farage (and I count myself among them) need to focus less on the media’s treatment of Farage and more on how to combat him.
I get that it can be annoying that it sometimes feel that he is getting an easy ride, but that is why it is so important for others to work to change the narrative. He is the manifestation of a lot of genuine grievance out there among voters right now. Perception of the issues needs to change if people like Farage are going to be seen in a different light; regardless of how many times the BBC mentions him.
Is the unpatriotic angle working? Why does Farage want to give money to the Taliban? Why was Farage encouraging another country to impose sanctions on the UK? These seem to have some weight on social media and (with the former) in polling.
It certainly wants to be used as a line of attack, I think. Farage’s tendency to flee stateside to have a moan about how everything is back home does have the potential to make him look unpatriotic and not on the side of his voters.
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
It seems she clearly didn't seek out the best legal advice as presumably that would have been to wait a few months / rewrite the trust so that she wasn't liable for the additional 2nd home tax.
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
Rayner's problem is that she didn't learn from the old rental income issues from before she became an MP.
Or rather the lesson that she 'learned' was that she could not declare things properly and then obfuscate her way through difficulties by vaguely refer to 'advice'.
In a way Rayner has followed Boris in not realising that at a certain level you've got to do things properly.
This and that failure means she isn't fit for ministerial office, though unlike Boris she seems unlikely to get a free pass up until enabling a sex "pest"
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
Rayner's problem is that she didn't learn from the old rental income issues from before she became an MP.
Or rather the lesson that she 'learned' was that she could not declare things properly and then obfuscate her way through difficulties by vaguely refer to 'advice'.
In a way Rayner has followed Boris in not realising that at a certain level you've got to do things properly.
Yes, if you are a public figure relying on reputation for probity, it doesn't matter who your advisers are, when dealing with the HMRC over difficult stuff the important thing is that you have early and clearly told the HMRC all the facts of the case and put them on notice that there is an issue to resolve.
The HMRC are not the final judge of tax liability for any of us and you can argue to matter out to your heart's content. But the principle is clear: if there is something you have not told the HMRC it is a working presumption there is something you don't want them to know and you are preferring to be the judge of your own cause.
It also needs to be on the record that you have been fully transparent with your own advisers. Once you blame the adviser, legal or financial, then you can no longer rely on the usual rules of privilege.
I would have gone with a single firm of lawyers capable of handling the tax and trust issues - and probably the purchase itself. A firm with a history and reputation for good work. Got a big file, from them, on exactly what they were going to do and why. Then *got them to do it*.
That way there would be no risk of slips due to miscommunication - and you would have the law firms reputation on your side.
Quite so. When I was executor to my late father, our Edinburgh law firm handled his house's sale - including not just conveyancing but also the estate agency (it being Scotland) and specialist CGT advice - entirely in house using the relevant specialists. Cost a bit more, probably, but no need to worry about the joints.
Valuing surveyor and videographer were brought in from outside.
There was a discussion yesterday about the relevance of what Labour politicians said about Tory misdemeanours in opposition to behaviour of Labour in govt. Many said it was irrelevant, but I think it is actually the most important thing
Your man in the street wouldn’t normally be that bothered by somebody avoiding stamp duty in the way Rayner has because, let’s face it, we’d all do it if we could. The crime in the eyes of voters is the chasm between the morally superior, pious tone adopted in the last parliament by ‘Mr Rules & Integrity’ and the realisation that they’re all at it. It has been shown for what it always was - a hammily acted pretence designed to fool voters. That’s where the anger comes from
Maybe it has changed, but I had the impression that in Britain most people choose to obey the rules, that this is one reason why we're such curtain-twitchers anxious to ensure that everyone else is also following the rules, and that this is something that sets us apart from countries like Greece, which struggle to collect taxes, because in those countries people take it for granted that following the rules is optional.
But Rayner probably thought she was following the rules; she was trying to dodge tax legally by changing the names on other properties. The snag is that, as well as the plan not working, she has been full on for years about Tories using schemes/plans/ruses to not pay the same amount of tax as ‘working people’, and now it looks like she’s at it
Despite the attempts by a lot of very sinister bodies to boost Reform, I'm not sure the bandwagon is going to do more than cancel out any Tory recovery. While Banks and others are out there fund raising for Reform and Dorries and others give fealty to Nigel, it all feels a bit fake somehow.
Silicon Valley shows that if you put enough money behind an enterprise and keep throwing it in, you can create a self-sustaining bandwagon that carries you all the way to world domination. So I’d not be so relaxed.
The 21st century is the era of oligarchy, with corrupt business leaders hand in glove with corrupt politicians to squeeze ever more out of the ordinary folk.
Reform is a con trick to raise culture wars issues to the fore so that the oligarchs can continue to fleece us. It is why Faragism, Trumpism and Putinism all look so alike.
The last twenty years of Labour & Tory government have transformed the country beyond recognition via mass immigration that was in no manifesto, had young boys and girls told they were in the wrong body and given puberty blockers with no pushback from mainstream politicians, not to mention the unmentionable, and people still think that any reaction to it is part of some shadowy evil plan pushed by big corporations rather than perfectly natural & understandable behaviour from people who’ve been let down and ignored by politicians who took them for granted.
Short answer, no.
Most people were reasonably content as long as the economy delivered - you can get away with a lot if you are delivering growth and prosperity, if people feel they are better off and doing well and their children will be better off as a result.
That was delivered, more or less, with a few interruptions, for three generations after 1945 but the wheels came off that wagon in 2008 and you can chart a lot of what has happened from those events.
Mass immigration has become an issue as much because the wave of cheap labour has failed to deliver the economic growth previous such examples provided. Five of the last three economic booms have been delivered by cheap labour and as long as everyone has work and is making good money no one really cares from where their co-worker originates.
The GFC was the failure of the economic model we had followed since the 1970s and there's been no replacement as of yet. We have stagnated (largely) for the last 17 years and the key part of it is not that people don't feel better off themselves (most people are pretty resilient) but they have no confidcnce the world their children will inherit will be any better. We all want our children to have a better life than we had (and will sacrifice enormously to achieve that if we can). The breaking of that promise has got us where we are.
Get back to 4-5% annual growth and a lot of the culture issues and concerns about immigration will melt away but no one has a route to that economic nirvana currently and in the absence of prosperity, everyone is looking for someone to blame, the Government, the immigrants etc, etc.
I agree with this entirely. The great irony is that the thing that appears to be holding back economic growth is an entirely self-inflicted lack of infrastructure investment. It’s not even about the expense of raising the money - the money is there to be spent if we would only give the green light to these projects early & often!
Despite the attempts by a lot of very sinister bodies to boost Reform, I'm not sure the bandwagon is going to do more than cancel out any Tory recovery. While Banks and others are out there fund raising for Reform and Dorries and others give fealty to Nigel, it all feels a bit fake somehow.
Silicon Valley shows that if you put enough money behind an enterprise and keep throwing it in, you can create a self-sustaining bandwagon that carries you all the way to world domination. So I’d not be so relaxed.
The 21st century is the era of oligarchy, with corrupt business leaders hand in glove with corrupt politicians to squeeze ever more out of the ordinary folk.
Reform is a con trick to raise culture wars issues to the fore so that the oligarchs can continue to fleece us. It is why Faragism, Trumpism and Putinism all look so alike.
The last twenty years of Labour & Tory government have transformed the country beyond recognition via mass immigration that was in no manifesto, had young boys and girls told they were in the wrong body and given puberty blockers with no pushback from mainstream politicians, not to mention the unmentionable, and people still think that any reaction to it is part of some shadowy evil plan pushed by big corporations rather than perfectly natural & understandable behaviour from people who’ve been let down and ignored by politicians who took them for granted.
Come on Sam, you are more intelligent than that.
The British people did vote for both New Labour and Johnson, as well as Brexit.
All were explicit about the importance of immigration to Britain, indeed Brexit was pushed in places like Leicester and Birmingham as a way to level the playing field and make it easier for Commonwealth migrants to replace EU ones.
Similarly the Cameron and May governments were explicit about liberalism attitudes to gays and Transgender folk. Self ID was proposed under a Conservative government.
You may well have voted differently, or for these parties for other issues but they certainly were voted for by the British public.
There was a discussion yesterday about the relevance of what Labour politicians said about Tory misdemeanours in opposition to behaviour of Labour in govt. Many said it was irrelevant, but I think it is actually the most important thing
Your man in the street wouldn’t normally be that bothered by somebody avoiding stamp duty in the way Rayner has because, let’s face it, we’d all do it if we could. The crime in the eyes of voters is the chasm between the morally superior, pious tone adopted in the last parliament by ‘Mr Rules & Integrity’ and the realisation that they’re all at it. It has been shown for what it always was - a hammily acted pretence designed to fool voters. That’s where the anger comes from
Maybe it has changed, but I had the impression that in Britain most people choose to obey the rules, that this is one reason why we're such curtain-twitchers anxious to ensure that everyone else is also following the rules, and that this is something that sets us apart from countries like Greece, which struggle to collect taxes, because in those countries people take it for granted that following the rules is optional.
But Rayner probably thought she was following the rules; she was trying to dodge tax legally by changing the names on other properties. The snag is that, as well as the plan not working, she has been full on for years about Tories using schemes/plans/ruses to not pay the same amount of tax as ‘working people’, and now it looks like she’s at it
"changing the names" *was* an actual sale (in part) and gift (in part). That's not like a badge change on one of DA's pet hates.
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
Rayner's problem is that she didn't learn from the old rental income issues from before she became an MP.
Or rather the lesson that she 'learned' was that she could not declare things properly and then obfuscate her way through difficulties by vaguely refer to 'advice'.
In a way Rayner has followed Boris in not realising that at a certain level you've got to do things properly.
Yes, if you are a public figure relying on reputation for probity, it doesn't matter who your advisers are, when dealing with the HMRC over difficult stuff the important thing is that you have early and clearly told the HMRC all the facts of the case and put them on notice that there is an issue to resolve.
The HMRC are not the final judge of tax liability for any of us and you can argue to matter out to your heart's content. But the principle is clear: if there is something you have not told the HMRC it is a working presumption there is something you don't want them to know and you are preferring to be the judge of your own cause.
It also needs to be on the record that you have been fully transparent with your own advisers. Once you blame the adviser, legal or financial, then you can no longer rely on the usual rules of privilege.
I would have gone with a single firm of lawyers capable of handling the tax and trust issues - and probably the purchase itself. A firm with a history and reputation for good work. Got a big file, from them, on exactly what they were going to do and why. Then *got them to do it*.
That way there would be no risk of slips due to miscommunication - and you would have the law firms reputation on your side.
Yes, I do find it rather curious that she used a smaller firm. It probably does say some good things about her in part - that she’s not trying to be high and mighty with who she engages - but it’s a balancing act and she’s a high profile public figure (the deputy prime minister of a G7 country) with all sorts of reputational risks and a rather complicated (through no fault of her own, I might add) personal life. It shows a bit of naivety and lack of judgement, I think, to not retain a more substantial outfit and a decent accountant in that situation.
Um I think they do. It was outside the US and in international waters, and no American citizens were involved. Nixon invoked something similar for the bombing of Cambodia, and Bush with Guantanamo and extraordinary rendition.
There are a bunch of legal hoops to jump through first.
It might just seem like lawyer talk, to you and me, but without these, things like the cruise missile/drone strikes that Clinton and Obama were so prolific with are illegal under US law.
Despite the attempts by a lot of very sinister bodies to boost Reform, I'm not sure the bandwagon is going to do more than cancel out any Tory recovery. While Banks and others are out there fund raising for Reform and Dorries and others give fealty to Nigel, it all feels a bit fake somehow.
Silicon Valley shows that if you put enough money behind an enterprise and keep throwing it in, you can create a self-sustaining bandwagon that carries you all the way to world domination. So I’d not be so relaxed.
The 21st century is the era of oligarchy, with corrupt business leaders hand in glove with corrupt politicians to squeeze ever more out of the ordinary folk.
Reform is a con trick to raise culture wars issues to the fore so that the oligarchs can continue to fleece us. It is why Faragism, Trumpism and Putinism all look so alike.
The last twenty years of Labour & Tory government have transformed the country beyond recognition via mass immigration that was in no manifesto, had young boys and girls told they were in the wrong body and given puberty blockers with no pushback from mainstream politicians, not to mention the unmentionable, and people still think that any reaction to it is part of some shadowy evil plan pushed by big corporations rather than perfectly natural & understandable behaviour from people who’ve been let down and ignored by politicians who took them for granted.
Short answer, no.
Most people were reasonably content as long as the economy delivered - you can get away with a lot if you are delivering growth and prosperity, if people feel they are better off and doing well and their children will be better off as a result.
That was delivered, more or less, with a few interruptions, for three generations after 1945 but the wheels came off that wagon in 2008 and you can chart a lot of what has happened from those events.
Mass immigration has become an issue as much because the wave of cheap labour has failed to deliver the economic growth previous such examples provided. Five of the last three economic booms have been delivered by cheap labour and as long as everyone has work and is making good money no one really cares from where their co-worker originates.
The GFC was the failure of the economic model we had followed since the 1970s and there's been no replacement as of yet. We have stagnated (largely) for the last 17 years and the key part of it is not that people don't feel better off themselves (most people are pretty resilient) but they have no confidcnce the world their children will inherit will be any better. We all want our children to have a better life than we had (and will sacrifice enormously to achieve that if we can). The breaking of that promise has got us where we are.
Get back to 4-5% annual growth and a lot of the culture issues and concerns about immigration will melt away but no one has a route to that economic nirvana currently and in the absence of prosperity, everyone is looking for someone to blame, the Government, the immigrants etc, etc.
The long run of low inflation was partly due to wages being held back (much cheaper services) but also the collapse in prices of consumer goods. There was deflation on the price of TVs, for example, over a long period. This was down to the exporting of a great deal of the work to the Far East. This long collapse in prices has stopped and even reversed.
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
It seems she clearly didn't seek out the best legal advice as presumably that would have been to wait a few months / rewrite the trust so that she wasn't liable for the additional 2nd home tax.
Once her child turns 18 she wouldn’t have been liable for the increased stamp duty . If she didn’t want to risk losing the flat in Hove she could have paid it and got a refund later.
Good morning everyone. Much, much brighter this morning, although not for poor Angela Rayner.
Poor Angela Rayner? Yes, I'm sorry for her. Not only is she going to have to resign, thus, temporarily at least, blighting a career which is otherwise an example to disadvantaged young women but out of her reduced income she is going to have to find a considerable sum of money. When did the tax position of second homes change? When did she put her place in Ashton into trust? Seems to me that she might have been caught by regulation change, although I'm quite prepared to be told I'm well up the wrong tree!
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
Rayner's problem is that she didn't learn from the old rental income issues from before she became an MP.
Or rather the lesson that she 'learned' was that she could not declare things properly and then obfuscate her way through difficulties by vaguely refer to 'advice'.
In a way Rayner has followed Boris in not realising that at a certain level you've got to do things properly.
Yes, if you are a public figure relying on reputation for probity, it doesn't matter who your advisers are, when dealing with the HMRC over difficult stuff the important thing is that you have early and clearly told the HMRC all the facts of the case and put them on notice that there is an issue to resolve.
The HMRC are not the final judge of tax liability for any of us and you can argue to matter out to your heart's content. But the principle is clear: if there is something you have not told the HMRC it is a working presumption there is something you don't want them to know and you are preferring to be the judge of your own cause.
It also needs to be on the record that you have been fully transparent with your own advisers. Once you blame the adviser, legal or financial, then you can no longer rely on the usual rules of privilege.
I would have gone with a single firm of lawyers capable of handling the tax and trust issues - and probably the purchase itself. A firm with a history and reputation for good work. Got a big file, from them, on exactly what they were going to do and why. Then *got them to do it*.
That way there would be no risk of slips due to miscommunication - and you would have the law firms reputation on your side.
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
It seems she clearly didn't seek out the best legal advice as presumably that would have been to wait a few months / rewrite the trust so that she wasn't liable for the additional 2nd home tax.
Once her child turns 18 she wouldn’t have been liable for the increased stamp duty . If she didn’t want to risk losing the flat in Hove she could have paid it and got a refund later.
Good morning everyone. Much, much brighter this morning, although not for poor Angela Rayner.
Poor Angela Rayner? Yes, I'm sorry for her. Not only is she going to have to resign, thus, temporarily at least, blighting a career which is otherwise an example to disadvantaged young women but out of her reduced income she is going to have to find a considerable sum of money. When did the tax position of second homes change? When did she put her place in Ashton into trust? Seems to me that she might have been caught by regulation change, although I'm quite prepared to be told I'm well up the wrong tree!
Why are you feeling sorry for her ?
Crucifying people who own two houses is a feature, not a bug for this gov't.
Despite the attempts by a lot of very sinister bodies to boost Reform, I'm not sure the bandwagon is going to do more than cancel out any Tory recovery. While Banks and others are out there fund raising for Reform and Dorries and others give fealty to Nigel, it all feels a bit fake somehow.
Silicon Valley shows that if you put enoughexceptEx money behind an enterprise and keep throwing it in, you can create a self-sustaining bandwagon that carries you all the way to world domination. So I’d not be so relaxed.
The 21st century is the era of oligarchy, with corrupt business leaders hand in glove with corrupt politicians to squeeze ever more out of the ordinary folk.
Reform is a con trick to raise culture wars issues to the fore so that the oligarchs can continue to fleece us. It is why Faragism, Trumpism and Putinism all look so alike.
It's the long established US GOP formula, where poor people are whipped up about guns and religion and abortion so that they vote for people who will hand over yet more power and wealth to America's super-rich.
Except Harris won the votes of the rich last year, voters earning over $100 000 a year and the poorest voters earning under $30 000 a year.
It was middle income voters who elected Trump on an anti immigration anti globalisation platform.
The super rich and corporations liked Trump's tax cuts but disliked his tariffs and are more liberal on abortion and trans and immigrants than rustbelt Trump voters.
Reform also perform poorly in the wealthiest areas of London and the Home counties
FPT overall population density is not a great metric for measuring how much room there is in a country. People in Scotland live in closer proximity to each other than people in England, despite a much lower population density.
The Netherlands actually has very high number of people living in houses rather than flats, though unlike England they are more likely to be terraced rather than detached. There is plenty of room to go around if only we didn't build these land inefficient detached houses - my tenement was built directly onto farmland in the 19th century and houses 20 people on a footprint that is now taken up by one divorced dad or a widow.
Not everyone wants to live cheek by jowl with people above and below them , we are not chickens. Any self respecting person would aspire to being detached from the great unwashed.
I'd love to have a big mansion on Barnton Avenue and a small castle in the Highlands too - but that's not going to be possible for 5.6 million people.
You can hardly call the New Town's apartments or Morningside tenements slums. Indeed, countries like Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland all have higher standards of living than we do, and a much higher proportion of people living in flats.
I grew up in Denmark, in the nicest hom,e I've ever had - 5 rooms on two floors on the top of a 8-story block with two full-time porters, nestled between a village and a town with a railway station offering fast access to the centrte (https://www.boligsiden.dk/postnummer/2800/vej/lehwaldsvej/tilsalg/ejerlejlighed). The British passion for separate houses at any price has always puzzled me, even though it's now my home, and coupled with agonising over urban sprawl it just seems strange.
When I lived in Geneva my partner wanted a house outside the city so I never got to live in the centre but I was always envious of my friends who lived in apartments in Geneva.
They were all good sized either beautiful period places with high ceilings and big floor space or large modern (60s onwards). All very soundproof. All had balconies or terraces where you could place a table and chairs for several to eat and enjoy the outside world, blocks weren’t huge high developments but blocks of 8 to ten flats with usually a big of garden around, parking underneath and often shops or cafes/restaurants on the ground floor.
Areas like Champel just outside the centre were full of these and highly sought after. I haven’t been to enough of the UK to compare the availability of these sort of residential blocks - maybe they are there and it’s just a different mental attitude that makes them less desireable in the UK. Possibly back to our Anglo-Saxon individualism.
Those sorts of blocks are common across Europe, and when they work out they become little communities; when they don't, beset with neighbour issues.
Some UK housing associations have replicated the model and you do find modern blocks of six or eight social housing flats quite commonly - but they aren't designed very well, rarely pay much attention to putting them in a decent environment (and they're usually in off-road estates rather than on the street) and it only takes a few problem social housing tenants for them to become less attractive places to live. And any councillor knows that social housing flats built relatively recently soon seem to generate tons of casework in terms of snags and repairs, often quite fundamental ones, about which housing associations vary in their willingness and speed to clear up.
What is less common here is blocks like that built for private sale.
Tice has quite often been OK in interviews, by using the tactic of answering the question, at least up to a point. This morning on R4 Today he was terrible and reverted to very obviously evading dealing with them. His diversions away from the questions were clumsy and illtempered; Robinson was using a somewhat unfair quick fire gotcha approach, but OTOH that's how it goes, and top politicians who want to run the country have to deal with it.
It was interesting comparing the interview with Danny Alexander who was being questioned on Rayner with Tice who was being questioned on Farage. It was chalk and cheese. DA was so adept you almost wanted to applaud. Tice by contrast was destroyed. Helped as you suggest by Robinson who was in a different class to the Alexander interviewer
Nah, I listened to that, DA was just avoiding giving answers. It might have worked 10 years ago but now folks are just fed up with political prevarication.
They got prevarication from both. Just one did it seamlessly like navigating a knife through butter the other was so amateurish you ended up thinking they were a couple of wide boys
Tice has quite often been OK in interviews, by using the tactic of answering the question, at least up to a point. This morning on R4 Today he was terrible and reverted to very obviously evading dealing with them. His diversions away from the questions were clumsy and illtempered; Robinson was using a somewhat unfair quick fire gotcha approach, but OTOH that's how it goes, and top politicians who want to run the country have to deal with it.
It was interesting comparing the interview with Danny Alexander who was being questioned on Rayner with Tice who was being questioned on Farage. It was chalk and cheese. DA was so adept you almost wanted to applaud. Tice by contrast was destroyed. Helped as you suggest by Robinson who was in a different class to the Alexander interviewer
Nah, I listened to that, DA was just avoiding giving answers. It might have worked 10 years ago but now folks are just fed up with political prevarication.
They got prevarication from both. Just one did it seamlessly like navigating a knife through butter the other was so amateurish you ended up thinking they were a couple of wide boys
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
Rayner's problem is that she didn't learn from the old rental income issues from before she became an MP.
Or rather the lesson that she 'learned' was that she could not declare things properly and then obfuscate her way through difficulties by vaguely refer to 'advice'.
In a way Rayner has followed Boris in not realising that at a certain level you've got to do things properly.
Yes, if you are a public figure relying on reputation for probity, it doesn't matter who your advisers are, when dealing with the HMRC over difficult stuff the important thing is that you have early and clearly told the HMRC all the facts of the case and put them on notice that there is an issue to resolve.
The HMRC are not the final judge of tax liability for any of us and you can argue to matter out to your heart's content. But the principle is clear: if there is something you have not told the HMRC it is a working presumption there is something you don't want them to know and you are preferring to be the judge of your own cause.
It also needs to be on the record that you have been fully transparent with your own advisers. Once you blame the adviser, legal or financial, then you can no longer rely on the usual rules of privilege.
I would have gone with a single firm of lawyers capable of handling the tax and trust issues - and probably the purchase itself. A firm with a history and reputation for good work. Got a big file, from them, on exactly what they were going to do and why. Then *got them to do it*.
That way there would be no risk of slips due to miscommunication - and you would have the law firms reputation on your side.
Yes, I do find it rather curious that she used a smaller firm. It probably does say some good things about her in part - that she’s not trying to be high and mighty with who she engages - but it’s a balancing act and she’s a high profile public figure (the deputy prime minister of a G7 country) with all sorts of reputational risks and a rather complicated (through no fault of her own, I might add) personal life. It shows a bit of naivety and lack of judgement, I think, to not retain a more substantial outfit and a decent accountant in that situation.
She was probably trying to save money on the conveyancing fees. The perils of making a false economy.
The Guardian are getting in on the act. Not much of a story but it gives some context to the way different people are treated by nasty rags like the Telegraph who loathe the idea of Rayner having a second home in Hove but don't blink at Farage saving the odd few hundred thousand on a tax wheeze
Have you not noticed from the US example that such blatant double standards need not be detrimental to the electoral success of individuals like Trump or Farage, Roger ?
I have noticed but my hope is that we are due a zeitgeist change and revolting characters like the two you mentioned by constant exposure become as repulsive to the public as they are to many of us at the moment. Talking of revolting people Richard Tice on a visit from Dubai is being eviscerated by Nick Robinson as I type
Reform are winning all the headlines and no matter how much anyone tries to guilt trip them it is not working
Reports from Rayner's Ashton constitutuency voters are turning against her and seem to want Reform
The reason Reform are winning is the stark fact both the conservatives and labour have failed them, and the perception is they are all the same but Reform are new
Your final paragraph is the heart of the matter.
Except...
What would success look like? I think we all agree "not like this". The catch is that it really doesn't feel clear what a realistic path to success looks like. And bluntly, Faragism looks likely to make things worse. In a "I hate this hangover so I'm going to down a bottle of gin, easy on the tonic" way.
But I don't know how to make that message in the current environment.
I read an argument recently that I found interesting and wondered what other people made of it. There are a lot of people who feel worse off, and so they're looking for reasons why, even though income growth hasn't been that bad. The explanation? Car finance.
The PCP car finance model has encouraged people to buy new cars that they can't afford. This squeezes their remaining disposable income and makes them feel a lot worse off than they are, because they've saddled themselves with a crushing debt for a depreciating asset.
This has clearly been a victory of marketing for the car manufacturers, but there have been negative consequences for society as a whole, just as there were when gambling companies worked out how effective FOBTs could be at creating gambling addicts.
I think that if the government could spin down the PCP car finance model then the voters would find they had more disposable income and would feel better for it, even if they had a lower status motor.
The car market baffles me. Despite how it feels, objectively, I'm pretty well off. I always tick one of the top two boxes in surveys. There are a lot worse off than me. And yet as a family, we run a fairly bog standard VW and an ancient Ford. Both of which we bought with money rather than finance. If you were to judge how well off we were by our cars, we would be distinctly mid range at best. It used to be that you could tell how affluent a neighbourhood you were in by the cars as much as the houses - as you crossed into Wythenshawe the cars got notably older, rustier and smaller. But no longer - walk down the street in Wythenshawe and Ardwick and you will see half a dozen newer or shinier or posher cars than I think I could afford. It's encouraging to see signs of wealth in areas like this. But also surprising that people would choose to allocate so much of their resources to a car.
I think the way a PCP is structured hides from people how much they're spending on a new car, and so they're spending more than they can afford. It's how you can reconcile the evidence of your eyes - of fancy cars in areas that you didn't think were that well off, with everyone grumbling about a cost of living crisis.
I've noticed that people asking for financial advice online, who are struggling to make expenditure match income, always have large PCP payments. They've "bought" cars with a list price of more than their annual gross salary. That's insane isn't it?
The income that should have created a feel-good feeling in the population has been securitized by car finance companies.
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
Rayner's problem is that she didn't learn from the old rental income issues from before she became an MP.
Or rather the lesson that she 'learned' was that she could not declare things properly and then obfuscate her way through difficulties by vaguely refer to 'advice'.
In a way Rayner has followed Boris in not realising that at a certain level you've got to do things properly.
Yes, if you are a public figure relying on reputation for probity, it doesn't matter who your advisers are, when dealing with the HMRC over difficult stuff the important thing is that you have early and clearly told the HMRC all the facts of the case and put them on notice that there is an issue to resolve.
The HMRC are not the final judge of tax liability for any of us and you can argue to matter out to your heart's content. But the principle is clear: if there is something you have not told the HMRC it is a working presumption there is something you don't want them to know and you are preferring to be the judge of your own cause.
It also needs to be on the record that you have been fully transparent with your own advisers. Once you blame the adviser, legal or financial, then you can no longer rely on the usual rules of privilege.
I would have gone with a single firm of lawyers capable of handling the tax and trust issues - and probably the purchase itself. A firm with a history and reputation for good work. Got a big file, from them, on exactly what they were going to do and why. Then *got them to do it*.
That way there would be no risk of slips due to miscommunication - and you would have the law firms reputation on your side.
Yes, I do find it rather curious that she used a smaller firm. It probably does say some good things about her in part - that she’s not trying to be high and mighty with who she engages - but it’s a balancing act and she’s a high profile public figure (the deputy prime minister of a G7 country) with all sorts of reputational risks and a rather complicated (through no fault of her own, I might add) personal life. It shows a bit of naivety and lack of judgement, I think, to not retain a more substantial outfit and a decent accountant in that situation.
When I had to deal with giving up US citizenship, I made sure that the firm I used had the capability to handle all aspects of the work.
I get the impression that she was trying to DIY with partial advice from professionals. I may be wrong. But when property is involved, people seem to develop strange behaviours. And often try and "save" a couple of hundred pounds, doing some quite stupid things.
FPT overall population density is not a great metric for measuring how much room there is in a country. People in Scotland live in closer proximity to each other than people in England, despite a much lower population density.
The Netherlands actually has very high number of people living in houses rather than flats, though unlike England they are more likely to be terraced rather than detached. There is plenty of room to go around if only we didn't build these land inefficient detached houses - my tenement was built directly onto farmland in the 19th century and houses 20 people on a footprint that is now taken up by one divorced dad or a widow.
Not everyone wants to live cheek by jowl with people above and below them , we are not chickens. Any self respecting person would aspire to being detached from the great unwashed.
I'd love to have a big mansion on Barnton Avenue and a small castle in the Highlands too - but that's not going to be possible for 5.6 million people.
You can hardly call the New Town's apartments or Morningside tenements slums. Indeed, countries like Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland all have higher standards of living than we do, and a much higher proportion of people living in flats.
I grew up in Denmark, in the nicest hom,e I've ever had - 5 rooms on two floors on the top of a 8-story block with two full-time porters, nestled between a village and a town with a railway station offering fast access to the centrte (https://www.boligsiden.dk/postnummer/2800/vej/lehwaldsvej/tilsalg/ejerlejlighed). The British passion for separate houses at any price has always puzzled me, even though it's now my home, and coupled with agonising over urban sprawl it just seems strange.
When I lived in Geneva my partner wanted a house outside the city so I never got to live in the centre but I was always envious of my friends who lived in apartments in Geneva.
They were all good sized either beautiful period places with high ceilings and big floor space or large modern (60s onwards). All very soundproof. All had balconies or terraces where you could place a table and chairs for several to eat and enjoy the outside world, blocks weren’t huge high developments but blocks of 8 to ten flats with usually a big of garden around, parking underneath and often shops or cafes/restaurants on the ground floor.
Areas like Champel just outside the centre were full of these and highly sought after. I haven’t been to enough of the UK to compare the availability of these sort of residential blocks - maybe they are there and it’s just a different mental attitude that makes them less desireable in the UK. Possibly back to our Anglo-Saxon individualism.
Those sorts of blocks are common across Europe, and when they work out they become little communities; when they don't, beset with neighbour issues.
Some UK housing associations have replicated the model and you do find modern blocks of six or eight social housing flats quite commonly - but they aren't designed very well, rarely pay much attention to putting them in a decent environment (and they're usually in off-road estates rather than on the street) and it only takes a few problem social housing tenants for them to become less attractive places to live. And any councillor knows that social housing flats built relatively recently soon seem to generate tons of casework in terms of snags and repairs, often quite fundamental ones, about which housing associations vary in their willingness and speed to clear up.
What is less common here is blocks like that built for private sale.
Re your last sentence I guess it’s a chicken and egg situation where if you build for private sale, people see others living there without problem tenants and having a nice lifestyle, walking out the door and the town/city are “there” but having a property nicer than a Barret House.
However Until people see others living well there then there is a risk in building them so nobody gets to see others living that lifestyle etc.
Despite the attempts by a lot of very sinister bodies to boost Reform, I'm not sure the bandwagon is going to do more than cancel out any Tory recovery. While Banks and others are out there fund raising for Reform and Dorries and others give fealty to Nigel, it all feels a bit fake somehow.
Silicon Valley shows that if you put enough money behind an enterprise and keep throwing it in, you can create a self-sustaining bandwagon that carries you all the way to world domination. So I’d not be so relaxed.
The 21st century is the era of oligarchy, with corrupt business leaders hand in glove with corrupt politicians to squeeze ever more out of the ordinary folk.
Reform is a con trick to raise culture wars issues to the fore so that the oligarchs can continue to fleece us. It is why Faragism, Trumpism and Putinism all look so alike.
The last twenty years of Labour & Tory government have transformed the country beyond recognition via mass immigration that was in no manifesto, had young boys and girls told they were in the wrong body and given puberty blockers with no pushback from mainstream politicians, not to mention the unmentionable, and people still think that any reaction to it is part of some shadowy evil plan pushed by big corporations rather than perfectly natural & understandable behaviour from people who’ve been let down and ignored by politicians who took them for granted.
Come on Sam, you are more intelligent than that.
The British people did vote for both New Labour and Johnson, as well as Brexit.
All were explicit about the importance of immigration to Britain, indeed Brexit was pushed in places like Leicester and Birmingham as a way to level the playing field and make it easier for Commonwealth migrants to replace EU ones.
Similarly the Cameron and May governments were explicit about liberalism attitudes to gays and Transgender folk. Self ID was proposed under a Conservative government.
You may well have voted differently, or for these parties for other issues but they certainly were voted for by the British public.
I didn’t say they weren’t voted for by the British public, not sure where you got that from. My point is the policies that changed the country irrevocably ran opposite to the pledges in their manifesto’s. I wholeheartedly disagree that any party was elected this century on a promise to increase immigration, and the idea that Brexit was voted for to do so is lunacy
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
It seems she clearly didn't seek out the best legal advice as presumably that would have been to wait a few months / rewrite the trust so that she wasn't liable for the additional 2nd home tax.
Once her child turns 18 she wouldn’t have been liable for the increased stamp duty . If she didn’t want to risk losing the flat in Hove she could have paid it and got a refund later.
Good morning everyone. Much, much brighter this morning, although not for poor Angela Rayner.
Poor Angela Rayner? Yes, I'm sorry for her. Not only is she going to have to resign, thus, temporarily at least, blighting a career which is otherwise an example to disadvantaged young women but out of her reduced income she is going to have to find a considerable sum of money. When did the tax position of second homes change? When did she put her place in Ashton into trust? Seems to me that she might have been caught by regulation change, although I'm quite prepared to be told I'm well up the wrong tree!
Why are you feeling sorry for her ?
Crucifying people who own two houses is a feature, not a bug for this gov't.
Because, as I said, she's dragged herself up by her own bootstraps and now it's all collapsing about her. I don't think she'd ever have made PM but she could have stayed a senior member of the government for as long as she wished, so long as Labour were in power.
The Guardian are getting in on the act. Not much of a story but it gives some context to the way different people are treated by nasty rags like the Telegraph who loathe the idea of Rayner having a second home in Hove but don't blink at Farage saving the odd few hundred thousand on a tax wheeze
Have you not noticed from the US example that such blatant double standards need not be detrimental to the electoral success of individuals like Trump or Farage, Roger ?
I have noticed but my hope is that we are due a zeitgeist change and revolting characters like the two you mentioned by constant exposure become as repulsive to the public as they are to many of us at the moment. Talking of revolting people Richard Tice on a visit from Dubai is being eviscerated by Nick Robinson as I type
Reform are winning all the headlines and no matter how much anyone tries to guilt trip them it is not working
Reports from Rayner's Ashton constitutuency voters are turning against her and seem to want Reform
The reason Reform are winning is the stark fact both the conservatives and labour have failed them, and the perception is they are all the same but Reform are new
Your final paragraph is the heart of the matter.
Except...
What would success look like? I think we all agree "not like this". The catch is that it really doesn't feel clear what a realistic path to success looks like. And bluntly, Faragism looks likely to make things worse. In a "I hate this hangover so I'm going to down a bottle of gin, easy on the tonic" way.
But I don't know how to make that message in the current environment.
I read an argument recently that I found interesting and wondered what other people made of it. There are a lot of people who feel worse off, and so they're looking for reasons why, even though income growth hasn't been that bad. The explanation? Car finance.
The PCP car finance model has encouraged people to buy new cars that they can't afford. This squeezes their remaining disposable income and makes them feel a lot worse off than they are, because they've saddled themselves with a crushing debt for a depreciating asset.
This has clearly been a victory of marketing for the car manufacturers, but there have been negative consequences for society as a whole, just as there were when gambling companies worked out how effective FOBTs could be at creating gambling addicts.
I think that if the government could spin down the PCP car finance model then the voters would find they had more disposable income and would feel better for it, even if they had a lower status motor.
The car market baffles me. Despite how it feels, objectively, I'm pretty well off. I always tick one of the top two boxes in surveys. There are a lot worse off than me. And yet as a family, we run a fairly bog standard VW and an ancient Ford. Both of which we bought with money rather than finance. If you were to judge how well off we were by our cars, we would be distinctly mid range at best. It used to be that you could tell how affluent a neighbourhood you were in by the cars as much as the houses - as you crossed into Wythenshawe the cars got notably older, rustier and smaller. But no longer - walk down the street in Wythenshawe and Ardwick and you will see half a dozen newer or shinier or posher cars than I think I could afford. It's encouraging to see signs of wealth in areas like this. But also surprising that people would choose to allocate so much of their resources to a car.
I think the way a PCP is structured hides from people how much they're spending on a new car, and so they're spending more than they can afford. It's how you can reconcile the evidence of your eyes - of fancy cars in areas that you didn't think were that well off, with everyone grumbling about a cost of living crisis.
I've noticed that people asking for financial advice online, who are struggling to make expenditure match income, always have large PCP payments. They've "bought" cars with a list price of more than their annual gross salary. That's insane isn't it?
The income that should have created a feel-good feeling in the population has been securitized by car finance companies.
I recall one expert being interviewed on TV - he suggested that the products should be forced to be sold as "Car Mortgages". Because that might get the message across about the vast amounts of money in the long term.
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
It seems she clearly didn't seek out the best legal advice as presumably that would have been to wait a few months / rewrite the trust so that she wasn't liable for the additional 2nd home tax.
Once her child turns 18 she wouldn’t have been liable for the increased stamp duty . If she didn’t want to risk losing the flat in Hove she could have paid it and got a refund later.
Good morning everyone. Much, much brighter this morning, although not for poor Angela Rayner.
Poor Angela Rayner? Yes, I'm sorry for her. Not only is she going to have to resign, thus, temporarily at least, blighting a career which is otherwise an example to disadvantaged young women but out of her reduced income she is going to have to find a considerable sum of money. When did the tax position of second homes change? When did she put her place in Ashton into trust? Seems to me that she might have been caught by regulation change, although I'm quite prepared to be told I'm well up the wrong tree!
Why are you feeling sorry for her ?
Crucifying people who own two houses is a feature, not a bug for this gov't.
Because, as I said, she's dragged herself up by her own bootstraps and now it's all collapsing about her. I don't think she'd ever have made PM but she could have stayed a senior member of the government for as long as she wished, so long as Labour were in power.
Female Northern Working class Progressed through public sector Improved her standing
Im always amazed that the people who push this line - and rightly - cant apply the same rules to Nadine Dorries
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
It seems she clearly didn't seek out the best legal advice as presumably that would have been to wait a few months / rewrite the trust so that she wasn't liable for the additional 2nd home tax.
Once her child turns 18 she wouldn’t have been liable for the increased stamp duty . If she didn’t want to risk losing the flat in Hove she could have paid it and got a refund later.
Good morning everyone. Much, much brighter this morning, although not for poor Angela Rayner.
Poor Angela Rayner? Yes, I'm sorry for her. Not only is she going to have to resign, thus, temporarily at least, blighting a career which is otherwise an example to disadvantaged young women but out of her reduced income she is going to have to find a considerable sum of money. When did the tax position of second homes change? When did she put her place in Ashton into trust? Seems to me that she might have been caught by regulation change, although I'm quite prepared to be told I'm well up the wrong tree!
Why are you feeling sorry for her ?
Crucifying people who own two houses is a feature, not a bug for this gov't.
Yes, their war on second homes is producing the wrong sort of casualties.
Lots of MPs (and journalists, media personalities, Royalty and oligarchs) have multiple homes. The witchhunt for dubious tax declarations is only just beginning.
Starmer doesn’t want a deputy leadership contest which is likely to be won by the most left wing candidate and could cause him a lot of problems .
If Rayner hasn’t broken the ministerial code he should keep her .
I know it might be jumping the gun but do people here, who know more about Labour than I do, have a prospective list of who the different wings would coalesce behind if it came to needing a new DPM?
Despite the attempts by a lot of very sinister bodies to boost Reform, I'm not sure the bandwagon is going to do more than cancel out any Tory recovery. While Banks and others are out there fund raising for Reform and Dorries and others give fealty to Nigel, it all feels a bit fake somehow.
Silicon Valley shows that if you put enough money behind an enterprise and keep throwing it in, you can create a self-sustaining bandwagon that carries you all the way to world domination. So I’d not be so relaxed.
The 21st century is the era of oligarchy, with corrupt business leaders hand in glove with corrupt politicians to squeeze ever more out of the ordinary folk.
Reform is a con trick to raise culture wars issues to the fore so that the oligarchs can continue to fleece us. It is why Faragism, Trumpism and Putinism all look so alike.
The last twenty years of Labour & Tory government have transformed the country beyond recognition via mass immigration that was in no manifesto, had young boys and girls told they were in the wrong body and given puberty blockers with no pushback from mainstream politicians, not to mention the unmentionable, and people still think that any reaction to it is part of some shadowy evil plan pushed by big corporations rather than perfectly natural & understandable behaviour from people who’ve been let down and ignored by politicians who took them for granted.
Short answer, no.
Most people were reasonably content as long as the economy delivered - you can get away with a lot if you are delivering growth and prosperity, if people feel they are better off and doing well and their children will be better off as a result.
That was delivered, more or less, with a few interruptions, for three generations after 1945 but the wheels came off that wagon in 2008 and you can chart a lot of what has happened from those events.
Mass immigration has become an issue as much because the wave of cheap labour has failed to deliver the economic growth previous such examples provided. Five of the last three economic booms have been delivered by cheap labour and as long as everyone has work and is making good money no one really cares from where their co-worker originates.
The GFC was the failure of the economic model we had followed since the 1970s and there's been no replacement as of yet. We have stagnated (largely) for the last 17 years and the key part of it is not that people don't feel better off themselves (most people are pretty resilient) but they have no confidcnce the world their children will inherit will be any better. We all want our children to have a better life than we had (and will sacrifice enormously to achieve that if we can). The breaking of that promise has got us where we are.
Get back to 4-5% annual growth and a lot of the culture issues and concerns about immigration will melt away but no one has a route to that economic nirvana currently and in the absence of prosperity, everyone is looking for someone to blame, the Government, the immigrants etc, etc.
The long run of low inflation was partly due to wages being held back (much cheaper services) but also the collapse in prices of consumer goods. There was deflation on the price of TVs, for example, over a long period. This was down to the exporting of a great deal of the work to the Far East. This long collapse in prices has stopped and even reversed.
TV deflation has something to do with lower labour costs & but lot more to do with the fact that TV manufacture is now carried out at huge scales using plants that draw from semiconductor manufacturing & float glass techniques.
She wasn't much cop as Home Secretary, but the last honourable resignation I can think of in cabinet was probably Amber Rudd. All the others have either gone far too late, stayed on when they shouldn't, were part of a mass change of ministry due to a new PM or were about attempting to get rid of the then PM.
LDM 41.3% [-36.3] Reform 36.2% [New] Labour 11.1% [-11.3] Con 6.7% [New] Grn 3.8% [New] Ind 0.8% [New]
On the face of it virtually all Reform's votes came from the Lib Dems
I assume someone can explain this
Looks like LDs were the NOTA and/or anti-Labour option last time as the Tories weren’t standing. Good to have retained the seat in what on the face of it isn’t a very Lib Demmy looking ward.
Next time I expect the Labour vote will shrink to near zero if it’s perceived as a LD-Ref fight.
Morning all. Stopsley is very Lib Demmy vote wise. There were boundary changes priot to 2022 but Lib Dems have held the ward named Stopsley throughout the 21st century with big majorities. That said its a good hold but shows the LD anti Reform sauce is much more effective in the more Lib Dem friendly demographic areas of leafy sleepy shiretown Its poor for Labour and its a shocker for the Tories - under the old boundaries theyd slways at least beat Labour and get a decent % towards 30%. Dont take a cycle off!
It goes to show how fickle the voters are - okay, some will have moved in from other places and former residents have moved out - but the notion of two immutable tribes of voters who would always vote the same whatever, whenever and wherever has gone for ever. Every vote has to be earned whether that's through local activity or through riding a wave of general discontent or disllusion and past loyalties are proving ephemeral.
As it was for the LDs, the question for Reform will be whether they can hold the gains achieved when the tide is rising when the tide goes out or slackens but that's for another day.
Stopsley is more naturally Reform than Lib Dem. It’s quite prosperous, but not posh, like the typical Lib Dem seat. It’s 75% white, and more like a large village than part of Luton.
Essentially, the Lib Dem vote is the anti-Labour vote which they used to get in places like Rochdale or Oldham. I expect Reform will gain the ward in 2027.
FPT overall population density is not a great metric for measuring how much room there is in a country. People in Scotland live in closer proximity to each other than people in England, despite a much lower population density.
The Netherlands actually has very high number of people living in houses rather than flats, though unlike England they are more likely to be terraced rather than detached. There is plenty of room to go around if only we didn't build these land inefficient detached houses - my tenement was built directly onto farmland in the 19th century and houses 20 people on a footprint that is now taken up by one divorced dad or a widow.
Not everyone wants to live cheek by jowl with people above and below them , we are not chickens. Any self respecting person would aspire to being detached from the great unwashed.
I'd love to have a big mansion on Barnton Avenue and a small castle in the Highlands too - but that's not going to be possible for 5.6 million people.
You can hardly call the New Town's apartments or Morningside tenements slums. Indeed, countries like Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland all have higher standards of living than we do, and a much higher proportion of people living in flats.
I grew up in Denmark, in the nicest hom,e I've ever had - 5 rooms on two floors on the top of a 8-story block with two full-time porters, nestled between a village and a town with a railway station offering fast access to the centrte (https://www.boligsiden.dk/postnummer/2800/vej/lehwaldsvej/tilsalg/ejerlejlighed). The British passion for separate houses at any price has always puzzled me, even though it's now my home, and coupled with agonising over urban sprawl it just seems strange.
When I lived in Geneva my partner wanted a house outside the city so I never got to live in the centre but I was always envious of my friends who lived in apartments in Geneva.
They were all good sized either beautiful period places with high ceilings and big floor space or large modern (60s onwards). All very soundproof. All had balconies or terraces where you could place a table and chairs for several to eat and enjoy the outside world, blocks weren’t huge high developments but blocks of 8 to ten flats with usually a big of garden around, parking underneath and often shops or cafes/restaurants on the ground floor.
Areas like Champel just outside the centre were full of these and highly sought after. I haven’t been to enough of the UK to compare the availability of these sort of residential blocks - maybe they are there and it’s just a different mental attitude that makes them less desireable in the UK. Possibly back to our Anglo-Saxon individualism.
Those sorts of blocks are common across Europe, and when they work out they become little communities; when they don't, beset with neighbour issues.
Some UK housing associations have replicated the model and you do find modern blocks of six or eight social housing flats quite commonly - but they aren't designed very well, rarely pay much attention to putting them in a decent environment (and they're usually in off-road estates rather than on the street) and it only takes a few problem social housing tenants for them to become less attractive places to live. And any councillor knows that social housing flats built relatively recently soon seem to generate tons of casework in terms of snags and repairs, often quite fundamental ones, about which housing associations vary in their willingness and speed to clear up.
What is less common here is blocks like that built for private sale.
Re your last sentence I guess it’s a chicken and egg situation where if you build for private sale, people see others living there without problem tenants and having a nice lifestyle, walking out the door and the town/city are “there” but having a property nicer than a Barret House.
However Until people see others living well there then there is a risk in building them so nobody gets to see others living that lifestyle etc.
There is plenty of flats in big cities. London has a high rise planned for every patch of land where it's allowed. Manchester is well on it's way to that road. Birmingham is trying to join the fun.
What people want, who move to smaller places or the countryside, is less density. They want more space to live in.
It's worth noting the hell that some people went through, in lockdown, living in tiny flats which were designed as a place for sleeping and maybe eating your takeaway. They were designed for you to live your life elsewhere. And people lived in them for 2 years.
The Guardian are getting in on the act. Not much of a story but it gives some context to the way different people are treated by nasty rags like the Telegraph who loathe the idea of Rayner having a second home in Hove but don't blink at Farage saving the odd few hundred thousand on a tax wheeze
Good to see that the Guardian still don’t understand personal service companies, the difference between corporation tax and income tax, nor employer NI.
They just don’t like it that Farage is earning money from GB News.
There was a discussion yesterday about the relevance of what Labour politicians said about Tory misdemeanours in opposition to behaviour of Labour in govt. Many said it was irrelevant, but I think it is actually the most important thing
Your man in the street wouldn’t normally be that bothered by somebody avoiding stamp duty in the way Rayner has because, let’s face it, we’d all do it if we could. The crime in the eyes of voters is the chasm between the morally superior, pious tone adopted in the last parliament by ‘Mr Rules & Integrity’ and the realisation that they’re all at it. It has been shown for what it always was - a hammily acted pretence designed to fool voters. That’s where the anger comes from
Maybe it has changed, but I had the impression that in Britain most people choose to obey the rules, that this is one reason why we're such curtain-twitchers anxious to ensure that everyone else is also following the rules, and that this is something that sets us apart from countries like Greece, which struggle to collect taxes, because in those countries people take it for granted that following the rules is optional.
But Rayner probably thought she was following the rules; she was trying to dodge tax legally by changing the names on other properties. The snag is that, as well as the plan not working, she has been full on for years about Tories using schemes/plans/ruses to not pay the same amount of tax as ‘working people’, and now it looks like she’s at it
I don't mean following the rules in a legalistic sense, but in the spirit of them, in a common-sense understanding. This is why most people are so annoyed by tax avoidance, and the tax evasion vs avoidance distinction doesn't convince most people (compared to people on here).
Starmer doesn’t want a deputy leadership contest which is likely to be won by the most left wing candidate and could cause him a lot of problems .
If Rayner hasn’t broken the ministerial code he should keep her .
I'm not sure that's right. Many very left-wing members have now left the Labour Party, and I think that the majority of members would prefer a 'soft left' to a 'hard left' deputy leader. The party has changed since Jezza's time.
Despite the attempts by a lot of very sinister bodies to boost Reform, I'm not sure the bandwagon is going to do more than cancel out any Tory recovery. While Banks and others are out there fund raising for Reform and Dorries and others give fealty to Nigel, it all feels a bit fake somehow.
Silicon Valley shows that if you put enough money behind an enterprise and keep throwing it in, you can create a self-sustaining bandwagon that carries you all the way to world domination. So I’d not be so relaxed.
The 21st century is the era of oligarchy, with corrupt business leaders hand in glove with corrupt politicians to squeeze ever more out of the ordinary folk.
Reform is a con trick to raise culture wars issues to the fore so that the oligarchs can continue to fleece us. It is why Faragism, Trumpism and Putinism all look so alike.
The last twenty years of Labour & Tory government have transformed the country beyond recognition via mass immigration that was in no manifesto, had young boys and girls told they were in the wrong body and given puberty blockers with no pushback from mainstream politicians, not to mention the unmentionable, and people still think that any reaction to it is part of some shadowy evil plan pushed by big corporations rather than perfectly natural & understandable behaviour from people who’ve been let down and ignored by politicians who took them for granted.
Come on Sam, you are more intelligent than that.
The British people did vote for both New Labour and Johnson, as well as Brexit.
All were explicit about the importance of immigration to Britain, indeed Brexit was pushed in places like Leicester and Birmingham as a way to level the playing field and make it easier for Commonwealth migrants to replace EU ones.
Similarly the Cameron and May governments were explicit about liberalism attitudes to gays and Transgender folk. Self ID was proposed under a Conservative government.
You may well have voted differently, or for these parties for other issues but they certainly were voted for by the British public.
I didn’t say they weren’t voted for by the British public, not sure where you got that from. My point is the policies that changed the country irrevocably ran opposite to the pledges in their manifesto’s. I wholeheartedly disagree that any party was elected this century on a promise to increase immigration, and the idea that Brexit was voted for to do so is lunacy
I do not recall any pledge by the Conservatives, in 2019, to push net immigration up to 900,000 p.a.
The Guardian are getting in on the act. Not much of a story but it gives some context to the way different people are treated by nasty rags like the Telegraph who loathe the idea of Rayner having a second home in Hove but don't blink at Farage saving the odd few hundred thousand on a tax wheeze
Good to see that the Guardian still don’t understand personal service companies, the difference between corporation tax and income tax, nor employer NI.
They just don’t like it that Farage is earning money from GB News.
If we bin all the politicians using personal companies for paid appearances, the front benches are going be empty.
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
It seems she clearly didn't seek out the best legal advice as presumably that would have been to wait a few months / rewrite the trust so that she wasn't liable for the additional 2nd home tax.
Once her child turns 18 she wouldn’t have been liable for the increased stamp duty . If she didn’t want to risk losing the flat in Hove she could have paid it and got a refund later.
Good morning everyone. Much, much brighter this morning, although not for poor Angela Rayner.
Poor Angela Rayner? Yes, I'm sorry for her. Not only is she going to have to resign, thus, temporarily at least, blighting a career which is otherwise an example to disadvantaged young women but out of her reduced income she is going to have to find a considerable sum of money. When did the tax position of second homes change? When did she put her place in Ashton into trust? Seems to me that she might have been caught by regulation change, although I'm quite prepared to be told I'm well up the wrong tree!
Why are you feeling sorry for her ?
Crucifying people who own two houses is a feature, not a bug for this gov't.
Because, as I said, she's dragged herself up by her own bootstraps and now it's all collapsing about her. I don't think she'd ever have made PM but she could have stayed a senior member of the government for as long as she wished, so long as Labour were in power.
Many many politicians have had humiliating downfalls, almost always self induced. It’s part of the job description for a politician and it still surprises me how many fall so easily into the rank hypocrisy trap.
That said, there’s something in the idea that it’s easier to weather a political fall from grace if you’ve grown up with the security of knowing you’ll always have assets, employment and wealthy relatives to bail you out. Bouncing back is easier then.
The post downfall grift circuit is easier too if you’re either far right, where social media riches and the warm embrace of the MAGA billionaires await, or far left where there’s a decent salary to be had from Novara and the like, or presentable centrist where so long as the downfall wasn’t too egregious, the corporate world beckons. Soft left non-corporate Labour is possibly the worst starting point. All you have is podcasts.
FPT overall population density is not a great metric for measuring how much room there is in a country. People in Scotland live in closer proximity to each other than people in England, despite a much lower population density.
The Netherlands actually has very high number of people living in houses rather than flats, though unlike England they are more likely to be terraced rather than detached. There is plenty of room to go around if only we didn't build these land inefficient detached houses - my tenement was built directly onto farmland in the 19th century and houses 20 people on a footprint that is now taken up by one divorced dad or a widow.
Not everyone wants to live cheek by jowl with people above and below them , we are not chickens. Any self respecting person would aspire to being detached from the great unwashed.
I'd love to have a big mansion on Barnton Avenue and a small castle in the Highlands too - but that's not going to be possible for 5.6 million people.
You can hardly call the New Town's apartments or Morningside tenements slums. Indeed, countries like Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland all have higher standards of living than we do, and a much higher proportion of people living in flats.
I grew up in Denmark, in the nicest hom,e I've ever had - 5 rooms on two floors on the top of a 8-story block with two full-time porters, nestled between a village and a town with a railway station offering fast access to the centrte (https://www.boligsiden.dk/postnummer/2800/vej/lehwaldsvej/tilsalg/ejerlejlighed). The British passion for separate houses at any price has always puzzled me, even though it's now my home, and coupled with agonising over urban sprawl it just seems strange.
When I lived in Geneva my partner wanted a house outside the city so I never got to live in the centre but I was always envious of my friends who lived in apartments in Geneva.
They were all good sized either beautiful period places with high ceilings and big floor space or large modern (60s onwards). All very soundproof. All had balconies or terraces where you could place a table and chairs for several to eat and enjoy the outside world, blocks weren’t huge high developments but blocks of 8 to ten flats with usually a big of garden around, parking underneath and often shops or cafes/restaurants on the ground floor.
Areas like Champel just outside the centre were full of these and highly sought after. I haven’t been to enough of the UK to compare the availability of these sort of residential blocks - maybe they are there and it’s just a different mental attitude that makes them less desireable in the UK. Possibly back to our Anglo-Saxon individualism.
Those sorts of blocks are common across Europe, and when they work out they become little communities; when they don't, beset with neighbour issues.
Some UK housing associations have replicated the model and you do find modern blocks of six or eight social housing flats quite commonly - but they aren't designed very well, rarely pay much attention to putting them in a decent environment (and they're usually in off-road estates rather than on the street) and it only takes a few problem social housing tenants for them to become less attractive places to live. And any councillor knows that social housing flats built relatively recently soon seem to generate tons of casework in terms of snags and repairs, often quite fundamental ones, about which housing associations vary in their willingness and speed to clear up.
What is less common here is blocks like that built for private sale.
Re your last sentence I guess it’s a chicken and egg situation where if you build for private sale, people see others living there without problem tenants and having a nice lifestyle, walking out the door and the town/city are “there” but having a property nicer than a Barret House.
However Until people see others living well there then there is a risk in building them so nobody gets to see others living that lifestyle etc.
Mansion blocks - even ones with lovely balconies - are not really suitable for families. Nowhere to play outside, having to lug prams and loads of shopping up stairs - unless there is a decent lift -etc.,. I grew up in a 4th floor flat in Naples - a beautiful flat with large rooms and high ceilings, the neighbours couldn't be heard and so on. But as a child it meant a very indoor life - and I loved it when I could be outside in a garden in England and on my relatives' farm in Ireland. Gardens are a real necessity for families. @NickPalmer does not have children and, I'm sure he will forgive me for saying this, scarcely knows what a plant is. Wanting some space is perfectly understandable.
What we do not do well in this country is build the sort of solid beautiful mansion blocks common in some parts of London and very common in the Continent., which would be suitable for those without families, older people, single people etc.,. A lot of flats are poorly built, insulated, cramped etc - plus leasehold and useless managing agents - make them a bit of a nightmare.
£2k/hour to appear on GB News seems more like an undisclosed political donation than a genuine appearance fee. Just another example of how rich rightwing fanatics like GB News owner Marshall are distorting the political conversation.
Nigel Farage had a programme on GB News long before his re-entry into the political fray. You just can't bear the fact that someone who you bitterly oppose is doing well.
If you're not worried about the man who could be PM in four years taking oodles of cash (that he's fuelling through a tax avoidance corporate vehicle) from a shadowy billionaire who is also buying up vast swathes of the UK media landscape, then you should be.
The Guardian article is (deliberately?) misleading - if you funnel your income into a ltd company like this then you pay 25% corporation tax, but then you have to pay dividend taxes on top - 8.75% if you’re a lower rate income tax payer & a painful 33.75% if you’re higher rate.
So a higher rate taxpayer pays ~50% on their marginal income paying themselves this way. A lower rate one pays 31.5%. If you compare with the total tax take for a salaried employee you’ll find the figures are roughly comparable - an employee earning £50k pays 30% of their total cost of employment in taxes (income tax + NI + employers NI) and the marginal rate for a high income earner is 40-45% plus 15% employers NI on top.
Dividend taxes used to be much lower & it was a huge tax advantage to structure your income through a ltd company. These days, after administration costs you’re probably slightly worse off, but you do get the advantage of being able to structure your income in whatever way you choose, including the ability to spread lumpy income across multiple tax years which can make it worth the effort for some people.
If you play fast & loose with the corporate credit card you can push some of that income through as expenses of course, but you’re asking for trouble if HMRC ever comes knocking.
That's not quite right either - Corp tax is only 25% for companies making a profit over £250k. It's 19% up to £50k then a sliding scale between the too.
So if you get £50k income or less channeled through a ltd, it's 27.75%. You get the first £12.7k as as tax free PAYE, although there is still employers NI on it.
It's also very tax efficient to dump the money into a pension from a ltd, but obviously you can only get the money back out again once you are old enough to retire.
All of this is of course full of perverse incentives - e.g. if you have a business that makes zero profit some years and £100k others, it's very much in your interest to cook to books so it makes £50k every year instead.
I have a business which on paper has substantial retained earnings - my accountant told me to take dividends out so my earnings total £50k every year (even if the cash to do so doesn't exist and therefore the dividend just becomes a directors loan to the business) partly on the basis that if the taxation regime changes it will almost certainly only get worse, and mostly because you pay far less tax by taking £50k each year than £0 for two years and £150k the next.
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
It seems she clearly didn't seek out the best legal advice as presumably that would have been to wait a few months / rewrite the trust so that she wasn't liable for the additional 2nd home tax.
Once her child turns 18 she wouldn’t have been liable for the increased stamp duty . If she didn’t want to risk losing the flat in Hove she could have paid it and got a refund later.
Good morning everyone. Much, much brighter this morning, although not for poor Angela Rayner.
Poor Angela Rayner? Yes, I'm sorry for her. Not only is she going to have to resign, thus, temporarily at least, blighting a career which is otherwise an example to disadvantaged young women but out of her reduced income she is going to have to find a considerable sum of money. When did the tax position of second homes change? When did she put her place in Ashton into trust? Seems to me that she might have been caught by regulation change, although I'm quite prepared to be told I'm well up the wrong tree!
Why are you feeling sorry for her ?
Crucifying people who own two houses is a feature, not a bug for this gov't.
Because, as I said, she's dragged herself up by her own bootstraps and now it's all collapsing about her. I don't think she'd ever have made PM but she could have stayed a senior member of the government for as long as she wished, so long as Labour were in power.
Female Northern Working class Progressed through public sector Improved her standing
Im always amazed that the people who push this line - and rightly - cant apply the same rules to Nadine Dorries
Of course one can. I's just that Dorries came to some (IMHO) damn silly conclusions. However, YMMV!
She wasn't much cop as Home Secretary, but the last honourable resignation I can think of in cabinet was probably Amber Rudd. All the others have either gone far too late, stayed on when they shouldn't or were about attempting to get rid of the then PM.
Louise Haigh resigned both quickly and gracefully from this government.
A pity, as she was one of the most articulate and effective ministers.
Nick Robinson just asked John Curtice if the BBC giving a platform to Farage & Reform was responsible for their popularity; presumably hoping to hear the polling guru say a resounding "no".
Instead, Curtice said, "it's not just that, it's also how he uses it"
So the answer's clearly yes.
#r4today
The BBC is guilty on several fronts over the last decade or so
Treating Nigel Lawson as if he is as qualified as actual climate scientists Giving Farage and his various parties far more coverage than their then representation / polling warranted EDL / Tommy Robinson - Newsnight did a profile several years ago, think it was Katie Razzall
Enoch Powell was correct when he said that a politician complaining about the media is like a ship’s captain complaining about the sea.
They bring out the worst in each other.
The only saving grace about the UK media is that they’re not as bad as the US media. OFCOM rules on TV political news actually work well. See MSNBC and Fox News for what it looks like without rules.
Isn't there a complete lack of evidence as to what they were, whether that's armed pirates or narco terrorists?
Piracy is a word for a felony committed at sea, so narco terrorists are also pirates.
I have seen no-one suggest they were merely enjoying the right of innocent passage.
The main suggestion is that having 13 people on a smallish boat would be very odd if they were smuggling drugs. It's possible that they were people smugglers or even refugees from the Venezuelan regime that Trump & co are so vociferously negative towards. Of course we'll probably never know and will just have to take the word of that paragon of truthiness, Hegseth.
Either way, their execution was unlawful.
Those pirates are always so courteous to their victims as well, shocking.
Despite the attempts by a lot of very sinister bodies to boost Reform, I'm not sure the bandwagon is going to do more than cancel out any Tory recovery. While Banks and others are out there fund raising for Reform and Dorries and others give fealty to Nigel, it all feels a bit fake somehow.
Silicon Valley shows that if you put enough money behind an enterprise and keep throwing it in, you can create a self-sustaining bandwagon that carries you all the way to world domination. So I’d not be so relaxed.
The 21st century is the era of oligarchy, with corrupt business leaders hand in glove with corrupt politicians to squeeze ever more out of the ordinary folk.
Reform is a con trick to raise culture wars issues to the fore so that the oligarchs can continue to fleece us. It is why Faragism, Trumpism and Putinism all look so alike.
The last twenty years of Labour & Tory government have transformed the country beyond recognition via mass immigration that was in no manifesto, had young boys and girls told they were in the wrong body and given puberty blockers with no pushback from mainstream politicians, not to mention the unmentionable, and people still think that any reaction to it is part of some shadowy evil plan pushed by big corporations rather than perfectly natural & understandable behaviour from people who’ve been let down and ignored by politicians who took them for granted.
Short answer, no.
Most people were reasonably content as long as the economy delivered - you can get away with a lot if you are delivering growth and prosperity, if people feel they are better off and doing well and their children will be better off as a result.
That was delivered, more or less, with a few interruptions, for three generations after 1945 but the wheels came off that wagon in 2008 and you can chart a lot of what has happened from those events.
Mass immigration has become an issue as much because the wave of cheap labour has failed to deliver the economic growth previous such examples provided. Five of the last three economic booms have been delivered by cheap labour and as long as everyone has work and is making good money no one really cares from where their co-worker originates.
The GFC was the failure of the economic model we had followed since the 1970s and there's been no replacement as of yet. We have stagnated (largely) for the last 17 years and the key part of it is not that people don't feel better off themselves (most people are pretty resilient) but they have no confidcnce the world their children will inherit will be any better. We all want our children to have a better life than we had (and will sacrifice enormously to achieve that if we can). The breaking of that promise has got us where we are.
Get back to 4-5% annual growth and a lot of the culture issues and concerns about immigration will melt away but no one has a route to that economic nirvana currently and in the absence of prosperity, everyone is looking for someone to blame, the Government, the immigrants etc, etc.
The long run of low inflation was partly due to wages being held back (much cheaper services) but also the collapse in prices of consumer goods. There was deflation on the price of TVs, for example, over a long period. This was down to the exporting of a great deal of the work to the Far East. This long collapse in prices has stopped and even reversed.
TV deflation has something to do with lower labour costs & but lot more to do with the fact that TV manufacture is now carried out at huge scales using plants that draw from semiconductor manufacturing & float glass techniques.
Oh sure - it was both - the more to Far East included a lot of automation and new processes. Easier to setup a new company to do new things, than change an existing one to do new things. See the last days of the British mass shipbuilding industry. And see the proliferation of "dark factories" in the Far East - no need to even have lights on.
She wasn't much cop as Home Secretary, but the last honourable resignation I can think of in cabinet was probably Amber Rudd. All the others have either gone far too late, stayed on when they shouldn't or were about attempting to get rid of the then PM.
Louise Haigh resigned both quickly and gracefully from this government.
A pity, as she was one of the most articulate and effective ministers.
Ah yes I forgot about that one- as I expect has everyone else, which shows how a swift resignation gets rid of a bad story from folk memory. Rayner OTOH remaining as Deputy PM into the next election is going to be an absolute gift for every other party.
Quick & honourable resignations seemed to evaporate with the Johnson & Sunak ministries - always someone or other clinging on for dear life when they really should have gone. Part of the reason they were trounced last GE.
LDM 41.3% [-36.3] Reform 36.2% [New] Labour 11.1% [-11.3] Con 6.7% [New] Grn 3.8% [New] Ind 0.8% [New]
On the face of it virtually all Reform's votes came from the Lib Dems
I assume someone can explain this
Looks like LDs were the NOTA and/or anti-Labour option last time as the Tories weren’t standing. Good to have retained the seat in what on the face of it isn’t a very Lib Demmy looking ward.
Next time I expect the Labour vote will shrink to near zero if it’s perceived as a LD-Ref fight.
Morning all. Stopsley is very Lib Demmy vote wise. There were boundary changes priot to 2022 but Lib Dems have held the ward named Stopsley throughout the 21st century with big majorities. That said its a good hold but shows the LD anti Reform sauce is much more effective in the more Lib Dem friendly demographic areas of leafy sleepy shiretown Its poor for Labour and its a shocker for the Tories - under the old boundaries theyd slways at least beat Labour and get a decent % towards 30%. Dont take a cycle off!
It goes to show how fickle the voters are - okay, some will have moved in from other places and former residents have moved out - but the notion of two immutable tribes of voters who would always vote the same whatever, whenever and wherever has gone for ever. Every vote has to be earned whether that's through local activity or through riding a wave of general discontent or disllusion and past loyalties are proving ephemeral.
As it was for the LDs, the question for Reform will be whether they can hold the gains achieved when the tide is rising when the tide goes out or slackens but that's for another day.
Stopsley is more naturally Reform than Lib Dem. It’s quite prosperous, but not posh, like the typical Lib Dem seat. It’s 75% white, and more like a large village than part of Luton.
Essentially, the Lib Dem vote is the anti-Labour vote which they used to get in places like Rochdale or Oldham. I expect Reform will gain the ward in 2027.
I believe I read that it is one of those places with a Liberal tradition. It had Liberal councillors in the Seventies.
FPT overall population density is not a great metric for measuring how much room there is in a country. People in Scotland live in closer proximity to each other than people in England, despite a much lower population density.
The Netherlands actually has very high number of people living in houses rather than flats, though unlike England they are more likely to be terraced rather than detached. There is plenty of room to go around if only we didn't build these land inefficient detached houses - my tenement was built directly onto farmland in the 19th century and houses 20 people on a footprint that is now taken up by one divorced dad or a widow.
Not everyone wants to live cheek by jowl with people above and below them , we are not chickens. Any self respecting person would aspire to being detached from the great unwashed.
I'd love to have a big mansion on Barnton Avenue and a small castle in the Highlands too - but that's not going to be possible for 5.6 million people.
You can hardly call the New Town's apartments or Morningside tenements slums. Indeed, countries like Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland all have higher standards of living than we do, and a much higher proportion of people living in flats.
I grew up in Denmark, in the nicest hom,e I've ever had - 5 rooms on two floors on the top of a 8-story block with two full-time porters, nestled between a village and a town with a railway station offering fast access to the centrte (https://www.boligsiden.dk/postnummer/2800/vej/lehwaldsvej/tilsalg/ejerlejlighed). The British passion for separate houses at any price has always puzzled me, even though it's now my home, and coupled with agonising over urban sprawl it just seems strange.
When I lived in Geneva my partner wanted a house outside the city so I never got to live in the centre but I was always envious of my friends who lived in apartments in Geneva.
They were all good sized either beautiful period places with high ceilings and big floor space or large modern (60s onwards). All very soundproof. All had balconies or terraces where you could place a table and chairs for several to eat and enjoy the outside world, blocks weren’t huge high developments but blocks of 8 to ten flats with usually a big of garden around, parking underneath and often shops or cafes/restaurants on the ground floor.
Areas like Champel just outside the centre were full of these and highly sought after. I haven’t been to enough of the UK to compare the availability of these sort of residential blocks - maybe they are there and it’s just a different mental attitude that makes them less desireable in the UK. Possibly back to our Anglo-Saxon individualism.
Those sorts of blocks are common across Europe, and when they work out they become little communities; when they don't, beset with neighbour issues.
Some UK housing associations have replicated the model and you do find modern blocks of six or eight social housing flats quite commonly - but they aren't designed very well, rarely pay much attention to putting them in a decent environment (and they're usually in off-road estates rather than on the street) and it only takes a few problem social housing tenants for them to become less attractive places to live. And any councillor knows that social housing flats built relatively recently soon seem to generate tons of casework in terms of snags and repairs, often quite fundamental ones, about which housing associations vary in their willingness and speed to clear up.
What is less common here is blocks like that built for private sale.
Re your last sentence I guess it’s a chicken and egg situation where if you build for private sale, people see others living there without problem tenants and having a nice lifestyle, walking out the door and the town/city are “there” but having a property nicer than a Barret House.
However Until people see others living well there then there is a risk in building them so nobody gets to see others living that lifestyle etc.
There is plenty of flats in big cities. London has a high rise planned for every patch of land where it's allowed. Manchester is well on it's way to that road. Birmingham is trying to join the fun.
What people want, who move to smaller places or the countryside, is less density. They want more space to live in.
It's worth noting the hell that some people went through, in lockdown, living in tiny flats which were designed as a place for sleeping and maybe eating your takeaway. They were designed for you to live your life elsewhere. And people lived in them for 2 years.
I’m not talking about tiny flats, I’m talking about the type friends lived in where it was a four or five story block where the floor space of each flat was generally larger that most new build houses - a plot where you might stick four to six crappy houses would instead have ten plus large apartments with the same number of rooms, a good terrace and gardens around. My friends who lived in these during Covid never complained at all and they are rare as hens teeth because people love living in them and don’t use them as a 2 year stepping stone.
Starmer doesn’t want a deputy leadership contest which is likely to be won by the most left wing candidate and could cause him a lot of problems .
If Rayner hasn’t broken the ministerial code he should keep her .
I know it might be jumping the gun but do people here, who know more about Labour than I do, have a prospective list of who the different wings would coalesce behind if it came to needing a new DPM?
The Labour membership are hacked off with Starmer because of his Reform lite tribute act , his Trump fawning and economic policies so they’ll want someone who can help move the party to the left .
In terms of candidates from different wings not sure about who’d put themselves forward yet .
There was a discussion yesterday about the relevance of what Labour politicians said about Tory misdemeanours in opposition to behaviour of Labour in govt. Many said it was irrelevant, but I think it is actually the most important thing
Your man in the street wouldn’t normally be that bothered by somebody avoiding stamp duty in the way Rayner has because, let’s face it, we’d all do it if we could. The crime in the eyes of voters is the chasm between the morally superior, pious tone adopted in the last parliament by ‘Mr Rules & Integrity’ and the realisation that they’re all at it. It has been shown for what it always was - a hammily acted pretence designed to fool voters. That’s where the anger comes from
Maybe it has changed, but I had the impression that in Britain most people choose to obey the rules, that this is one reason why we're such curtain-twitchers anxious to ensure that everyone else is also following the rules, and that this is something that sets us apart from countries like Greece, which struggle to collect taxes, because in those countries people take it for granted that following the rules is optional.
But Rayner probably thought she was following the rules; she was trying to dodge tax legally by changing the names on other properties. The snag is that, as well as the plan not working, she has been full on for years about Tories using schemes/plans/ruses to not pay the same amount of tax as ‘working people’, and now it looks like she’s at it
I don't mean following the rules in a legalistic sense, but in the spirit of them, in a common-sense understanding. This is why most people are so annoyed by tax avoidance, and the tax evasion vs avoidance distinction doesn't convince most people (compared to people on here).
If that was what Starmer and Co meant by ‘rules’ he would have resigned over currygate, Lord Alli and the voice coach.
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
The Guardian are getting in on the act. Not much of a story but it gives some context to the way different people are treated by nasty rags like the Telegraph who loathe the idea of Rayner having a second home in Hove but don't blink at Farage saving the odd few hundred thousand on a tax wheeze
Have you not noticed from the US example that such blatant double standards need not be detrimental to the electoral success of individuals like Trump or Farage, Roger ?
I have noticed but my hope is that we are due a zeitgeist change and revolting characters like the two you mentioned by constant exposure become as repulsive to the public as they are to many of us at the moment. Talking of revolting people Richard Tice on a visit from Dubai is being eviscerated by Nick Robinson as I type
Reform are winning all the headlines and no matter how much anyone tries to guilt trip them it is not working
Reports from Rayner's Ashton constitutuency voters are turning against her and seem to want Reform
The reason Reform are winning is the stark fact both the conservatives and labour have failed them, and the perception is they are all the same but Reform are new
Your final paragraph is the heart of the matter.
Except...
What would success look like? I think we all agree "not like this". The catch is that it really doesn't feel clear what a realistic path to success looks like. And bluntly, Faragism looks likely to make things worse. In a "I hate this hangover so I'm going to down a bottle of gin, easy on the tonic" way.
But I don't know how to make that message in the current environment.
I read an argument recently that I found interesting and wondered what other people made of it. There are a lot of people who feel worse off, and so they're looking for reasons why, even though income growth hasn't been that bad. The explanation? Car finance.
The PCP car finance model has encouraged people to buy new cars that they can't afford. This squeezes their remaining disposable income and makes them feel a lot worse off than they are, because they've saddled themselves with a crushing debt for a depreciating asset.
This has clearly been a victory of marketing for the car manufacturers, but there have been negative consequences for society as a whole, just as there were when gambling companies worked out how effective FOBTs could be at creating gambling addicts.
I think that if the government could spin down the PCP car finance model then the voters would find they had more disposable income and would feel better for it, even if they had a lower status motor.
The car market baffles me. Despite how it feels, objectively, I'm pretty well off. I always tick one of the top two boxes in surveys. There are a lot worse off than me. And yet as a family, we run a fairly bog standard VW and an ancient Ford. Both of which we bought with money rather than finance. If you were to judge how well off we were by our cars, we would be distinctly mid range at best. It used to be that you could tell how affluent a neighbourhood you were in by the cars as much as the houses - as you crossed into Wythenshawe the cars got notably older, rustier and smaller. But no longer - walk down the street in Wythenshawe and Ardwick and you will see half a dozen newer or shinier or posher cars than I think I could afford. It's encouraging to see signs of wealth in areas like this. But also surprising that people would choose to allocate so much of their resources to a car.
I think the way a PCP is structured hides from people how much they're spending on a new car, and so they're spending more than they can afford. It's how you can reconcile the evidence of your eyes - of fancy cars in areas that you didn't think were that well off, with everyone grumbling about a cost of living crisis.
I've noticed that people asking for financial advice online, who are struggling to make expenditure match income, always have large PCP payments. They've "bought" cars with a list price of more than their annual gross salary. That's insane isn't it?
The income that should have created a feel-good feeling in the population has been securitized by car finance companies.
I recall one expert being interviewed on TV - he suggested that the products should be forced to be sold as "Car Mortgages". Because that might get the message across about the vast amounts of money in the long term.
And maybe some mortgage-style regulation on income multiples.
I only drive occasionally but I note the petrol price continues to hover around 130p a litre round here.
I remember being it 140p back in 2022 and even though the fuel price has remained fairly static it seems not to have helped economic growth that much though it might explain why things aren't quite as bad as some would have us believe.
Indeed, we're paying no more for petrol now than we did in 2012 which, with ambient inflation, means a substantial real terms cut.
I can only imagine how this will be viewed by the Chancellor in terms of a possible rise in fuel duty in the Budget but it's extraordinary to me how little impact this once crucial barometer of our economic fortunes now seems to have.
‘ The small conveyancing firm that did Angela Rayner’s Hove house purchase say they gave her no tax advice — they’re not even solicitors and have no tax expertise.
The advisers who set up her trust (from where the Hove deposit came) say they were not involved in any aspect of the Hove purchase.
The tax barrister who said she’d underpaid stamp duty was only called in after the matter of how much she should pay became a matter of public controversy.
So from whom did the Deputy PM seek tax advice on the stamp duty she should pay on the Hove home?’
It seems she clearly didn't seek out the best legal advice as presumably that would have been to wait a few months / rewrite the trust so that she wasn't liable for the additional 2nd home tax.
Once her child turns 18 she wouldn’t have been liable for the increased stamp duty . If she didn’t want to risk losing the flat in Hove she could have paid it and got a refund later.
Good morning everyone. Much, much brighter this morning, although not for poor Angela Rayner.
Poor Angela Rayner? Yes, I'm sorry for her. Not only is she going to have to resign, thus, temporarily at least, blighting a career which is otherwise an example to disadvantaged young women but out of her reduced income she is going to have to find a considerable sum of money. When did the tax position of second homes change? When did she put her place in Ashton into trust? Seems to me that she might have been caught by regulation change, although I'm quite prepared to be told I'm well up the wrong tree!
Why are you feeling sorry for her ?
Crucifying people who own two houses is a feature, not a bug for this gov't.
Because, as I said, she's dragged herself up by her own bootstraps and now it's all collapsing about her. I don't think she'd ever have made PM but she could have stayed a senior member of the government for as long as she wished, so long as Labour were in power.
She wasn't much cop as Home Secretary, but the last honourable resignation I can think of in cabinet was probably Amber Rudd. All the others have either gone far too late, stayed on when they shouldn't or were about attempting to get rid of the then PM.
Louise Haigh resigned both quickly and gracefully from this government.
A pity, as she was one of the most articulate and effective ministers.
Comments
https://youtu.be/UDfAdHBtK_Q?t=472
This is the relevant US statute:
18 U.S. Code § 1651 - Piracy under law of nations
"Whoever, on the high seas, commits the crime of piracy as defined by the law of nations, and is afterwards brought into or found in the United States, shall be imprisoned for life."
A broader discussion of the law relating to piracy is available here:
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/what-makes-a-pirate--updating-u.s.-piracy-law-to-address-an-age-old-scourge
As it was for the LDs, the question for Reform will be whether they can hold the gains achieved when the tide is rising when the tide goes out or slackens but that's for another day.
OTOH, it's extraordinary engineering that something so large and so fast can cost as little as £5k.
The fact that Sunak appointed Magnus should at least mean we won’t have to hear from Kemi but I expect Reform to call it a stitch up .
I begin to think left and right are equally driven by how hard-done-by they feel.
They need to get off their arses and work for the common good. Then we wouldn’t have to listen to their whining.
The entitlement is tragi-comic.
The HMRC are not the final judge of tax liability for any of us and you can argue to matter out to your heart's content. But the principle is clear: if there is something you have not told the HMRC it is a working presumption there is something you don't want them to know and you are preferring to be the judge of your own cause.
It also needs to be on the record that you have been fully transparent with your own advisers. Once you blame the adviser, legal or financial, then you can no longer rely on the usual rules of privilege.
200mph in theory and big old boat, £2600.
https://ebay.us/m/1SCd5j
They repteatedly try to do things that they for which do not (imo) seem to have the hinterland.
Acting Deputy Chief of Special Operations at the Department of Justice, Joseph Schnitt, was secretly filmed saying that "thousands and thousands of pages of files" exist about Epstein, and that, “They’ll redact every Republican or conservative person in those files, leave all the liberal, Democratic people in those files”. Also that Ghislaine Maxwell's transfer to a minimum-security prison was because, “They’re offering her something to keep her mouth shut.”
The video has been confirmed as real, but Schnitt has said he was just showing off to what he thought was a date, and the DoJ say that Schnitt has nothing to do with any internal review of Epstein materials.
Anti-Trump outlet's coverage: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/james-okeefe-joseph-schnitt-doj-epstein-files_n_68b9f090e4b09c6f4cf68efb
Pro-Trump outlet's response: https://newrepublic.com/post/200027/justice-department-official-project-veritas-o-keefe-epstein-files-video
The real rabbit hutches are the tiny Barratt detached houses with no storage, a plastic lawn, miles away from any public services or stuff to do. They are actually smaller than a nice Scandinavian-style apartment with a coffee shop below and a tram taking you into town.
Like Churchill Boris was of course a Liberal for a time so his joining an even harder right party than the Tories is unlikely. Boris was in the SDP at Oxford and had their support to be Union President
They’re also much less likely to pull your file for investigation in the first place - accounts signed off by a registered professional are put in the “low risk of tax shenanigans” box by default.
That way there would be no risk of slips due to miscommunication - and you would have the law firms reputation on your side.
They were all good sized either beautiful period places with high ceilings and big floor space or large modern (60s onwards). All very soundproof. All had balconies or terraces where you could place a table and chairs for several to eat and enjoy the outside world, blocks weren’t huge high developments but blocks of 8 to ten flats with usually a big of garden around, parking underneath and often shops or cafes/restaurants on the ground floor.
Areas like Champel just outside the centre were full of these and highly sought after. I haven’t been to enough of the UK to compare the availability of these sort of residential blocks - maybe they are there and it’s just a different mental attitude that makes them less desireable in the UK. Possibly back to our Anglo-Saxon individualism.
The great irony is, had she waited six months or so she would have been entirely correct - her son would have been 18 & she would have had no extra stamp duty to pay. This whole affair seems to be due to a genuine misunderstanding of the relevant tax law - I really don’t believe she ever intended to avoid whatever taxes were due to be paid. If she had known about them, she would have waiting six months and saved herself £40k!
That she underpaid stamp duty is clear. The question to be determined is why she did so. Was it deliberate? Or was it because she was incorrectly advised? It is not enough to say that she got advice from a lawyer. First, he needs to see that advice and whether it was given professionally for a fee and when. And, the crucial question is what he or she was told by AR ie the factual basis for his advice. If she told him "I do not own any other property" then that is not enough, IMO, to get her off the hook. Because it simply pushes the question further back: "Were you told by your trust advisors when the trust was set up that you would be deemed its owner until your son was 18?"
It is possible that she was not told that - but to establish that you'd need to speak to the trust lawyers who did the work for her at the time and/or review their files.
If she was not told that so that she genuinely thought she did not have a property interest in her old home then it is possible that this was all a SNAFU. But I find it odd that, when setting up a trust for an under-age child, those advising her - and her ex-husband - who also faces the same Stamp Duty issues (has he bought property somewhere, paid the higher rate, realised his ex has not and got his own back?) - would not have explained all the consequences of the arrangement, regardless of whether they knew about any future property purchases. It is possible that it is in a written document somewhere, written in 2020, and that it never got carefully read then or later when the Hove flat was being acquired.
It will be interesting (to me, at least) to see what facts - and how - Sir Laurie will be able to establish.
It might just seem like lawyer talk, to you and me, but without these, things like the cruise missile/drone strikes that Clinton and Obama were so prolific with are illegal under US law.
Most people were reasonably content as long as the economy delivered - you can get away with a lot if you are delivering growth and prosperity, if people feel they are better off and doing well and their children will be better off as a result.
That was delivered, more or less, with a few interruptions, for three generations after 1945 but the wheels came off that wagon in 2008 and you can chart a lot of what has happened from those events.
Mass immigration has become an issue as much because the wave of cheap labour has failed to deliver the economic growth previous such examples provided. Five of the last three economic booms have been delivered by cheap labour and as long as everyone has work and is making good money no one really cares from where their co-worker originates.
The GFC was the failure of the economic model we had followed since the 1970s and there's been no replacement as of yet. We have stagnated (largely) for the last 17 years and the key part of it is not that people don't feel better off themselves (most people are pretty resilient) but they have no confidcnce the world their children will inherit will be any better. We all want our children to have a better life than we had (and will sacrifice enormously to achieve that if we can). The breaking of that promise has got us where we are.
Get back to 4-5% annual growth and a lot of the culture issues and concerns about immigration will melt away but no one has a route to that economic nirvana currently and in the absence of prosperity, everyone is looking for someone to blame, the Government, the immigrants etc, etc.
Ref 31 (+2)
Lab 21 (-1)
Con 18 (=)
LD 14 (-2)
Grn 10 (+1)
SNP 2 (=)
Oth 4 (=)
Valuing surveyor and videographer were brought in from outside.
Not sure any of it will surprise any of us:
https://x.com/LukeTryl/status/1963876688418279712
The British people did vote for both New Labour and Johnson, as well as Brexit.
All were explicit about the importance of immigration to Britain, indeed Brexit was pushed in places like Leicester and Birmingham as a way to level the playing field and make it easier for Commonwealth migrants to replace EU ones.
Similarly the Cameron and May governments were explicit about liberalism attitudes to gays and Transgender folk. Self ID was proposed under a Conservative government.
You may well have voted differently, or for these parties for other issues but they certainly were voted for by the British public.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Military_Force_of_2001
Its applicability here would be... controversial. But in any event, it has yet to be cited by the administration.
Poor Angela Rayner? Yes, I'm sorry for her. Not only is she going to have to resign, thus, temporarily at least, blighting a career which is otherwise an example to disadvantaged young women but out of her reduced income she is going to have to find a considerable sum of money.
When did the tax position of second homes change? When did she put her place in Ashton into trust? Seems to me that she might have been caught by regulation change, although I'm quite prepared to be told I'm well up the wrong tree!
Crucifying people who own two houses is a feature, not a bug for this gov't.
voters earning over $100 000 a year and the poorest voters earning under $30 000 a year.
It was middle income voters who elected Trump on an anti immigration anti globalisation platform.
The super rich and corporations liked Trump's tax cuts but disliked his tariffs and are more liberal on abortion and trans and immigrants than rustbelt Trump voters.
Reform also perform poorly in the wealthiest areas of London and the Home counties
Some UK housing associations have replicated the model and you do find modern blocks of six or eight social housing flats quite commonly - but they aren't designed very well, rarely pay much attention to putting them in a decent environment (and they're usually in off-road estates rather than on the street) and it only takes a few problem social housing tenants for them to become less attractive places to live. And any councillor knows that social housing flats built relatively recently soon seem to generate tons of casework in terms of snags and repairs, often quite fundamental ones, about which housing associations vary in their willingness and speed to clear up.
What is less common here is blocks like that built for private sale.
If Rayner hasn’t broken the ministerial code he should keep her .
I've noticed that people asking for financial advice online, who are struggling to make expenditure match income, always have large PCP payments. They've "bought" cars with a list price of more than their annual gross salary. That's insane isn't it?
The income that should have created a feel-good feeling in the population has been securitized by car finance companies.
I get the impression that she was trying to DIY with partial advice from professionals. I may be wrong. But when property is involved, people seem to develop strange behaviours. And often try and "save" a couple of hundred pounds, doing some quite stupid things.
However Until people see others living well there then there is a risk in building them so nobody gets to see others living that lifestyle etc.
Northern
Working class
Progressed through public sector
Improved her standing
Im always amazed that the people who push this line - and rightly - cant apply the same rules to Nadine Dorries
Lots of MPs (and journalists, media personalities, Royalty and oligarchs) have multiple homes. The witchhunt for dubious tax declarations is only just beginning.
Essentially, the Lib Dem vote is the anti-Labour vote which they used to get in places like Rochdale or Oldham. I expect Reform will gain the ward in 2027.
What people want, who move to smaller places or the countryside, is less density. They want more space to live in.
It's worth noting the hell that some people went through, in lockdown, living in tiny flats which were designed as a place for sleeping and maybe eating your takeaway. They were designed for you to live your life elsewhere. And people lived in them for 2 years.
They just don’t like it that Farage is earning money from GB News.
The party has changed since Jezza's time.
Some of those now Reform
That said, there’s something in the idea that it’s easier to weather a political fall from grace if you’ve grown up with the security of knowing you’ll always have assets, employment and wealthy relatives to bail you out. Bouncing back is easier then.
The post downfall grift circuit is easier too if you’re either far right, where social media riches and the warm embrace of the MAGA billionaires await, or far left where there’s a decent salary to be had from Novara and the like, or presentable centrist where so long as the downfall wasn’t too egregious, the corporate world beckons. Soft left non-corporate Labour is possibly the worst starting point. All you have is podcasts.
What we do not do well in this country is build the sort of solid beautiful mansion blocks common in some parts of London and very common in the Continent., which would be suitable for those without families, older people, single people etc.,. A lot of flats are poorly built, insulated, cramped etc - plus leasehold and useless managing agents - make them a bit of a nightmare.
So if you get £50k income or less channeled through a ltd, it's 27.75%. You get the first £12.7k as as tax free PAYE, although there is still employers NI on it.
It's also very tax efficient to dump the money into a pension from a ltd, but obviously you can only get the money back out again once you are old enough to retire.
All of this is of course full of perverse incentives - e.g. if you have a business that makes zero profit some years and £100k others, it's very much in your interest to cook to books so it makes £50k every year instead.
I have a business which on paper has substantial retained earnings - my accountant told me to take dividends out so my earnings total £50k every year (even if the cash to do so doesn't exist and therefore the dividend just becomes a directors loan to the business) partly on the basis that if the taxation regime changes it will almost certainly only get worse, and mostly because you pay far less tax by taking £50k each year than £0 for two years and £150k the next.
A pity, as she was one of the most articulate and effective ministers.
The only saving grace about the UK media is that they’re not as bad as the US media. OFCOM rules on TV political news actually work well. See MSNBC and Fox News for what it looks like without rules.
But cheap labour was a fundamental part of it.
Quick & honourable resignations seemed to evaporate with the Johnson & Sunak ministries - always someone or other clinging on for dear life when they really should have gone. Part of the reason they were trounced last GE.
*Truss was a whole another story
In terms of candidates from different wings not sure about who’d put themselves forward yet .
I remember being it 140p back in 2022 and even though the fuel price has remained fairly static it seems not to have helped economic growth that much though it might explain why things aren't quite as bad as some would have us believe.
https://www.racfoundation.org/data/uk-pump-prices-over-time
Indeed, we're paying no more for petrol now than we did in 2012 which, with ambient inflation, means a substantial real terms cut.
I can only imagine how this will be viewed by the Chancellor in terms of a possible rise in fuel duty in the Budget but it's extraordinary to me how little impact this once crucial barometer of our economic fortunes now seems to have.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/sep/05/dorking-fan-54-goalkeeper-injury-crisis
Exclusive: Reform leader’s use of television star-style arrangement is a practice criticised across the political spectrum
@gabyhinsliff.bsky.social
UK has never obliged all party leaders to publish their tax returns but would be an interesting time to start
https://bsky.app/profile/gabyhinsliff.bsky.social/post/3ly3bycgzd22q