I'm hoping this isn't the case but if the already ineffably stupid OSA is expanded to ban VPNs that'll throw the work I currently have onto a bonfire.
Regular PBers may remember AI ate a load of my work a couple of years ago after which I had a wonderful and not at all soul-destroying year or so of trying to find more work. If unbelievably stupid government regulation then destroys what I've currently got it it would be fair to say I would be less than happy.
How could you actually ban VPNs? I mean, even the Chinese haven't managed that. Or at least, they are banned but everyone ignores the law.
Mr. Doethur, MPs are utter morons when it comes to technology. I have no confidence they won't try this bullshit 'to protect the children'. We had the minister responsible for technology asking people not to use VPNs to evade the OSA bullshit (and commit the vile sin of looking at legal material aimed at adults), on the basis that they should think of the children and comply with the verification crap Labour brought in.
I presume if we are going to get promises of more infrastructure spending it will be the reheating of that idea about the big beautiful British sovereign growth fund, that in reality was nothing like a sovereign wealth fund, it was just PFI and they shut up really quickly about.
Speaking of PFI, we’re only a couple of years away from the early Brown 30-year PFIs on Skools’n’Ospitals expiring. That’s one massive time bomb no-one is yet talking about.
It's been discussed a bit here. A smart government would have already been preparing legislation to mitigate the more egregious contracts.
A smart government would never have signed most of the contracts to start with.
Not much we can do about that now. But we could do something about reducing the costs.
I presume if we are going to get promises of more infrastructure spending it will be the reheating of that idea about the big beautiful British sovereign growth fund, that in reality was nothing like a sovereign wealth fund, it was just PFI and they shut up really quickly about.
Speaking of PFI, we’re only a couple of years away from the early Brown 30-year PFIs on Skools’n’Ospitals expiring. That’s one massive time bomb no-one is yet talking about.
I thought that after 30 years in most cases the state owns the property - effectively a lease to buy.
So it would help because the annual costs are high
It seems Reeves is making a statement from no 10 in 5 minutes
Why and how is it right to speak to the nation just 3 weeks before her budget and outside parliament ?
Tax rises are coming.
It will be the fault of
Brexit the Tories Austerity Ukraine conflict
It won’t be the fault of
Rachel Reeves Labour
🥱🥱
I mean she’s not wrong. We have been living beyond our means for a long time
It’s all talk.
Yet she won’t do anything about reforming the triple lock or tackling her party over the burgeoning welfare bill.
It will be taxing ourselves to prosperity and regulating ourselves to prosperity.
The only growth she’s going to see is in emigration, and if she tries to tax that it will happen straight away and all at once.
So people are going to leave the UK in big numbers because of an exit tax and perhaps move to one of US, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, Spain or Australia that all have similar or stricter exit taxes? Maybe, people are sometimes a bit dim.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. The trouble is the whinging has acquired a life of its own- the Mail is particularly whingey- but the truth is a lot more nuanced.
It is just rich people whinging in an echo chamber. The UK is a premium location, which is why we have such low emigration rates.
Number of people leaving has risen massively. The question that doesn't seem to get answered (I think because the state doesn't record this) is who are these people. Are they people who were immigrants returning home, are they retirees going to Spain, are they highly educated individuals, rich people? Basically what proprotion of the significantly increased levels of emigration do these different types of make up (and many are overlapping e.g. high educated immigrant).
Dont believe the Daily Mail and Telegraph. Emigration is rising slowly not massively, and that is to be expected when you have higher inwards migration, as not all settle permanently. Labour slowly getting to grips with deportations presumably also increases emigration.
513,000 people emigrated in 2024....that is a lot of people leaving per year. 10 years ago it was more like 300k.
7.5m people have arrived here over the last decade. If just 3% of them go back each year that would account for that difference.
There's never a good time to break manifesto pledges on taxes. To do so immediately after winning the election is bad. To do so immediately before the next election is foolish.
So, maybe to do so after 18 months but with a few years to get over it before the next GE is the optimum time.
It seems Reeves is making a statement from no 10 in 5 minutes
Why and how is it right to speak to the nation just 3 weeks before her budget and outside parliament ?
Tax rises are coming.
It will be the fault of
Brexit the Tories Austerity Ukraine conflict
It won’t be the fault of
Rachel Reeves Labour
🥱🥱
I mean she’s not wrong. We have been living beyond our means for a long time
It’s all talk.
Yet she won’t do anything about reforming the triple lock or tackling her party over the burgeoning welfare bill.
It will be taxing ourselves to prosperity and regulating ourselves to prosperity.
The only growth she’s going to see is in emigration, and if she tries to tax that it will happen straight away and all at once.
So people are going to leave the UK in big numbers because of an exit tax and perhaps move to one of US, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, Spain or Australia that all have similar or stricter exit taxes? Maybe, people are sometimes a bit dim.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. The trouble is the whinging has acquired a life of its own- the Mail is particularly whingey- but the truth is a lot more nuanced.
It is just rich people whinging in an echo chamber. The UK is a premium location, which is why we have such low emigration rates.
Number of people leaving has risen massively. The question that doesn't seem to get answered (I think because the state doesn't record this) is who are these people. Are they people who were immigrants returning home, are they retirees going to Spain, are they highly educated individuals, rich people? Basically what proprotion of the significantly increased levels of emigration do these different types of make up (and many are overlapping e.g. high educated immigrant).
Dont believe the Daily Mail and Telegraph. Emigration is rising slowly not massively, and that is to be expected when you have higher inwards migration, as not all settle permanently. Labour slowly getting to grips with deportations presumably also increases emigration.
A quick look at that shows that over 400, 000 were non-UK nationals, with only 77, 000 UK nationals. And emigration has lain between 400,000 and 600,000 every year since 2012. So normal for the UK.
I am reminded by David Suchet's Cathedrals series that Henry II submitted himself to flogging by Thomas Becket's bishops after his murder. Seems a decent way for a royal to do penance. Just sayin'.
I’d prefer that to Randy Andy doing Cersei’s walk of shame…
I thought it was a decent speech from Reeves . It doesn’t remove the problem of likely breaking manifesto pledges .
People can debate whether Labour should have made that tax pledge.
Is the manifesto breaking a big issue?
Virtually no-one is happy with how the government is progressing at the moment. There may well be more votes in breaking the commitment and forgetting about having to cut £2bn here and £1bn there every few months.
I'd suggest if they dont raise some proper money their vote share at the GE is in the 15-25 range whereas if they do it is in the 20-30 range.
It might depend how they do it. If they break the pledges in a small way and give the impression they're doing it to fill in a shortfall and that they might come back and do it again next year, that's unlikely to be popular. If they can tell a coherent story about why they're doing it and how it fits in to getting the economy going again and actually doing something (and they follow up by focusing on actually doing stuff) -- well, it probably still won't be popular but at least by the time of the next GE they might be able to point at some reason to vote for them again. But they're still open to the charge of "why didn't you do this last year?" and they've consistently demonstrated they're not really capable of communicating what they think they're in government to do, so I'm not optimistic.
(Unless they can also figure out a plan for dealing with the steady ramp up of spending imposed by our demographics I think they, and we, are screwed, though.)
It seems Reeves is making a statement from no 10 in 5 minutes
Why and how is it right to speak to the nation just 3 weeks before her budget and outside parliament ?
Tax rises are coming.
It will be the fault of
Brexit the Tories Austerity Ukraine conflict
It won’t be the fault of
Rachel Reeves Labour
🥱🥱
I mean she’s not wrong. We have been living beyond our means for a long time
It’s all talk.
Yet she won’t do anything about reforming the triple lock or tackling her party over the burgeoning welfare bill.
It will be taxing ourselves to prosperity and regulating ourselves to prosperity.
The only growth she’s going to see is in emigration, and if she tries to tax that it will happen straight away and all at once.
So people are going to leave the UK in big numbers because of an exit tax and perhaps move to one of US, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, Spain or Australia that all have similar or stricter exit taxes? Maybe, people are sometimes a bit dim.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. The trouble is the whinging has acquired a life of its own- the Mail is particularly whingey- but the truth is a lot more nuanced.
It is just rich people whinging in an echo chamber. The UK is a premium location, which is why we have such low emigration rates.
Number of people leaving has risen massively. The question that doesn't seem to get answered (I think because the state doesn't record this) is who are these people. Are they people who were immigrants returning home, are they retirees going to Spain, are they highly educated individuals, rich people? Basically what proprotion of the significantly increased levels of emigration do these different types of make up (and many are overlapping e.g. high educated immigrant).
Dont believe the Daily Mail and Telegraph. Emigration is rising slowly not massively, and that is to be expected when you have higher inwards migration, as not all settle permanently. Labour slowly getting to grips with deportations presumably also increases emigration.
513,000 people emigrated in 2024....that is a lot of people leaving per year. 10 years ago it was more like 300k.
7.5m people have arrived here over the last decade. If just 3% of them go back each year that would account for that difference.
Except we don't know. That is my whole point. And also which ones. The highly skiled ones?
It seems Reeves is making a statement from no 10 in 5 minutes
Why and how is it right to speak to the nation just 3 weeks before her budget and outside parliament ?
Tax rises are coming.
It will be the fault of
Brexit the Tories Austerity Ukraine conflict
It won’t be the fault of
Rachel Reeves Labour
🥱🥱
I mean she’s not wrong. We have been living beyond our means for a long time
It’s all talk.
Yet she won’t do anything about reforming the triple lock or tackling her party over the burgeoning welfare bill.
It will be taxing ourselves to prosperity and regulating ourselves to prosperity.
The only growth she’s going to see is in emigration, and if she tries to tax that it will happen straight away and all at once.
So people are going to leave the UK in big numbers because of an exit tax and perhaps move to one of US, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, Spain or Australia that all have similar or stricter exit taxes? Maybe, people are sometimes a bit dim.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. The trouble is the whinging has acquired a life of its own- the Mail is particularly whingey- but the truth is a lot more nuanced.
It is just rich people whinging in an echo chamber. The UK is a premium location, which is why we have such low emigration rates.
This is one of the problems in that people are only looking at the emigration side of the ledger instead of looking at whether we are an attractive place for entrepreneurs and the wealthy to move to, bring new business, growth, taxes.
If the UK puts up barriers - high taxes, penalties on leaving, making wealthy and successful people scapegoats then it’s a massive negative to people choosing the Uk.
They will have a pluses and minus sheet and in the pluses you might have London, English as a natural language, rule of law (just about) safe from extreme weather.
The thing is that if that list of positives shrinks and the negatives grow then we don’t attract new business and they choose the US (for example) - yes exit taxes but choice of low tax states to base in, a huge quality university sector, English language, New York, LA etc etc.
So whilst everyone might clap themselves on the back because “only x thousands of entrepreneurs and super wealthy” have left it’s not taken into account the tech wizards from Belgium who might have decamped to the UK with their new business and now are choosing elsewhere etc. These are precisely the people the UK wants to attract in to create growth not make it less attractive - they aren’t coming for the weather.
It seems Reeves is making a statement from no 10 in 5 minutes
Why and how is it right to speak to the nation just 3 weeks before her budget and outside parliament ?
Tax rises are coming.
It will be the fault of
Brexit the Tories Austerity Ukraine conflict
It won’t be the fault of
Rachel Reeves Labour
🥱🥱
I mean she’s not wrong. We have been living beyond our means for a long time
And yet she chose to increase spending by £60bn per year in the last budget. That's a choice she made and now because her tax rises have failed to yield enough we're left with an even bigger shortfall than what they purported to start with.
This is all her own fault. She could have cut spending on day one, made modest tax rises and moved towards balancing the budget but instead she chose to blow the budget on public sector pay rises and the endless money pit that is the NHS. Now she's back for more tax rises because, whoops, business investment crashed and now the economy is slowing down so not enough tax is being raised.
She's worse than useless, actively harmful to the national economy.
I personally am not bothered about being taxed a bit more if it means we don’t have to cut the NHS
Trouble is it's always more than a bit extra tax and never enough to improve the NHS.
It seems Reeves is making a statement from no 10 in 5 minutes
Why and how is it right to speak to the nation just 3 weeks before her budget and outside parliament ?
Tax rises are coming.
It will be the fault of
Brexit the Tories Austerity Ukraine conflict
It won’t be the fault of
Rachel Reeves Labour
🥱🥱
I mean she’s not wrong. We have been living beyond our means for a long time
It’s all talk.
Yet she won’t do anything about reforming the triple lock or tackling her party over the burgeoning welfare bill.
It will be taxing ourselves to prosperity and regulating ourselves to prosperity.
The only growth she’s going to see is in emigration, and if she tries to tax that it will happen straight away and all at once.
So people are going to leave the UK in big numbers because of an exit tax and perhaps move to one of US, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, Spain or Australia that all have similar or stricter exit taxes? Maybe, people are sometimes a bit dim.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. The trouble is the whinging has acquired a life of its own- the Mail is particularly whingey- but the truth is a lot more nuanced.
It is just rich people whinging in an echo chamber. The UK is a premium location, which is why we have such low emigration rates.
Number of people leaving has risen massively. The question that doesn't seem to get answered (I think because the state doesn't record this) is who are these people. Are they people who were immigrants returning home, are they retirees going to Spain, are they highly educated individuals, rich people? Basically what proprotion of the significantly increased levels of emigration do these different types of make up (and many are overlapping e.g. high educated immigrant).
I know a bunch of people moving to Milan (non dom) and one wealthy German person moving to Spain because of the inheritance tax changes.
It seems Reeves is making a statement from no 10 in 5 minutes
Why and how is it right to speak to the nation just 3 weeks before her budget and outside parliament ?
Tax rises are coming.
It will be the fault of
Brexit the Tories Austerity Ukraine conflict
It won’t be the fault of
Rachel Reeves Labour
🥱🥱
I mean she’s not wrong. We have been living beyond our means for a long time
It’s all talk.
Yet she won’t do anything about reforming the triple lock or tackling her party over the burgeoning welfare bill.
It will be taxing ourselves to prosperity and regulating ourselves to prosperity.
The only growth she’s going to see is in emigration, and if she tries to tax that it will happen straight away and all at once.
So people are going to leave the UK in big numbers because of an exit tax and perhaps move to one of US, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, Spain or Australia that all have similar or stricter exit taxes? Maybe, people are sometimes a bit dim.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. The trouble is the whinging has acquired a life of its own- the Mail is particularly whingey- but the truth is a lot more nuanced.
It is just rich people whinging in an echo chamber. The UK is a premium location, which is why we have such low emigration rates.
Number of people leaving has risen massively. The question that doesn't seem to get answered (I think because the state doesn't record this) is who are these people. Are they people who were immigrants returning home, are they retirees going to Spain, are they highly educated individuals, rich people? Basically what proprotion of the significantly increased levels of emigration do these different types of make up (and many are overlapping e.g. high educated immigrant).
Dont believe the Daily Mail and Telegraph. Emigration is rising slowly not massively, and that is to be expected when you have higher inwards migration, as not all settle permanently. Labour slowly getting to grips with deportations presumably also increases emigration.
A quick look at that shows that over 400, 000 were non-UK nationals, with only 77, 000 UK nationals. And emigration has lain between 400,000 and 600,000 every year since 2012. So normal for the UK.
Before 2020, it was normally more like 300-350k year. I don't know the answer what makes up this increase, its a question I have asked before. Is it a brain drain / wealth drain, I don't know.
There's never a good time to break manifesto pledges on taxes. To do so immediately after winning the election is bad. To do so immediately before the next election is foolish.
So, maybe to do so after 18 months but with a few years to get over it before the next GE is the optimum time.
To do so after welfare reforms have been abandoned might be even worse.
Anyone who pays more tax, or thinks they're paying more tax, after the budget will know they are doing so because Labour politicians gave preference to shirkers over workers.
There's never a good time to break manifesto pledges on taxes. To do so immediately after winning the election is bad. To do so immediately before the next election is foolish.
So, maybe to do so after 18 months but with a few years to get over it before the next GE is the optimum time.
They are going to get completely pummelled for it if they raise income tax*, and given our rolling news age I’m not sure that story will be closed down.
*the only way I can see them managing to - somewhat - pull it off will be if they make a corresponding cut to NI. That’ll give them their ability to hide behind the “working people” mantra.
The optics otherwise are going to be utterly dire, and possibly terminal for Starmer and Reeves (though I don’t really expect both to be in post by the time of the next GE anyway).
I think that Reeves will be announcing that OBR evaluations will be once a year not twice a year - or has she done that? That's an unnecessary extra open goal for the opposition.
Personally I hope she'll be getting on to some of the strategic long term things that they blinked on last year, including Council Tax and tax rates around £100k to £125k. I wonder if the things they TACOd on last year after lobbying (eg reform of favourable tax arrangements for hedge funds iirc?) will get a revisit? It won't be easy because there are still multiple years of black holes to be recovered.
I'd also expect further measures to mitigate Brexit damage as far as possible.
I presume if we are going to get promises of more infrastructure spending it will be the reheating of that idea about the big beautiful British sovereign growth fund, that in reality was nothing like a sovereign wealth fund, it was just PFI and they shut up really quickly about.
Speaking of PFI, we’re only a couple of years away from the early Brown 30-year PFIs on Skools’n’Ospitals expiring. That’s one massive time bomb no-one is yet talking about.
How were they structured at expiry? Is this an opportunity to do actual sensible deals or bring maintenance etc back in-house?
Or is there some clause that the government is obliged to sign a new 30 year deal at a price specified by the current contractor?
AIUI the government options range from terrible to horrific, and the buildings were in many cases designed with a 30-year lifespan. If they wish to remain in them, then a whole load of “maintenance” becomes due, at a price pretty much of the contractor’s choosing, before it’s handed to the State.
It was talked about at the time, and everyone knew it was punting the problem into the very long grass in exchange for a better (sic) deal at the time. But those 30 years passed quickly!
There's never a good time to break manifesto pledges on taxes. To do so immediately after winning the election is bad. To do so immediately before the next election is foolish.
So, maybe to do so after 18 months but with a few years to get over it before the next GE is the optimum time.
I think we have seen the pitch well and truly rolled this morning on that score.
It seems Reeves is making a statement from no 10 in 5 minutes
Why and how is it right to speak to the nation just 3 weeks before her budget and outside parliament ?
Tax rises are coming.
It will be the fault of
Brexit the Tories Austerity Ukraine conflict
It won’t be the fault of
Rachel Reeves Labour
🥱🥱
I mean she’s not wrong. We have been living beyond our means for a long time
And yet she chose to increase spending by £60bn per year in the last budget. That's a choice she made and now because her tax rises have failed to yield enough we're left with an even bigger shortfall than what they purported to start with.
This is all her own fault. She could have cut spending on day one, made modest tax rises and moved towards balancing the budget but instead she chose to blow the budget on public sector pay rises and the endless money pit that is the NHS. Now she's back for more tax rises because, whoops, business investment crashed and now the economy is slowing down so not enough tax is being raised.
She's worse than useless, actively harmful to the national economy.
I personally am not bothered about being taxed a bit more if it means we don’t have to cut the NHS
Trouble is it's always more than a bit extra tax and never enough to improve the NHS.
Even if tax was infinite there would never be enough money for the NHS
I presume if we are going to get promises of more infrastructure spending it will be the reheating of that idea about the big beautiful British sovereign growth fund, that in reality was nothing like a sovereign wealth fund, it was just PFI and they shut up really quickly about.
Speaking of PFI, we’re only a couple of years away from the early Brown 30-year PFIs on Skools’n’Ospitals expiring. That’s one massive time bomb no-one is yet talking about.
How were they structured at expiry? Is this an opportunity to do actual sensible deals or bring maintenance etc back in-house?
Or is there some clause that the government is obliged to sign a new 30 year deal at a price specified by the current contractor?
AIUI the government options range from terrible to horrific, and the buildings were in many cases designed with a 30-year lifespan. If they wish to remain in them, then a whole load of “maintenance” becomes due, at a price pretty much of the contractor’s choosing.
It was talked about at the time, and everyone knew it was punting the problem into the very long grass in exchange for a better (sic) deal at the time. But those 30 years passed quickly!
The providers will already be running down maintenance to pass the costs on to whoever is responsible next, presumably.
Exactly the same as developers who leave the fabric of a housing estate in the hands of a management company paid per annum by residents, rather than providing the commuted sum necessary for adoption.
I have no idea how well the termination terms were written on such PFI contracts.
There's never a good time to break manifesto pledges on taxes. To do so immediately after winning the election is bad. To do so immediately before the next election is foolish.
So, maybe to do so after 18 months but with a few years to get over it before the next GE is the optimum time.
They are going to get completely pummelled for it if they raise income tax*, and given our rolling news age I’m not sure that story will be closed down.
*the only way I can see them managing to - somewhat - pull it off will be if they make a corresponding cut to NI. That’ll give them their ability to hide behind the “working people” mantra.
The optics otherwise are going to be utterly dire, and possibly terminal for Starmer and Reeves (though I don’t really expect both to be in post by the time of the next GE anyway).
They are heading for a seismic defeat anyway. May as well go down fighting.
I presume if we are going to get promises of more infrastructure spending it will be the reheating of that idea about the big beautiful British sovereign growth fund, that in reality was nothing like a sovereign wealth fund, it was just PFI and they shut up really quickly about.
Speaking of PFI, we’re only a couple of years away from the early Brown 30-year PFIs on Skools’n’Ospitals expiring. That’s one massive time bomb no-one is yet talking about.
How were they structured at expiry? Is this an opportunity to do actual sensible deals or bring maintenance etc back in-house?
Or is there some clause that the government is obliged to sign a new 30 year deal at a price specified by the current contractor?
AIUI the government options range from terrible to horrific, and the buildings were in many cases designed with a 30-year lifespan. If they wish to remain in them, then a whole load of “maintenance” becomes due, at a price pretty much of the contractor’s choosing, before it’s handed to the State.
It was talked about at the time, and everyone knew it was punting the problem into the very long grass in exchange for a better (sic) deal at the time. But those 30 years passed quickly!
It was a classic example of Government making very bad deals. 30 year contract to build/maintain a school, backed by the UK government, in a tight defined contract. That should be an ultra low risk contract.
I thought it was a decent speech from Reeves . It doesn’t remove the problem of likely breaking manifesto pledges .
People can debate whether Labour should have made that tax pledge.
Is the manifesto breaking a big issue?
Virtually no-one is happy with how the government is progressing at the moment. There may well be more votes in breaking the commitment and forgetting about having to cut £2bn here and £1bn there every few months.
I'd suggest if they dont raise some proper money their vote share at the GE is in the 15-25 range whereas if they do it is in the 20-30 range.
It might depend how they do it. If they break the pledges in a small way and give the impression they're doing it to fill in a shortfall and that they might come back and do it again next year, that's unlikely to be popular. If they can tell a coherent story about why they're doing it and how it fits in to getting the economy going again and actually doing something (and they follow up by focusing on actually doing stuff) -- well, it probably still won't be popular but at least by the time of the next GE they might be able to point at some reason to vote for them again. But they're still open to the charge of "why didn't you do this last year?" and they've consistently demonstrated they're not really capable of communicating what they think they're in government to do, so I'm not optimistic.
(Unless they can also figure out a plan for dealing with the steady ramp up of spending imposed by our demographics I think they, and we, are screwed, though.)
A cleverer government would craft a narrative that taxes need to go up in the short term to get over the “hump” of resolving out-of-control spending, reform of public services and the welfare system, and deregulation. Then hope you can get some things fixed in time to give you a little cut in tax before the GE.
This however, isn’t a clever government, nor are their backbenchers in the mood for any of that stuff.
It seems Reeves is making a statement from no 10 in 5 minutes
Why and how is it right to speak to the nation just 3 weeks before her budget and outside parliament ?
Tax rises are coming.
It will be the fault of
Brexit the Tories Austerity Ukraine conflict
It won’t be the fault of
Rachel Reeves Labour
🥱🥱
I mean she’s not wrong. We have been living beyond our means for a long time
It’s all talk.
Yet she won’t do anything about reforming the triple lock or tackling her party over the burgeoning welfare bill.
It will be taxing ourselves to prosperity and regulating ourselves to prosperity.
The only growth she’s going to see is in emigration, and if she tries to tax that it will happen straight away and all at once.
So people are going to leave the UK in big numbers because of an exit tax and perhaps move to one of US, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, Spain or Australia that all have similar or stricter exit taxes? Maybe, people are sometimes a bit dim.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. The trouble is the whinging has acquired a life of its own- the Mail is particularly whingey- but the truth is a lot more nuanced.
It is just rich people whinging in an echo chamber. The UK is a premium location, which is why we have such low emigration rates.
Number of people leaving has risen massively. The question that doesn't seem to get answered (I think because the state doesn't record this) is who are these people. Are they people who were immigrants returning home, are they retirees going to Spain, are they highly educated individuals, rich people? Basically what proprotion of the significantly increased levels of emigration do these different types of make up (and many are overlapping e.g. high educated immigrant).
I know a bunch of people moving to Milan (non dom) and one wealthy German person moving to Spain because of the inheritance tax changes.
I know loads of people, particularly in business who have gone or seriously considering going. Its easier than ever to hop the globe, run things remote etc. A bit like asylum was based on a premise that it would only be a few people as travel was hard, particularly long distance, the tax rules about only being in a country x days a year are rather redundant now as people don't need to be physically present 5 days a week in an office (and many workers aren't).
There's never a good time to break manifesto pledges on taxes. To do so immediately after winning the election is bad. To do so immediately before the next election is foolish.
So, maybe to do so after 18 months but with a few years to get over it before the next GE is the optimum time.
They are going to get completely pummelled for it if they raise income tax*, and given our rolling news age I’m not sure that story will be closed down.
*the only way I can see them managing to - somewhat - pull it off will be if they make a corresponding cut to NI. That’ll give them their ability to hide behind the “working people” mantra.
That would be the right thing to do economically.
Even better if a four year plan was outlined to get rid of employees national insurance in 4x2% stages with income tax being increased by 4x2%.
It would also partially solve the issue of salary sacrifice pensions and likely encourage workers from not retiring as early.
The outrage though from those affected would be deafening.
It seems Reeves is making a statement from no 10 in 5 minutes
Why and how is it right to speak to the nation just 3 weeks before her budget and outside parliament ?
Tax rises are coming.
It will be the fault of
Brexit the Tories Austerity Ukraine conflict
It won’t be the fault of
Rachel Reeves Labour
🥱🥱
I mean she’s not wrong. We have been living beyond our means for a long time
It’s all talk.
Yet she won’t do anything about reforming the triple lock or tackling her party over the burgeoning welfare bill.
It will be taxing ourselves to prosperity and regulating ourselves to prosperity.
The only growth she’s going to see is in emigration, and if she tries to tax that it will happen straight away and all at once.
So people are going to leave the UK in big numbers because of an exit tax and perhaps move to one of US, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, Spain or Australia that all have similar or stricter exit taxes? Maybe, people are sometimes a bit dim.
If I was to move overseas again it would not be to any of those countries.
Sure, some rich people will move to tax havens or Middle East, as they always have done. That is a minority choice though, most people won't enjoy that lifestyle permanently.
The people you have to worry about are the highly educated / highly skilled. They drive an economy.
If observations from the sandpit are anything to go by, then almost all graduates, many working in financial services, real estate, teaching, healthcare, in 20s and 30s - plus a few HNWIs and UHNWIs who take a lot of investment out of the UK. Possibly the worst bunch of emigrants you could possibly want.
Oh, and if you earn $100k you can now sponsor yourself for a 10-year “golden visa”, so people are putting down roots and having families, not just treating it as a few years to earn money before returning to UK.
It seems Reeves is making a statement from no 10 in 5 minutes
Why and how is it right to speak to the nation just 3 weeks before her budget and outside parliament ?
Tax rises are coming.
It will be the fault of
Brexit the Tories Austerity Ukraine conflict
It won’t be the fault of
Rachel Reeves Labour
🥱🥱
I mean she’s not wrong. We have been living beyond our means for a long time
It’s all talk.
Yet she won’t do anything about reforming the triple lock or tackling her party over the burgeoning welfare bill.
It will be taxing ourselves to prosperity and regulating ourselves to prosperity.
The only growth she’s going to see is in emigration, and if she tries to tax that it will happen straight away and all at once.
So people are going to leave the UK in big numbers because of an exit tax and perhaps move to one of US, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, Spain or Australia that all have similar or stricter exit taxes? Maybe, people are sometimes a bit dim.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. The trouble is the whinging has acquired a life of its own- the Mail is particularly whingey- but the truth is a lot more nuanced.
It is just rich people whinging in an echo chamber. The UK is a premium location, which is why we have such low emigration rates.
Number of people leaving has risen massively. The question that doesn't seem to get answered (I think because the state doesn't record this) is who are these people. Are they people who were immigrants returning home, are they retirees going to Spain, are they highly educated individuals, rich people? Basically what proprotion of the significantly increased levels of emigration do these different types of make up (and many are overlapping e.g. high educated immigrant).
Dont believe the Daily Mail and Telegraph. Emigration is rising slowly not massively, and that is to be expected when you have higher inwards migration, as not all settle permanently. Labour slowly getting to grips with deportations presumably also increases emigration.
A quick look at that shows that over 400, 000 were non-UK nationals, with only 77, 000 UK nationals. And emigration has lain between 400,000 and 600,000 every year since 2012. So normal for the UK.
Before 2020, it was normally more like 300-350k year. I don't know the answer what makes up this increase, its a question I have asked before. Is it a brain drain / wealth drain, I don't know.
There's never a good time to break manifesto pledges on taxes. To do so immediately after winning the election is bad. To do so immediately before the next election is foolish.
So, maybe to do so after 18 months but with a few years to get over it before the next GE is the optimum time.
They are going to get completely pummelled for it if they raise income tax*, and given our rolling news age I’m not sure that story will be closed down.
*the only way I can see them managing to - somewhat - pull it off will be if they make a corresponding cut to NI. That’ll give them their ability to hide behind the “working people” mantra.
The optics otherwise are going to be utterly dire, and possibly terminal for Starmer and Reeves (though I don’t really expect both to be in post by the time of the next GE anyway).
They get pummeled either way, so they might as well get pummeled doing the responsible thing.
I'm hoping this isn't the case but if the already ineffably stupid OSA is expanded to ban VPNs that'll throw the work I currently have onto a bonfire.
Regular PBers may remember AI ate a load of my work a couple of years ago after which I had a wonderful and not at all soul-destroying year or so of trying to find more work. If unbelievably stupid government regulation then destroys what I've currently got it it would be fair to say I would be less than happy.
How could you actually ban VPNs? I mean, even the Chinese haven't managed that. Or at least, they are banned but everyone ignores the law.
What I suspect they’ll do is demand Apple/Google/Microsoft app stores remove the most prominent VPNs, have banks block payments to them, ban them from advertising in UK etc.
Of course it’s a giant whack-a-mole, and government has no chance of doing anything but educating teenagers on evasion tactics.
It seems Reeves is making a statement from no 10 in 5 minutes
Why and how is it right to speak to the nation just 3 weeks before her budget and outside parliament ?
Tax rises are coming.
It will be the fault of
Brexit the Tories Austerity Ukraine conflict
It won’t be the fault of
Rachel Reeves Labour
🥱🥱
I mean she’s not wrong. We have been living beyond our means for a long time
It’s all talk.
Yet she won’t do anything about reforming the triple lock or tackling her party over the burgeoning welfare bill.
It will be taxing ourselves to prosperity and regulating ourselves to prosperity.
The only growth she’s going to see is in emigration, and if she tries to tax that it will happen straight away and all at once.
So people are going to leave the UK in big numbers because of an exit tax and perhaps move to one of US, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, Spain or Australia that all have similar or stricter exit taxes? Maybe, people are sometimes a bit dim.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. The trouble is the whinging has acquired a life of its own- the Mail is particularly whingey- but the truth is a lot more nuanced.
It is just rich people whinging in an echo chamber. The UK is a premium location, which is why we have such low emigration rates.
Number of people leaving has risen massively. The question that doesn't seem to get answered (I think because the state doesn't record this) is who are these people. Are they people who were immigrants returning home, are they retirees going to Spain, are they highly educated individuals, rich people? Basically what proprotion of the significantly increased levels of emigration do these different types of make up (and many are overlapping e.g. high educated immigrant).
Dont believe the Daily Mail and Telegraph. Emigration is rising slowly not massively, and that is to be expected when you have higher inwards migration, as not all settle permanently. Labour slowly getting to grips with deportations presumably also increases emigration.
A quick look at that shows that over 400, 000 were non-UK nationals, with only 77, 000 UK nationals. And emigration has lain between 400,000 and 600,000 every year since 2012. So normal for the UK.
Before 2020, it was normally more like 300-350k year. I don't know the answer what makes up this increase, its a question I have asked before. Is it a brain drain / wealth drain, I don't know.
It seems Reeves is making a statement from no 10 in 5 minutes
Why and how is it right to speak to the nation just 3 weeks before her budget and outside parliament ?
Tax rises are coming.
It will be the fault of
Brexit the Tories Austerity Ukraine conflict
It won’t be the fault of
Rachel Reeves Labour
🥱🥱
I mean she’s not wrong. We have been living beyond our means for a long time
And yet she chose to increase spending by £60bn per year in the last budget. That's a choice she made and now because her tax rises have failed to yield enough we're left with an even bigger shortfall than what they purported to start with.
This is all her own fault. She could have cut spending on day one, made modest tax rises and moved towards balancing the budget but instead she chose to blow the budget on public sector pay rises and the endless money pit that is the NHS. Now she's back for more tax rises because, whoops, business investment crashed and now the economy is slowing down so not enough tax is being raised.
She's worse than useless, actively harmful to the national economy.
I personally am not bothered about being taxed a bit more if it means we don’t have to cut the NHS
Trouble is it's always more than a bit extra tax and never enough to improve the NHS.
Even if tax was infinite there would never be enough money for the NHS
The law of diminishing marginal returns always applies.
On the RR landlord licence email, it's interesting that the Letting Agent said it was normal process to apply for a license after the tenant had moved in.
It seems Reeves is making a statement from no 10 in 5 minutes
Why and how is it right to speak to the nation just 3 weeks before her budget and outside parliament ?
Tax rises are coming.
It will be the fault of
Brexit the Tories Austerity Ukraine conflict
It won’t be the fault of
Rachel Reeves Labour
🥱🥱
I mean she’s not wrong. We have been living beyond our means for a long time
It’s all talk.
Yet she won’t do anything about reforming the triple lock or tackling her party over the burgeoning welfare bill.
It will be taxing ourselves to prosperity and regulating ourselves to prosperity.
The only growth she’s going to see is in emigration, and if she tries to tax that it will happen straight away and all at once.
So people are going to leave the UK in big numbers because of an exit tax and perhaps move to one of US, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, Spain or Australia that all have similar or stricter exit taxes? Maybe, people are sometimes a bit dim.
If I was to move overseas again it would not be to any of those countries.
Sure, some rich people will move to tax havens or Middle East, as they always have done. That is a minority choice though, most people won't enjoy that lifestyle permanently.
We need a UK FATCA. If people want to benefit from UK citizenship they should pay UK taxes, wherever they choose to live. If they love money more than their country well fine, they can become a citizen of elsewhere.
“The Budget this month will focus squarely on the priorities of the British people: cutting waiting lists, cutting the national debt and cutting the cost of living."
I see our politicians are still struggling with debt vs deficit, anybody would think she was a fake economist....unless she intends to cut government expendure to a fraction of its current amount.
That is being unduly pedantic, I think ? In the large majority of cases, cutting national debt has always meant cutting it as a percentage of GDP, rather than a cut in absolute terms.
While that would still be a pretty unlikely achievement for this government, it's not quite so absurd.
Well if she borrows £200bn this year to add to the £2.9trn debt, where’s the 7% growth coming from to reduce the debt/GDP ratio?
Well, if inflation is 3%, it's only about 4% she'd need. Easy .
I suspect it was supposed to be deficit in the tweet.
Well if the Chancellor of the Exchequer can’t tell the difference between debt and deficit, what chance of the rest of us being properly informed?
One might expect even the intern social media manager at No.11 to have studied economics course 101.
There's never a good time to break manifesto pledges on taxes. To do so immediately after winning the election is bad. To do so immediately before the next election is foolish.
So, maybe to do so after 18 months but with a few years to get over it before the next GE is the optimum time.
They are going to get completely pummelled for it if they raise income tax*, and given our rolling news age I’m not sure that story will be closed down.
*the only way I can see them managing to - somewhat - pull it off will be if they make a corresponding cut to NI. That’ll give them their ability to hide behind the “working people” mantra.
The optics otherwise are going to be utterly dire, and possibly terminal for Starmer and Reeves (though I don’t really expect both to be in post by the time of the next GE anyway).
They get pummeled either way, so they might as well get pummeled doing the responsible thing.
Well, it would be a first sign of some genuine political power playing from either of them. I suspect given their record it won’t end well for them, but yes if taxes need to go up then they need to stop fiddling at the edges. I said as much last year, which is when this budget should have been written.
I'm hoping this isn't the case but if the already ineffably stupid OSA is expanded to ban VPNs that'll throw the work I currently have onto a bonfire.
Regular PBers may remember AI ate a load of my work a couple of years ago after which I had a wonderful and not at all soul-destroying year or so of trying to find more work. If unbelievably stupid government regulation then destroys what I've currently got it it would be fair to say I would be less than happy.
How could you actually ban VPNs? I mean, even the Chinese haven't managed that. Or at least, they are banned but everyone ignores the law.
What I suspect they’ll do is demand Apple/Google/Microsoft app stores remove the most prominent VPNs, have banks block payments to them, ban them from advertising in UK etc.
Of course it’s a giant whack-a-mole, and government has no chance of doing anything but educating teenagers on evasion tactics.
They’ll be trading brave on USB sticks. It’ll be like the heady piracy days of the 80s and 90s. But with more girls.
Announce a staged process of moving a significant amount of NI to income tax in an annual process. 1p switch over every year for rest of this parliament.
Free people to employ other people and soak up more revenue from non-employment income.
Call it 'necessary rebalancing' of the main tax system and hope people give some grudging respect for trying to get out of the fiscal mess whilst keeping the nhs going.
It seems Reeves is making a statement from no 10 in 5 minutes
Why and how is it right to speak to the nation just 3 weeks before her budget and outside parliament ?
Tax rises are coming.
It will be the fault of
Brexit the Tories Austerity Ukraine conflict
It won’t be the fault of
Rachel Reeves Labour
🥱🥱
I mean she’s not wrong. We have been living beyond our means for a long time
And yet she chose to increase spending by £60bn per year in the last budget. That's a choice she made and now because her tax rises have failed to yield enough we're left with an even bigger shortfall than what they purported to start with.
This is all her own fault. She could have cut spending on day one, made modest tax rises and moved towards balancing the budget but instead she chose to blow the budget on public sector pay rises and the endless money pit that is the NHS. Now she's back for more tax rises because, whoops, business investment crashed and now the economy is slowing down so not enough tax is being raised.
She's worse than useless, actively harmful to the national economy.
I personally am not bothered about being taxed a bit more if it means we don’t have to cut the NHS
Trouble is it's always more than a bit extra tax and never enough to improve the NHS.
Well quite. How much does the NHS need. The demand seems to grow and grow and if people want to pay additional tax I believe they are free to do so.
Announce a staged process of moving a significant amount of NI to income tax in an annual process. 1p switch over every year for rest of this parliament.
Free people to employ other people and soak up more revenue from non-employment income.
Call it 'necessary rebalancing' of the main tax system and hope people give some grudging respect for trying to get out of the fiscal mess whilst keeping the nhs going.
Remind me of Labour’s reaction when the Tories floated the idea of scrapping NI.
I thought it was a decent speech from Reeves . It doesn’t remove the problem of likely breaking manifesto pledges .
People can debate whether Labour should have made that tax pledge.
Is the manifesto breaking a big issue?
Virtually no-one is happy with how the government is progressing at the moment. There may well be more votes in breaking the commitment and forgetting about having to cut £2bn here and £1bn there every few months.
I'd suggest if they dont raise some proper money their vote share at the GE is in the 15-25 range whereas if they do it is in the 20-30 range.
It might depend how they do it. If they break the pledges in a small way and give the impression they're doing it to fill in a shortfall and that they might come back and do it again next year, that's unlikely to be popular. If they can tell a coherent story about why they're doing it and how it fits in to getting the economy going again and actually doing something (and they follow up by focusing on actually doing stuff) -- well, it probably still won't be popular but at least by the time of the next GE they might be able to point at some reason to vote for them again. But they're still open to the charge of "why didn't you do this last year?" and they've consistently demonstrated they're not really capable of communicating what they think they're in government to do, so I'm not optimistic.
(Unless they can also figure out a plan for dealing with the steady ramp up of spending imposed by our demographics I think they, and we, are screwed, though.)
A cleverer government would craft a narrative that taxes need to go up in the short term to get over the “hump” of resolving out-of-control spending, reform of public services and the welfare system, and deregulation. Then hope you can get some things fixed in time to give you a little cut in tax before the GE.
This however, isn’t a clever government, nor are their backbenchers in the mood for any of that stuff.
The back benchers have discovered they’ve been sold a crap job.
No chance of getting a Government role (as there are way too many MPs), little chance of being re- elected, going back to work outside Parliament is difficult to impossible and as Nick pointed out even the pension isn’t that great
Literally the only thing they can do is force the Government to follow its manifesto and keep vocal constituents happy by keeping the money flow continuing
It seems Reeves is making a statement from no 10 in 5 minutes
Why and how is it right to speak to the nation just 3 weeks before her budget and outside parliament ?
Tax rises are coming.
It will be the fault of
Brexit the Tories Austerity Ukraine conflict
It won’t be the fault of
Rachel Reeves Labour
🥱🥱
I mean she’s not wrong. We have been living beyond our means for a long time
It’s all talk.
Yet she won’t do anything about reforming the triple lock or tackling her party over the burgeoning welfare bill.
It will be taxing ourselves to prosperity and regulating ourselves to prosperity.
The only growth she’s going to see is in emigration, and if she tries to tax that it will happen straight away and all at once.
So people are going to leave the UK in big numbers because of an exit tax and perhaps move to one of US, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, Spain or Australia that all have similar or stricter exit taxes? Maybe, people are sometimes a bit dim.
If I was to move overseas again it would not be to any of those countries.
Sure, some rich people will move to tax havens or Middle East, as they always have done. That is a minority choice though, most people won't enjoy that lifestyle permanently.
We need a UK FATCA. If people want to benefit from UK citizenship they should pay UK taxes, wherever they choose to live. If they love money more than their country well fine, they can become a citizen of elsewhere.
The benefits of citizenship increasingly look to be limited to paying for the citizens on benefits.
There's never a good time to break manifesto pledges on taxes. To do so immediately after winning the election is bad. To do so immediately before the next election is foolish.
So, maybe to do so after 18 months but with a few years to get over it before the next GE is the optimum time.
They are going to get completely pummelled for it if they raise income tax*, and given our rolling news age I’m not sure that story will be closed down.
*the only way I can see them managing to - somewhat - pull it off will be if they make a corresponding cut to NI. That’ll give them their ability to hide behind the “working people” mantra.
The optics otherwise are going to be utterly dire, and possibly terminal for Starmer and Reeves (though I don’t really expect both to be in post by the time of the next GE anyway).
They are heading for a seismic defeat anyway. May as well go down fighting.
She could be truly transformative and do some real good with some proper reform.
There's never a good time to break manifesto pledges on taxes. To do so immediately after winning the election is bad. To do so immediately before the next election is foolish.
So, maybe to do so after 18 months but with a few years to get over it before the next GE is the optimum time.
They are going to get completely pummelled for it if they raise income tax*, and given our rolling news age I’m not sure that story will be closed down.
*the only way I can see them managing to - somewhat - pull it off will be if they make a corresponding cut to NI. That’ll give them their ability to hide behind the “working people” mantra.
That would be the right thing to do economically.
Even better if a four year plan was outlined to get rid of employees national insurance in 4x2% stages with income tax being increased by 4x2%.
It would also partially solve the issue of salary sacrifice pensions and likely encourage workers from not retiring as early.
The outrage though from those affected would be deafening.
I remember when pensioners were phoning in complaining about Hunt's NICs cut - because it was a tax cut that they wouldn't enjoy.
I just don’t see how Labour can recover after breaking a manifesto pledge of such high profile .
Their next election manifesto will be trashed as not worth the paper it’s printed on . Perhaps they might mitigate some of the damage with new leadership in No 10 and 11 . And even then they’d need the economy to be improving and better public services .
I thought it was a decent speech from Reeves . It doesn’t remove the problem of likely breaking manifesto pledges .
People can debate whether Labour should have made that tax pledge.
The trouble with big bold decisions from the off is that you immediately drive away a big slice of voters. Labour has at least cunningly waited until they have nothing more to lose.
I'm hoping this isn't the case but if the already ineffably stupid OSA is expanded to ban VPNs that'll throw the work I currently have onto a bonfire.
Regular PBers may remember AI ate a load of my work a couple of years ago after which I had a wonderful and not at all soul-destroying year or so of trying to find more work. If unbelievably stupid government regulation then destroys what I've currently got it it would be fair to say I would be less than happy.
How could you actually ban VPNs? I mean, even the Chinese haven't managed that. Or at least, they are banned but everyone ignores the law.
What I suspect they’ll do is demand Apple/Google/Microsoft app stores remove the most prominent VPNs, have banks block payments to them, ban them from advertising in UK etc.
Of course it’s a giant whack-a-mole, and government has no chance of doing anything but educating teenagers on evasion tactics.
Google are moving Android to ability to restrict installs of apps from I think next year. They say it is for "safety" with only app developers that have provided all their details and approved will be able to install those apps. Not won't be able to download from app store, won't be able to install / run them. Doesn't take much to flick a switch to ban certain apps from ever installing. Amazon have done this with the Firestick (which is an android device), they now can remotely blacklist apps which won't run.
I presume if we are going to get promises of more infrastructure spending it will be the reheating of that idea about the big beautiful British sovereign growth fund, that in reality was nothing like a sovereign wealth fund, it was just PFI and they shut up really quickly about.
Speaking of PFI, we’re only a couple of years away from the early Brown 30-year PFIs on Skools’n’Ospitals expiring. That’s one massive time bomb no-one is yet talking about.
They already are expiring.
What happens then ? Are they rolled over on existing terms, re negotiated ? Do they become a greater liability ?
I thought it was a decent speech from Reeves . It doesn’t remove the problem of likely breaking manifesto pledges .
People can debate whether Labour should have made that tax pledge.
The trouble with big bold decisions from the off is that you immediately drive away a big slice of voters. Labour has at least cunningly waited until they have nothing more to lose.
And that's why they have no excuse. Hunt should have done the same in Spring '24.
There's never a good time to break manifesto pledges on taxes. To do so immediately after winning the election is bad. To do so immediately before the next election is foolish.
So, maybe to do so after 18 months but with a few years to get over it before the next GE is the optimum time.
They are going to get completely pummelled for it if they raise income tax*, and given our rolling news age I’m not sure that story will be closed down.
*the only way I can see them managing to - somewhat - pull it off will be if they make a corresponding cut to NI. That’ll give them their ability to hide behind the “working people” mantra.
The optics otherwise are going to be utterly dire, and possibly terminal for Starmer and Reeves (though I don’t really expect both to be in post by the time of the next GE anyway).
They are heading for a seismic defeat anyway. May as well go down fighting.
I'd rather they made a start on the hard work with the aim of at least having a hopeful plan for the next GE. It sounds as though Nigel Farage has started talking about difficult circumstances so maybe the word will start to get out.
I am not sure how a VPN ban would work for companies, as I Currently log in for work via a VPN.
Well if you want to go really big government dystopia (which is what China does), VPN provider must have a licence to operate, restrict access to certain things (or conditions placed on why / where you can access certain things*) and be monitored by government with backdoor capabilities.
* e.g. I think things like YouTube with licensed VPNs in China are still heavily restricted access.
There's never a good time to break manifesto pledges on taxes. To do so immediately after winning the election is bad. To do so immediately before the next election is foolish.
So, maybe to do so after 18 months but with a few years to get over it before the next GE is the optimum time.
They are going to get completely pummelled for it if they raise income tax*, and given our rolling news age I’m not sure that story will be closed down.
*the only way I can see them managing to - somewhat - pull it off will be if they make a corresponding cut to NI. That’ll give them their ability to hide behind the “working people” mantra.
The optics otherwise are going to be utterly dire, and possibly terminal for Starmer and Reeves (though I don’t really expect both to be in post by the time of the next GE anyway).
They are heading for a seismic defeat anyway. May as well go down fighting.
She could be truly transformative and do some real good with some proper reform.
It’s shit or bust. Why not go for it.
Exactly.
She's probably only go another year, maybe two, in the CoE job anyway so start building a decent legacy.
It seems Reeves is making a statement from no 10 in 5 minutes
Why and how is it right to speak to the nation just 3 weeks before her budget and outside parliament ?
Tax rises are coming.
It will be the fault of
Brexit the Tories Austerity Ukraine conflict
It won’t be the fault of
Rachel Reeves Labour
🥱🥱
I mean she’s not wrong. We have been living beyond our means for a long time
It’s all talk.
Yet she won’t do anything about reforming the triple lock or tackling her party over the burgeoning welfare bill.
It will be taxing ourselves to prosperity and regulating ourselves to prosperity.
The only growth she’s going to see is in emigration, and if she tries to tax that it will happen straight away and all at once.
So people are going to leave the UK in big numbers because of an exit tax and perhaps move to one of US, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, Spain or Australia that all have similar or stricter exit taxes? Maybe, people are sometimes a bit dim.
If I was to move overseas again it would not be to any of those countries.
Sure, some rich people will move to tax havens or Middle East, as they always have done. That is a minority choice though, most people won't enjoy that lifestyle permanently.
We need a UK FATCA. If people want to benefit from UK citizenship they should pay UK taxes, wherever they choose to live. If they love money more than their country well fine, they can become a citizen of elsewhere.
The benefits of citizenship increasingly look to be limited to paying for the citizens on benefits.
That’s also a narrative that Labour need to “head off” I.e why am I paying ever more for a growing population on welfare obtaining fancy motability cars etc etc
But they don’t have the comms / talent to manage that narrative, so the whole budget will be a disaster
I thought it was a decent speech from Reeves . It doesn’t remove the problem of likely breaking manifesto pledges .
People can debate whether Labour should have made that tax pledge.
The trouble with big bold decisions from the off is that you immediately drive away a big slice of voters. Labour has at least cunningly waited until they have nothing more to lose.
And that's why they have no excuse. Hunt should have done the same in Spring '24.
Yes, but Spring 2024 w2as 99.999% about get out arse out of the fire, cover it, and a fair amount of salt the earth.
I thought it was a decent speech from Reeves . It doesn’t remove the problem of likely breaking manifesto pledges .
People can debate whether Labour should have made that tax pledge.
What is there to debate? It was obviously a stupid promise, that has forced the government into a series of other poor measures to raise revenue, and basically wasted an entire year in office. Now they will get to look like "just another bunch of lying politicians who broke their promises".
Was it good politics? Yes if you think getting elected is all that matters, but not if you actually wish to govern, which is the entire point of getting elected in the first place.
If Reeves was the CFO of a company, she would already have got the boot.
10 and 30 year bond rates have fallen during Reeves speech .
So maybe doing this speech will leave her with a bit more money come budget day . I expect tax rises but with some sweeteners .
From what, to what, they have been falling (as they have for other economies) for a while now.
Only a small amount but Reeves needs all the help she can get ! Politically I don’t see anyway Labour can go into the next election with Starmer and Reeves . They’d need an economic miracle which isn’t going to happen .
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
I just don’t see how Labour can recover after breaking a manifesto pledge of such high profile .
Their next election manifesto will be trashed as not worth the paper it’s printed on . Perhaps they might mitigate some of the damage with new leadership in No 10 and 11 . And even then they’d need the economy to be improving and better public services .
If people’s lives are better, or feel better, in 2029 I think they would get away with it.
Announce a staged process of moving a significant amount of NI to income tax in an annual process. 1p switch over every year for rest of this parliament.
Free people to employ other people and soak up more revenue from non-employment income.
Call it 'necessary rebalancing' of the main tax system and hope people give some grudging respect for trying to get out of the fiscal mess whilst keeping the nhs going.
2p per year, as per the Res Foundation proposals, but yes I agree. The benefit of pre-announcing repeated annual changes is that they compound up to the all important 3rd year. By then it would be an £18bn revenue benefit. And in the world of bad options, this is one of the least worst in terms of gdp or inflation impact.
I was seemingly the first to moot this as an option to journos back in the summer a few weeks before the Res paper came out. Which makes it a brace, as I was also the first to predict a rise in employers NICs last year.
It seems Reeves is making a statement from no 10 in 5 minutes
Why and how is it right to speak to the nation just 3 weeks before her budget and outside parliament ?
Tax rises are coming.
It will be the fault of
Brexit the Tories Austerity Ukraine conflict
It won’t be the fault of
Rachel Reeves Labour
🥱🥱
I mean she’s not wrong. We have been living beyond our means for a long time
It’s all talk.
Yet she won’t do anything about reforming the triple lock or tackling her party over the burgeoning welfare bill.
It will be taxing ourselves to prosperity and regulating ourselves to prosperity.
The only growth she’s going to see is in emigration, and if she tries to tax that it will happen straight away and all at once.
So people are going to leave the UK in big numbers because of an exit tax and perhaps move to one of US, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, Spain or Australia that all have similar or stricter exit taxes? Maybe, people are sometimes a bit dim.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. The trouble is the whinging has acquired a life of its own- the Mail is particularly whingey- but the truth is a lot more nuanced.
It is just rich people whinging in an echo chamber. The UK is a premium location, which is why we have such low emigration rates.
Number of people leaving has risen massively. The question that doesn't seem to get answered (I think because the state doesn't record this) is who are these people. Are they people who were immigrants returning home, are they retirees going to Spain, are they highly educated individuals, rich people? Basically what proprotion of the significantly increased levels of emigration do these different types of make up (and many are overlapping e.g. high educated immigrant).
Dont believe the Daily Mail and Telegraph. Emigration is rising slowly not massively, and that is to be expected when you have higher inwards migration, as not all settle permanently. Labour slowly getting to grips with deportations presumably also increases emigration.
A quick look at that shows that over 400, 000 were non-UK nationals, with only 77, 000 UK nationals. And emigration has lain between 400,000 and 600,000 every year since 2012. So normal for the UK.
Before 2020, it was normally more like 300-350k year. I don't know the answer what makes up this increase, its a question I have asked before. Is it a brain drain / wealth drain, I don't know.
I just don’t see how Labour can recover after breaking a manifesto pledge of such high profile .
Their next election manifesto will be trashed as not worth the paper it’s printed on . Perhaps they might mitigate some of the damage with new leadership in No 10 and 11 . And even then they’d need the economy to be improving and better public services .
Maybe people will realise it is necessary and the parties were all wrong to make manifesto commitments about it. ie they all lied to us.
I’ll be interested to see the reaction when people who don’t think they’ll be hit by any extra tax rises are, in fact, taxed more
Some of us are bracing already. If one of the think tank proposals currently doing numbers actually goes ahead then I’ll have a >50k tax rise. Which is definitely in ouch territory.
A view of the Refuk UK claims around Motability (Agent Anderson's Bring Back Invacar) from a thoughtful disabled friend who has been in this field for decades. He also wants reform of the scheme, but without Anderson's poisonous politics.
What's really depressing about this is it targetting the flaws in the scheme in such a way as to put the blame on disabled people! The scheme is basically a way of channelling the welfare budget into a subsidy for the car industry. The reason why you can buy a BMW is that if you couldn't BMW would crucify the government for unfair subsidies. Either Reform knows this and is being really malicious, or it doesn't, in which case its being stupid.
I thought it was a decent speech from Reeves . It doesn’t remove the problem of likely breaking manifesto pledges .
People can debate whether Labour should have made that tax pledge.
What is there to debate? It was obviously a stupid promise, that has forced the government into a series of other poor measures to raise revenue, and basically wasted an entire year in office. Now they will get to look like "just another bunch of lying politicians who broke their promises".
Was it good politics? Yes if you think getting elected is all that matters, but not if you actually wish to govern, which is the entire point of getting elected in the first place.
If Reeves was the CFO of a company, she would already have got the boot.
And Reform and the Tories will continue to ignore reality . The country needs taxes to go up not down unless they want public services to collapse.
There's never a good time to break manifesto pledges on taxes. To do so immediately after winning the election is bad. To do so immediately before the next election is foolish.
So, maybe to do so after 18 months but with a few years to get over it before the next GE is the optimum time.
They are going to get completely pummelled for it if they raise income tax*, and given our rolling news age I’m not sure that story will be closed down.
*the only way I can see them managing to - somewhat - pull it off will be if they make a corresponding cut to NI. That’ll give them their ability to hide behind the “working people” mantra.
The optics otherwise are going to be utterly dire, and possibly terminal for Starmer and Reeves (though I don’t really expect both to be in post by the time of the next GE anyway).
They are heading for a seismic defeat anyway. May as well go down fighting.
She could be truly transformative and do some real good with some proper reform.
I'm hoping this isn't the case but if the already ineffably stupid OSA is expanded to ban VPNs that'll throw the work I currently have onto a bonfire.
Regular PBers may remember AI ate a load of my work a couple of years ago after which I had a wonderful and not at all soul-destroying year or so of trying to find more work. If unbelievably stupid government regulation then destroys what I've currently got it it would be fair to say I would be less than happy.
How could you actually ban VPNs? I mean, even the Chinese haven't managed that. Or at least, they are banned but everyone ignores the law.
What I suspect they’ll do is demand Apple/Google/Microsoft app stores remove the most prominent VPNs, have banks block payments to them, ban them from advertising in UK etc.
Of course it’s a giant whack-a-mole, and government has no chance of doing anything but educating teenagers on evasion tactics.
They’ll be trading brave on USB sticks. It’ll be like the heady piracy days of the 80s and 90s. But with more girls.
According to the ex-Cabinet Office guy I know, the thinking is that ISPs would control access to allow Approved VPNs only. Big Business would be given an exemption. So smaller businesses would be hammered, along with ordinary people.
Satellite internet providers would have to provide 1) Landing of all Internet traffic from the UK in the UK and 2) enforce the above.
Following the interesting reference here yesterday to the first recorded charge of Outraging Public Decency, it's quite amusing to consider that Reeves wants 2p on us all
I just don’t see how Labour can recover after breaking a manifesto pledge of such high profile .
Their next election manifesto will be trashed as not worth the paper it’s printed on . Perhaps they might mitigate some of the damage with new leadership in No 10 and 11 . And even then they’d need the economy to be improving and better public services .
If people’s lives are better, or feel better, in 2029 I think they would get away with it.
Labour need a lot to go right . Breaking a manifesto pledge is a big deal when it’s one of the really high profile ones .
There's never a good time to break manifesto pledges on taxes. To do so immediately after winning the election is bad. To do so immediately before the next election is foolish.
So, maybe to do so after 18 months but with a few years to get over it before the next GE is the optimum time.
They are going to get completely pummelled for it if they raise income tax*, and given our rolling news age I’m not sure that story will be closed down.
*the only way I can see them managing to - somewhat - pull it off will be if they make a corresponding cut to NI. That’ll give them their ability to hide behind the “working people” mantra.
That would be the right thing to do economically.
Even better if a four year plan was outlined to get rid of employees national insurance in 4x2% stages with income tax being increased by 4x2%.
It would also partially solve the issue of salary sacrifice pensions and likely encourage workers from not retiring as early.
The outrage though from those affected would be deafening.
I remember when pensioners were phoning in complaining about Hunt's NICs cut - because it was a tax cut that they wouldn't enjoy.
They could extend NI to pensioners then slightly cut it, everybody's happy!!
Increasing Income Tax and abolishing NI would be a messaging error, it would just be a "Labour massively increased Income Tax" in one to two laps of the goldfish bowl.
It seems Reeves is making a statement from no 10 in 5 minutes
Why and how is it right to speak to the nation just 3 weeks before her budget and outside parliament ?
Tax rises are coming.
It will be the fault of
Brexit the Tories Austerity Ukraine conflict
It won’t be the fault of
Rachel Reeves Labour
🥱🥱
I mean she’s not wrong. We have been living beyond our means for a long time
And yet she chose to increase spending by £60bn per year in the last budget. That's a choice she made and now because her tax rises have failed to yield enough we're left with an even bigger shortfall than what they purported to start with.
This is all her own fault. She could have cut spending on day one, made modest tax rises and moved towards balancing the budget but instead she chose to blow the budget on public sector pay rises and the endless money pit that is the NHS. Now she's back for more tax rises because, whoops, business investment crashed and now the economy is slowing down so not enough tax is being raised.
She's worse than useless, actively harmful to the national economy.
I personally am not bothered about being taxed a bit more if it means we don’t have to cut the NHS
It’s important to think of “The NHS” in terms of outputs though, not in terms of inputs.
Throwing ever increasing piles of money at an unreformed system does nothing to help with the actual problem.
I just don’t see how Labour can recover after breaking a manifesto pledge of such high profile .
Their next election manifesto will be trashed as not worth the paper it’s printed on . Perhaps they might mitigate some of the damage with new leadership in No 10 and 11 . And even then they’d need the economy to be improving and better public services .
Maybe people will realise it is necessary and the parties were all wrong to make manifesto commitments about it. ie they all lied to us.
To be fair, this is normal for politicians. And even more normal in the age of social media when people make silly remarks that become policy.
It would be more helpful if there were some system of 'these are things we will do, no messing', and ' these are things we will do if we can' and 'this is the idea, but it may not be possible when we get in and look at the books' with the possibility of new elections if a governing party breached (1). That might concentrate minds on actually coming up with sane policies.
I'm hoping this isn't the case but if the already ineffably stupid OSA is expanded to ban VPNs that'll throw the work I currently have onto a bonfire.
Regular PBers may remember AI ate a load of my work a couple of years ago after which I had a wonderful and not at all soul-destroying year or so of trying to find more work. If unbelievably stupid government regulation then destroys what I've currently got it it would be fair to say I would be less than happy.
How could you actually ban VPNs? I mean, even the Chinese haven't managed that. Or at least, they are banned but everyone ignores the law.
What I suspect they’ll do is demand Apple/Google/Microsoft app stores remove the most prominent VPNs, have banks block payments to them, ban them from advertising in UK etc.
Of course it’s a giant whack-a-mole, and government has no chance of doing anything but educating teenagers on evasion tactics.
They’ll be trading brave on USB sticks. It’ll be like the heady piracy days of the 80s and 90s. But with more girls.
According to the ex-Cabinet Office guy I know, the thinking is that ISPs would control access to allow Approved VPNs only. Big Business would be given an exemption. So smaller businesses would be hammered, along with ordinary people.
Satellite internet providers would have to provide 1) Landing of all Internet traffic from the UK in the UK and 2) enforce the above.
This, of course, assumes that there are no unapproved VPNs/TOR copies already in circulation. And that you can’t update them over themselves…
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 21m I think the stuff in Reeves' speech about how one of her priorities is getting down inflation is most naturally interpreted as implying she thinks raising business taxes (& hence costs) or expenditure taxes (eg VAT) are bad options for inflation, & hence income tax is better.
I'm hoping this isn't the case but if the already ineffably stupid OSA is expanded to ban VPNs that'll throw the work I currently have onto a bonfire...
Indeed. A stupid decision from a stupid government that wants to control everything.
Re the Budget: The answer is 2p or 3p on the basic rate of income tax but with a large increase in the tax free allowance. They would be able to say that they have not increased tax for a large proportion of the population -the "Workers", whilst increasing the take from the high earners. Increasing the tax free allowance would help the lowest paid and take millions out of paying tax. I am already paying tax on my state pension.
I'm hoping this isn't the case but if the already ineffably stupid OSA is expanded to ban VPNs that'll throw the work I currently have onto a bonfire.
Regular PBers may remember AI ate a load of my work a couple of years ago after which I had a wonderful and not at all soul-destroying year or so of trying to find more work. If unbelievably stupid government regulation then destroys what I've currently got it it would be fair to say I would be less than happy.
How could you actually ban VPNs? I mean, even the Chinese haven't managed that. Or at least, they are banned but everyone ignores the law.
What I suspect they’ll do is demand Apple/Google/Microsoft app stores remove the most prominent VPNs, have banks block payments to them, ban them from advertising in UK etc.
Of course it’s a giant whack-a-mole, and government has no chance of doing anything but educating teenagers on evasion tactics.
They’ll be trading brave on USB sticks. It’ll be like the heady piracy days of the 80s and 90s. But with more girls.
According to the ex-Cabinet Office guy I know, the thinking is that ISPs would control access to allow Approved VPNs only. Big Business would be given an exemption. So smaller businesses would be hammered, along with ordinary people.
Satellite internet providers would have to provide 1) Landing of all Internet traffic from the UK in the UK and 2) enforce the above.
This, of course, assumes that there are no unapproved VPNs/TOR copies already in circulation. And that you can’t update them over themselves…
I look at my NordVPN connection with the double VPN option and think - well that's going to last about 30 seconds...
I’m finding the Virginia races the most interesting. The last poll for the Governor race was D+6, and both candidates have been bringing a lot of high-profile supporters to the State.
If the GOP can’t win the AG race they’re in trouble next year.
New York Mayor is another interesting one in what could be a three-way fight, but the official Dem Mamdani is the clear odds-on favourite. I guess we’re about to see what happens when a financial capital elects a communist.
Particularly we're going to see what happens when a Communist goes up against a Fascist.
Mamdani has the advantage of being youthful and not having dementia.
Trump has the advantage of a control of the whole government and military machine plus the courts.
He's not a communist. He does not support a dictatorship of the proletariat. He's a hard left socialist. The Republicans, and their supporters, like to call him a communist, even though it's Trump who's cosying up to the successor of Stalin, viz. Putin.
It seems Reeves is making a statement from no 10 in 5 minutes
Why and how is it right to speak to the nation just 3 weeks before her budget and outside parliament ?
Tax rises are coming.
It will be the fault of
Brexit the Tories Austerity Ukraine conflict
It won’t be the fault of
Rachel Reeves Labour
🥱🥱
I mean she’s not wrong. We have been living beyond our means for a long time
It’s all talk.
Yet she won’t do anything about reforming the triple lock or tackling her party over the burgeoning welfare bill.
It will be taxing ourselves to prosperity and regulating ourselves to prosperity.
The only growth she’s going to see is in emigration, and if she tries to tax that it will happen straight away and all at once.
So people are going to leave the UK in big numbers because of an exit tax and perhaps move to one of US, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, Spain or Australia that all have similar or stricter exit taxes? Maybe, people are sometimes a bit dim.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. The trouble is the whinging has acquired a life of its own- the Mail is particularly whingey- but the truth is a lot more nuanced.
It is just rich people whinging in an echo chamber. The UK is a premium location, which is why we have such low emigration rates.
Number of people leaving has risen massively. The question that doesn't seem to get answered (I think because the state doesn't record this) is who are these people. Are they people who were immigrants returning home, are they retirees going to Spain, are they highly educated individuals, rich people? Basically what proprotion of the significantly increased levels of emigration do these different types of make up (and many are overlapping e.g. high educated immigrant).
Dont believe the Daily Mail and Telegraph. Emigration is rising slowly not massively, and that is to be expected when you have higher inwards migration, as not all settle permanently. Labour slowly getting to grips with deportations presumably also increases emigration.
513,000 people emigrated in 2024....that is a lot of people leaving per year. 10 years ago it was more like 300k.
Ten years ago we weren't counting students in and out and now we do, IIRC?
There's never a good time to break manifesto pledges on taxes. To do so immediately after winning the election is bad. To do so immediately before the next election is foolish.
So, maybe to do so after 18 months but with a few years to get over it before the next GE is the optimum time.
They are going to get completely pummelled for it if they raise income tax*, and given our rolling news age I’m not sure that story will be closed down.
*the only way I can see them managing to - somewhat - pull it off will be if they make a corresponding cut to NI. That’ll give them their ability to hide behind the “working people” mantra.
The optics otherwise are going to be utterly dire, and possibly terminal for Starmer and Reeves (though I don’t really expect both to be in post by the time of the next GE anyway).
They are heading for a seismic defeat anyway. May as well go down fighting.
She could be truly transformative and do some real good with some proper reform.
It’s shit or bust. Why not go for it.
More likely to be shit followed by bust.
We need a chancellor brave enough to announce they are bringing back boom and bust.
“It’s time for a return to boom and bust. No more sclerotic growth!”
In all seriousness we could do with some of the capacity building you get in investment booms, and some of the clear out of zombie enterprises you get in busts.
Re the Budget: The answer is 2p or 3p on the basic rate of income tax but with a large increase in the tax free allowance. They would be able to say that they have not increased tax for a large proportion of the population -the "Workers", whilst increasing the take from the high earners. Increasing the tax free allowance would help the lowest paid and take millions out of paying tax. I am already paying tax on my state pension.
And that £2000 or £3000 increase in the allowance would kick the issue of pensions hitting the income tax allowance for a few years..
Yep I can see that being done it - solves a number of problems with pensioners while raising a few more quid.
There's never a good time to break manifesto pledges on taxes. To do so immediately after winning the election is bad. To do so immediately before the next election is foolish.
So, maybe to do so after 18 months but with a few years to get over it before the next GE is the optimum time.
They are going to get completely pummelled for it if they raise income tax*, and given our rolling news age I’m not sure that story will be closed down.
*the only way I can see them managing to - somewhat - pull it off will be if they make a corresponding cut to NI. That’ll give them their ability to hide behind the “working people” mantra.
That would be the right thing to do economically.
Even better if a four year plan was outlined to get rid of employees national insurance in 4x2% stages with income tax being increased by 4x2%.
It would also partially solve the issue of salary sacrifice pensions and likely encourage workers from not retiring as early.
The outrage though from those affected would be deafening.
I remember when pensioners were phoning in complaining about Hunt's NICs cut - because it was a tax cut that they wouldn't enjoy.
Anecdotally I've heard a few oldies complain about paying income tax recently.
Not the possibility of the state pension being higher than the individual tax allowance but having to pay income tax on the work pensions they currently receive.
It wouldn't surprise me if most oldies think they should be exempt from income tax entirely.
Re the Budget: The answer is 2p or 3p on the basic rate of income tax but with a large increase in the tax free allowance. They would be able to say that they have not increased tax for a large proportion of the population -the "Workers", whilst increasing the take from the high earners. Increasing the tax free allowance would help the lowest paid and take millions out of paying tax. I am already paying tax on my state pension.
Many would argue this is the opposite to what we should be doing. Our tax base has narrowed considerably over the years. Partly due to demographics, partly deliberate tax policy. The fewer people you tax, the more you have to charge those who do pay.
Another topic where Dan Neidle’s site has some useful analysis.
I thought it was a decent speech from Reeves . It doesn’t remove the problem of likely breaking manifesto pledges .
People can debate whether Labour should have made that tax pledge.
What is there to debate? It was obviously a stupid promise, that has forced the government into a series of other poor measures to raise revenue, and basically wasted an entire year in office. Now they will get to look like "just another bunch of lying politicians who broke their promises".
Was it good politics? Yes if you think getting elected is all that matters, but not if you actually wish to govern, which is the entire point of getting elected in the first place.
If Reeves was the CFO of a company, she would already have got the boot.
And Reform and the Tories will continue to ignore reality . The country needs taxes to go up not down unless they want public services to collapse.
Reform have questioned the continuation of the triple lock and rolled back on their 90 billion welfare cuts so, perhaps, they are getting it.
I just don’t see how Labour can recover after breaking a manifesto pledge of such high profile .
Their next election manifesto will be trashed as not worth the paper it’s printed on . Perhaps they might mitigate some of the damage with new leadership in No 10 and 11 . And even then they’d need the economy to be improving and better public services .
If people’s lives are better, or feel better, in 2029 I think they would get away with it.
Labour need a lot to go right . Breaking a manifesto pledge is a big deal when it’s one of the really high profile ones .
I highly doubt they will ever recover from this, particularly once it starts hitting people's pay packets in April.
It might be slightly different if there were some overwhelming but temporary national priority that needed to be paid for, like a war or a pandemic.
Instead, it's obvious to everyone that they are trashing their main manifesto pledge to shovel more money to their friends in public sector unions and fraudulent incapacity benefit claimants. Their dismal faliure to generate economic growth is the crowning factor.
So, overall, I don't think Labour will ever be forgiven by the "working people" they claimed to "protect".
Which they completely deserve, and it'll be very gratifying to see them discredited. It's just a pity they're taking what remains of the private sector down with them.
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
The biggest problem is the entrenched belief, among the electorate, that increased taxes will simply disappear into the maw of government, without noticeable improvement.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
I think that Reeves will be announcing that OBR evaluations will be once a year not twice a year - or has she done that? That's an unnecessary extra open goal for the opposition.
Personally I hope she'll be getting on to some of the strategic long term things that they blinked on last year, including Council Tax and tax rates around £100k to £125k. I wonder if the things they TACOd on last year after lobbying (eg reform of favourable tax arrangements for hedge funds iirc?) will get a revisit? It won't be easy because there are still multiple years of black holes to be recovered.
I'd also expect further measures to mitigate Brexit damage as far as possible.
If they try it on with hedge fund or venture capital CGT rates, they’ll all move from Mayfair to Dubai faster than you could possibly imagine.
If ever there was a group of people focussed on nothing but the bottom line, who are “global citizens” able to base themselves anywhere, it’s those guys.
Re the Budget: The answer is 2p or 3p on the basic rate of income tax but with a large increase in the tax free allowance. They would be able to say that they have not increased tax for a large proportion of the population -the "Workers", whilst increasing the take from the high earners. Increasing the tax free allowance would help the lowest paid and take millions out of paying tax. I am already paying tax on my state pension.
TAX 1) Rewrite the tax code - we need to make it much simpler with far fewer discounts and loopholes. Raise more money by setting lower rates that people actually have to pay 2) Asset Value tax. Tax the land and the buildings, not a hypothetical rent from the 90s 3) Non-Dom tax. Please come here, live in swanky apartments in that London. Pay us half a mil a year and no further questions asked 4) Company Value tax. Offer companies a FAT discount off Corporation Tax if they invest in the value of their staff and assets. Do actual training and development so that your employees are the best they can be. Pay them enough money so that they can actually pay their bills. Trained and happy staff are more productive, boosting economic output and reducing in work welfare payments 5) Offshored assets tax, or the "Starbucks" tax. Basically tax them as if they're not actually buying coffee from Luxembourg - which despite their tax set up they are not. With a fat discount if they onshore fully. Radical idea - pay tax in the UK for business done in the UK you degenerate bastards 6) A sex tax. Getting some? Pay out. 7) Investment tax credits. Come and build your AI data server near where we have so much power that we have to switch the turbines off. Huge savings to be offered.
SPEND 1) Scrap the faux-market structures in public services. An end to endless NHS and Education trusts. 2) Create StateCo enterprises to run and modernise the railways, the post office, the roads, power infrastructure etc. Borrow, invest, ROI, Growth 3) HouseCo organisations. Borrow money at state rates, automatic planning permission given to build on redundant council sites. A use it or lose it 6 months deadline on landbanking by Barratts et al. Build affordable apartments and rent them at social rent levels. Thus collapsing the private rental sector and with it correcting house prices 4) Launch municipal funds - councils should be investing in civic infrastructure not property speculation. Copy Manchester - build apartments in run down town and city centres so people live there. The rest will follow as it has in Manchester. 5) Decouple energy prices from gas. Prices drop 30-40% as they have in Spain, freeing up cash to spend elsewhere 6) Abolish the OBR, hire new brains into the Treasury. Abolish the annual budget cycle - a cut to hit this year's budget target which costs more than the cut next year is economic vandalism, yet we do it over and over and over again. No more.
It seems Reeves is making a statement from no 10 in 5 minutes
Why and how is it right to speak to the nation just 3 weeks before her budget and outside parliament ?
Tax rises are coming.
It will be the fault of
Brexit the Tories Austerity Ukraine conflict
It won’t be the fault of
Rachel Reeves Labour
🥱🥱
I mean she’s not wrong. We have been living beyond our means for a long time
It’s all talk.
Yet she won’t do anything about reforming the triple lock or tackling her party over the burgeoning welfare bill.
It will be taxing ourselves to prosperity and regulating ourselves to prosperity.
The only growth she’s going to see is in emigration, and if she tries to tax that it will happen straight away and all at once.
So people are going to leave the UK in big numbers because of an exit tax and perhaps move to one of US, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, Spain or Australia that all have similar or stricter exit taxes? Maybe, people are sometimes a bit dim.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. The trouble is the whinging has acquired a life of its own- the Mail is particularly whingey- but the truth is a lot more nuanced.
It is just rich people whinging in an echo chamber. The UK is a premium location, which is why we have such low emigration rates.
Number of people leaving has risen massively. The question that doesn't seem to get answered (I think because the state doesn't record this) is who are these people. Are they people who were immigrants returning home, are they retirees going to Spain, are they highly educated individuals, rich people? Basically what proprotion of the significantly increased levels of emigration do these different types of make up (and many are overlapping e.g. high educated immigrant).
Dont believe the Daily Mail and Telegraph. Emigration is rising slowly not massively, and that is to be expected when you have higher inwards migration, as not all settle permanently. Labour slowly getting to grips with deportations presumably also increases emigration.
513,000 people emigrated in 2024....that is a lot of people leaving per year. 10 years ago it was more like 300k.
Ten years ago we weren't counting students in and out and now we do, IIRC?
We’ve had net emigration of EU citizens since Brexit - last year almost 100k net outward movement. I know several of them.
Virtually all of the useless commentary is on taxes. The fundamental thing is that government spending is too high. Bringing that should be target number one
There's never a good time to break manifesto pledges on taxes. To do so immediately after winning the election is bad. To do so immediately before the next election is foolish.
So, maybe to do so after 18 months but with a few years to get over it before the next GE is the optimum time.
They are going to get completely pummelled for it if they raise income tax*, and given our rolling news age I’m not sure that story will be closed down.
*the only way I can see them managing to - somewhat - pull it off will be if they make a corresponding cut to NI. That’ll give them their ability to hide behind the “working people” mantra.
That would be the right thing to do economically.
Even better if a four year plan was outlined to get rid of employees national insurance in 4x2% stages with income tax being increased by 4x2%.
It would also partially solve the issue of salary sacrifice pensions and likely encourage workers from not retiring as early.
The outrage though from those affected would be deafening.
I remember when pensioners were phoning in complaining about Hunt's NICs cut - because it was a tax cut that they wouldn't enjoy.
Anecdotally I've heard a few oldies complain about paying income tax recently.
Not the possibility of the state pension being higher than the individual tax allowance but having to pay income tax on the work pensions they currently receive.
It wouldn't surprise me if most oldies think they should be exempt from income tax entirely.
It's going to get a lot worse when people with defined contribution pensions start claiming their pensions. They will have a pot of money from which they withdraw some money from on which they will be paying income tax and if you look at it as pulling money from your savings that isn't income.
There's never a good time to break manifesto pledges on taxes. To do so immediately after winning the election is bad. To do so immediately before the next election is foolish.
So, maybe to do so after 18 months but with a few years to get over it before the next GE is the optimum time.
The manifesto pledges were stupid. They 'helped' Labour to a huge (by seats) majority but them reduced the headroom they had when in government. The said that they were the adults in the room - adults would have treated the electorate like adults. Instead they have peddled fairy stories and then tried to blame everything on the big bad wolf. Now that wolf was responsible for some of the trouble, but a lot of the trouble wasn't the wolf's fault either.
If Labour want to raise my income tax I'll pay it. But I will expect pensioners to be paying too. Its absurd that the triple lock is still inexistence.
I’m finding the Virginia races the most interesting. The last poll for the Governor race was D+6, and both candidates have been bringing a lot of high-profile supporters to the State.
If the GOP can’t win the AG race they’re in trouble next year.
New York Mayor is another interesting one in what could be a three-way fight, but the official Dem Mamdani is the clear odds-on favourite. I guess we’re about to see what happens when a financial capital elects a communist.
Particularly we're going to see what happens when a Communist goes up against a Fascist.
Mamdani has the advantage of being youthful and not having dementia.
Trump has the advantage of a control of the whole government and military machine plus the courts.
He's not a communist. He does not support a dictatorship of the proletariat. He's a hard left socialist. The Republicans, and their supporters, like to call him a communist, even though it's Trump who's cosying up to the successor of Stalin, viz. Putin.
Two cheeks of the same arse for all those calling Farage a Nazi, I guess.
I thought it was a decent speech from Reeves . It doesn’t remove the problem of likely breaking manifesto pledges .
People can debate whether Labour should have made that tax pledge.
What is there to debate? It was obviously a stupid promise, that has forced the government into a series of other poor measures to raise revenue, and basically wasted an entire year in office. Now they will get to look like "just another bunch of lying politicians who broke their promises".
Was it good politics? Yes if you think getting elected is all that matters, but not if you actually wish to govern, which is the entire point of getting elected in the first place.
If Reeves was the CFO of a company, she would already have got the boot.
And Reform and the Tories will continue to ignore reality . The country needs taxes to go up not down unless they want public services to collapse.
That's true, but it makes Labour look particularly bad if the best they can say is "they are lying as well". Crazy idea but perhaps leadership means telling the country some things that it doesn't want to hear?
Comments
I hope I'm worrying about nothing.
But we could do something about reducing the costs.
So it would help because the annual costs are high
So, maybe to do so after 18 months but with a few years to get over it before the next GE is the optimum time.
(Unless they can also figure out a plan for dealing with the steady ramp up of spending imposed by our demographics I think they, and we, are screwed, though.)
If the UK puts up barriers - high taxes, penalties on leaving, making wealthy and successful people scapegoats then it’s a massive negative to people choosing the Uk.
They will have a pluses and minus sheet and in the pluses you might have London, English as a natural language, rule of law (just about) safe from extreme weather.
The thing is that if that list of positives shrinks and the negatives grow then we don’t attract new business and they choose the US (for example) - yes exit taxes but choice of low tax states to base in, a huge quality university sector, English language, New York, LA etc etc.
So whilst everyone might clap themselves on the back because “only x thousands of entrepreneurs and super wealthy” have left it’s not taken into account the tech wizards from Belgium who might have decamped to the UK with their new business and now are choosing elsewhere etc. These are precisely the people the UK wants to attract in to create growth not make it less attractive - they aren’t coming for the weather.
Anyone who pays more tax, or thinks they're paying more tax, after the budget will know they are doing so because Labour politicians gave preference to shirkers over workers.
Scum bag is down to 10 on BF.
I am now in profit by 20p.
Is it time to cut and run?
*the only way I can see them managing to - somewhat - pull it off will be if they make a corresponding cut to NI. That’ll give them their ability to hide behind the “working people” mantra.
The optics otherwise are going to be utterly dire, and possibly terminal for Starmer and Reeves (though I don’t really expect both to be in post by the time of the next GE anyway).
I'm just about to listen to the statement.
I think that Reeves will be announcing that OBR evaluations will be once a year not twice a year - or has she done that? That's an unnecessary extra open goal for the opposition.
Personally I hope she'll be getting on to some of the strategic long term things that they blinked on last year, including Council Tax and tax rates around £100k to £125k.
I wonder if the things they TACOd on last year after lobbying (eg reform of favourable tax arrangements for hedge funds iirc?) will get a revisit?
It won't be easy because there are still multiple years of black holes to be recovered.
I'd also expect further measures to mitigate Brexit damage as far as possible.
It was talked about at the time, and everyone knew it was punting the problem into the very long grass in exchange for a better (sic) deal at the time. But those 30 years passed quickly!
Exactly the same as developers who leave the fabric of a housing estate in the hands of a management company paid per annum by residents, rather than providing the commuted sum necessary for adoption.
I have no idea how well the termination terms were written on such PFI contracts.
This however, isn’t a clever government, nor are their backbenchers in the mood for any of that stuff.
They might just manage both!
Even better if a four year plan was outlined to get rid of employees national insurance in 4x2% stages with income tax being increased by 4x2%.
It would also partially solve the issue of salary sacrifice pensions and likely encourage workers from not retiring as early.
The outrage though from those affected would be deafening.
Oh, and if you earn $100k you can now sponsor yourself for a 10-year “golden visa”, so people are putting down roots and having families, not just treating it as a few years to earn money before returning to UK.
Of course it’s a giant whack-a-mole, and government has no chance of doing anything but educating teenagers on evasion tactics.
Also that is different from this chart,
https://www.statista.com/statistics/283287/net-migration-figures-of-the-united-kingdom-y-on-y/
Which is odd as Statista is normally very reliable source.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj41y1ze9jyo
One might expect even the intern social media manager at No.11 to have studied economics course 101.
Announce a staged process of moving a significant amount of NI to income tax in an annual process. 1p switch over every year for rest of this parliament.
Free people to employ other people and soak up more revenue from non-employment income.
Call it 'necessary rebalancing' of the main tax system and hope people give some grudging respect for trying to get out of the fiscal mess whilst keeping the nhs going.
No chance of getting a Government role (as there are way too many MPs), little chance of being re- elected, going back to work outside Parliament is difficult to impossible and as Nick pointed out even the pension isn’t that great
Literally the only thing they can do is force the Government to follow its manifesto and keep vocal constituents happy by keeping the money flow continuing
It’s shit or bust. Why not go for it.
Their next election manifesto will be trashed as not worth the paper it’s printed on . Perhaps they might mitigate some of the damage with new leadership in No 10 and 11 . And even then they’d need the economy to be improving and better public services .
run by their matesable to demonstrate a legitimate need for security/GDPR considerations.So bankers will still be able to watch porn, but not ordinary people.
Quite frankly we are getting to the stage where we should be past the blame game and just sorting the problem.
* e.g. I think things like YouTube with licensed VPNs in China are still heavily restricted access.
She's probably only go another year, maybe two, in the CoE job anyway so start building a decent legacy.
But they don’t have the comms / talent to manage that narrative, so the whole budget will be a disaster
Was it good politics? Yes if you think getting elected is all that matters, but not if you actually wish to govern, which is the entire point of getting elected in the first place.
If Reeves was the CFO of a company, she would already have got the boot.
It seems the country's going to be a lot quieter once all the people supposedly leaving have gone....
We all know Reeves and Starmer should have been honest about raising income tax and perhaps VAT before the election but the shadow cast by 1992 is very long and it would have been manna from heaven for Sunak and Hunt - "Labour will raise your taxes, the Conservatives will cut them" - the social media messages write themselves.
We also know, in the event of their re-election, Hunt would likely have raised taxes as well.
The deficit remains eye watering - no one objects to borrowing for long term capital investment but borrowing to get from one month to the next doesn't work well for individuals or countries. The truth is even if we can bring the deficit and borrowing down we will still be saddled with the annual debt interest payments of £60-70 billion tearing a chunk out of our available expenditure.
The priority for now must be getting the deficit down and while some of the more fanciful ideas on here about slashing civil service headcount by 50% and cutting benefits by the same amount might make some on here feel better, we all know that won't happen under a Labour, Conservative or even Reform Government.
Raising basic rate progressively to 25p, higher rate to nearer 50p and instigating a third higher tax rate is probably where Reeves is going. I'd still be looking at Land Value Taxation or some measure relating to property valuations to replace Stamp Duty and possibly Council Tax. As a small gesture of carrot, I'd put thresholds up by 2x inflation this year and pledge to keep them in line with inflation for the rest of the Parliament.
It looks as though online gaming and FOBTs in betting shops will face higher tax but it may be the lobbying by the horse racing and greyhound industries has done enough to stop a significant rise in betting duty. I suspect fuel duty will go up by more than inflation as well.
I was seemingly the first to moot this as an option to journos back in the summer a few weeks before the Res paper came out. Which makes it a brace, as I was also the first to predict a rise in employers NICs last year.
What's really depressing about this is it targetting the flaws in the scheme in such a way as to put the blame on disabled people! The scheme is basically a way of channelling the welfare budget into a subsidy for the car industry. The reason why you can buy a BMW is that if you couldn't BMW would crucify the government for unfair subsidies. Either Reform knows this and is being really malicious, or it doesn't, in which case its being stupid.
(Can't link - quoting from a private forum.)
Satellite internet providers would have to provide 1) Landing of all Internet traffic from the UK in the UK and 2) enforce the above.
Increasing Income Tax and abolishing NI would be a messaging error, it would just be a "Labour massively increased Income Tax" in one to two laps of the goldfish bowl.
Throwing ever increasing piles of money at an unreformed system does nothing to help with the actual problem.
It would be more helpful if there were some system of 'these are things we will do, no messing', and ' these are things we will do if we can' and 'this is the idea, but it may not be possible when we get in and look at the books' with the possibility of new elections if a governing party breached (1). That might concentrate minds on actually coming up with sane policies.
It wouldn't affect Farage and his ilk, of course.
@andrew_lilico
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21m
I think the stuff in Reeves' speech about how one of her priorities is getting down inflation is most naturally interpreted as implying she thinks raising business taxes (& hence costs) or expenditure taxes (eg VAT) are bad options for inflation, & hence income tax is better.
https://x.com/andrew_lilico
“It’s time for a return to boom and bust. No more sclerotic growth!”
In all seriousness we could do with some of the capacity building you get in investment booms, and some of the clear out of zombie enterprises you get in busts.
Yep I can see that being done it - solves a number of problems with pensioners while raising a few more quid.
Not the possibility of the state pension being higher than the individual tax allowance but having to pay income tax on the work pensions they currently receive.
It wouldn't surprise me if most oldies think they should be exempt from income tax entirely.
Another topic where Dan Neidle’s site has some useful analysis.
It might be slightly different if there were some overwhelming but temporary national priority that needed to be paid for, like a war or a pandemic.
Instead, it's obvious to everyone that they are trashing their main manifesto pledge to shovel more money to their friends in public sector unions and fraudulent incapacity benefit claimants. Their dismal faliure to generate economic growth is the crowning factor.
So, overall, I don't think Labour will ever be forgiven by the "working people" they claimed to "protect".
Which they completely deserve, and it'll be very gratifying to see them discredited. It's just a pity they're taking what remains of the private sector down with them.
Lying, swindling, incompetent scum.
It's fairly clear that much of Government, local and national has lost control of costs. It's Feast-Or-Famine - either there's no money for X or theres billions spent on something that should cost millions.
The migrant hotels farce is a prefect example of this - an avalanche of money for the owners. I don't blame them - times are tough in the hotel business. If someone is offering you a zero risk, unbelievably profitable multi-year contract, you'd be insane not to take it.
We need to start cutting our cloth according to the.... cloth we actually have.
I know that a British Museum catalogue without a logo, a Richard Rogeresque HQ, some abstract sculpture in the foyer and a mission statement, isn't exciting. Not to mention a "dynamic team" for the Board of Directors on 6 figures each for 2 days of work as year.
But if we ditch those things, we might be able to afford a... British Museum catalogue.
If ever there was a group of people focussed on nothing but the bottom line, who are “global citizens” able to base themselves anywhere, it’s those guys.
I know a few of them.
TAX
1) Rewrite the tax code - we need to make it much simpler with far fewer discounts and loopholes. Raise more money by setting lower rates that people actually have to pay
2) Asset Value tax. Tax the land and the buildings, not a hypothetical rent from the 90s
3) Non-Dom tax. Please come here, live in swanky apartments in that London. Pay us half a mil a year and no further questions asked
4) Company Value tax. Offer companies a FAT discount off Corporation Tax if they invest in the value of their staff and assets. Do actual training and development so that your employees are the best they can be. Pay them enough money so that they can actually pay their bills. Trained and happy staff are more productive, boosting economic output and reducing in work welfare payments
5) Offshored assets tax, or the "Starbucks" tax. Basically tax them as if they're not actually buying coffee from Luxembourg - which despite their tax set up they are not. With a fat discount if they onshore fully. Radical idea - pay tax in the UK for business done in the UK you degenerate bastards
6) A sex tax. Getting some? Pay out.7) Investment tax credits. Come and build your AI data server near where we have so much power that we have to switch the turbines off. Huge savings to be offered.
SPEND
1) Scrap the faux-market structures in public services. An end to endless NHS and Education trusts.
2) Create StateCo enterprises to run and modernise the railways, the post office, the roads, power infrastructure etc. Borrow, invest, ROI, Growth
3) HouseCo organisations. Borrow money at state rates, automatic planning permission given to build on redundant council sites. A use it or lose it 6 months deadline on landbanking by Barratts et al. Build affordable apartments and rent them at social rent levels. Thus collapsing the private rental sector and with it correcting house prices
4) Launch municipal funds - councils should be investing in civic infrastructure not property speculation. Copy Manchester - build apartments in run down town and city centres so people live there. The rest will follow as it has in Manchester.
5) Decouple energy prices from gas. Prices drop 30-40% as they have in Spain, freeing up cash to spend elsewhere
6) Abolish the OBR, hire new brains into the Treasury. Abolish the annual budget cycle - a cut to hit this year's budget target which costs more than the cut next year is economic vandalism, yet we do it over and over and over again. No more.
As a starter for 10
Some of those will be highly skilled workers.
The fundamental thing is that government spending is too high.
Bringing that should be target number one
If Labour want to raise my income tax I'll pay it. But I will expect pensioners to be paying too. Its absurd that the triple lock is still inexistence.