I don’t like being drunk so, while I do drink, I am relatively abstemious. However, I realised today that my optimal operating mode is after slightly less than two pints/glasses of wine. That Mitchell and Webb sketch is actually true.
I take a barbell approach to drinking - stay sober or get drunk. Being slightly tipsy is what I don't like, you get the mental impairment without the fun of really letting go. I'm lucky that I don't tend to behave stupidly when drunk so it's less risky than it might be for some. Hangovers get worse with age though. Alcohol is definitely a suboptimal intoxicant.
What odds can I get on Badenoch leading a minority Conservative government after the next GE with Reform confidence and supply? She is clearly growing into the job. It will suit Farage to influence government policy without having to be fully responsible. Labour’s only hope is to ditch Farage, ease left and gain Green support.
What odds can I get on Badenoch leading a minority Conservative government after the next GE with Reform confidence and supply? She is clearly growing into the job. It will suit Farage to influence government policy without having to be fully responsible. Labour’s only hope is to ditch Farage, ease left and gain Green support.
21 on Betfair for Badenoch as next PM on Betfair, though that does assume Starmer lasts to the GE.
Or 6.4 for Conservative most seats.
Both unusually long for a LOTO when a government is deeply unpopular.
What odds can I get on Badenoch leading a minority Conservative government after the next GE with Reform confidence and supply? She is clearly growing into the job. It will suit Farage to influence government policy without having to be fully responsible. Labour’s only hope is to ditch Farage, ease left and gain Green support.
Ditch Farage? Is that a Freudian slip?
Yes. I meant ditch Starmer! Thanks for picking up my brainfade.
Atm the Tories are about half a percentage point behind Labour in the polling averages — perhaps Kemi's performance today will push the Tories back into second place.
Apart from the OBR publishing the EFO too early I though today went pretty well for the government. The gilt market happy. Labour MPs and supporters happy. Voters more broadly probably ok with inflation reducing measures and no* abandonment of manifesto commitments on tax. (* obviously apart from the freezing of thresholds, but there seems to be a political consensus that this particular cheat is allowed). The only negative was Badenoch buying time as Tory leader, bad news for Labour because they need the Tories to take votes off Reform.
I found Reeves's speech odd, in that good budget speeches traditionally combine dignity and seriousness with clever low politics. This felt like pantomime. She didn't rise to the occasion. Good polemic needs to be better hidden as serious comment.
The old customs of not announcing and leaking in advance, taking up about five weeks of political energy, were good and should have been kept.
The custom of listening to the budget in near silence was excellent. The Deputy speaker should keep much better control.
The opportunity (the last for this government I think) for a deep reforming budget was missed. This was about survival, the soft left, the benefits and pensioner class.
Nothing in it for the middling family types.
No central theme or core coherence. Clarke, Howe and Gladstone's reputations are safe.
it was a stark reminder of the anti-intellectualism of public life.
I got what I wanted from the budget: the removal of the iniquitous two child cap. The government eventually did the right thing in the face of considerable opposition. That's what governments should be in power for.
For the rest, I have no idea, and never do at the time of budgets. Chancellors whose job it is to take revenue from here and there, stand up and tell us how they are taking revenue from here and there, and it's supposed to be some kind of theatre.
The received wisdom on this budget seems to be that Reeves has ducked the difficult decisions that none of predecessors took either, while implementing tax increases which are highly unpopular. We'll see. I don't rule out that paradoxical take transpiring.
Why was it the right thing to do?
Because children in poverty is a blight on society when effective and not massively expensive measures exist to reduce it. The two child cap was designed to punish families with more than two children, which meant it was punishing the children particularly. Because the cap was so targeted removing it will take the most children out of poverty for the least cost.
The “taking children out of poverty” line is utter BS.
It’s calculated based on relative poverty so moving people from £1 below a threshold to £1 above it takes “the most children out of poverty for the least cost”. It does nothing to address the problem
How is substantially raising the income of poorly off families with three or more children doing nothing to alleviate the problem of child poverty? Arguments about 'relative vs absolute' notwithstanding, of course it's doing something. It's alleviating child poverty.
Senior Labour figures are of course usually idiots. I think that this reinforces the point.
What sort of budget do you expect if the chancellor is a Labour one?
What, that they’re in the wrong side of every argument?
Yes, I do tend to fear that will be true of any Labour budget, but I gave them the benefit of doubt that they’d actually at least try to do some sensible stuff alongside it. Blair and Brown, to their credit, did.
What odds can I get on Badenoch leading a minority Conservative government after the next GE with Reform confidence and supply? She is clearly growing into the job. It will suit Farage to influence government policy without having to be fully responsible. Labour’s only hope is to ditch Farage, ease left and gain Green support.
Labours real hope is peace in Ukraine, which would have economic dividends and lower cost of living. If that happens in 2026 a lot of western governments will get re-elected by 2030. If the war continues they will get mostly kicked out.
What the governments do has far less influence than we would like to imagine.
What odds can I get on Badenoch leading a minority Conservative government after the next GE with Reform confidence and supply? She is clearly growing into the job. It will suit Farage to influence government policy without having to be fully responsible. Labour’s only hope is to ditch Farage, ease left and gain Green support.
21 on Betfair for Badenoch as next PM on Betfair, though that does assume Starmer lasts to the GE.
Or 6.4 for Conservative most seats.
Both unusually long for a LOTO when a government is deeply unpopular.
I am tempted, especially as there is a possible nuclear bomb ready to explode next to the current favourite to win most seats. If Farage goes, or is discredited, the Tories have a lot of votes to harvest, and Kemi is upping her game.
As I said earlier, I think Badenoch PM it is the optimum result for people who want less PC talk, less woke, and so on. A 60-something, white man with credible reports of nasty racial behaviour in his background could do more harm than good
I found Reeves's speech odd, in that good budget speeches traditionally combine dignity and seriousness with clever low politics. This felt like pantomime. She didn't rise to the occasion. Good polemic needs to be better hidden as serious comment.
The old customs of not announcing and leaking in advance, taking up about five weeks of political energy, were good and should have been kept.
The custom of listening to the budget in near silence was excellent. The Deputy speaker should keep much better control.
The opportunity (the last for this government I think) for a deep reforming budget was missed. This was about survival, the soft left, the benefits and pensioner class.
Nothing in it for the middling family types.
No central theme or core coherence. Clarke, Howe and Gladstone's reputations are safe.
it was a stark reminder of the anti-intellectualism of public life.
I got what I wanted from the budget: the removal of the iniquitous two child cap. The government eventually did the right thing in the face of considerable opposition. That's what governments should be in power for.
For the rest, I have no idea, and never do at the time of budgets. Chancellors whose job it is to take revenue from here and there, stand up and tell us how they are taking revenue from here and there, and it's supposed to be some kind of theatre.
The received wisdom on this budget seems to be that Reeves has ducked the difficult decisions that none of predecessors took either, while implementing tax increases which are highly unpopular. We'll see. I don't rule out that paradoxical take transpiring.
Why was it the right thing to do?
Because children in poverty is a blight on society when effective and not massively expensive measures exist to reduce it. The two child cap was designed to punish families with more than two children, which meant it was punishing the children particularly. Because the cap was so targeted removing it will take the most children out of poverty for the least cost.
The “taking children out of poverty” line is utter BS.
It’s calculated based on relative poverty so moving people from £1 below a threshold to £1 above it takes “the most children out of poverty for the least cost”. It does nothing to address the problem
How does substantially raising the income of poorly off families with three or more children equate to doing nothing to alleviate the problem of child poverty? Arguments about 'relative vs absolute' notwithstanding, of course it's doing something. It's alleviating child poverty.
My point was more about the phrase than the benefit cap - the optimal way to do it (and I think Brown did it once) massages the statistics but doesn’t address the issue
Basically, people on around £50,000 get clobbered by the fiscal drag.
Indeed. And, mea culpa, taking that model as correct, it means that I much overdid my earlier critique of Reeves.
So, if your income is between £12,570 and £45,530 freezing the threshold will cost you £261 in the third year.
But if your income is above £50,270 (and still below the additional rate threshold) freezing the threshold will cost you £1,307 more.
So over 7 times more for higher earners.
While I can now very much see why Reeves froze the higher rate allowance, I'm still scratching my head as to why Reeves felt it politically expedient to freeze the basic rate allowance, rather than raise equivalent funds by further removing the tax advantages on higher rate pension contributions or reforming CGT.
Atm the Tories are about half a percentage point behind Labour in the polling averages — perhaps Kemi's performance today will push the Tories back into second place.
Doubtful based on one speech alone. But Badenoch has finally come out from the long shadow of the last government, IMHO. At least in part. It is time for the Tories to be bold and really try and set out a different but positive economic story. The more they are able to do this, and leave Reform empty-handed on the economy, the more they stand to gain.
The political landscape looks very different if the Tories claw back even 2-3% from Reform.
OBR - "We have assessed that none of the policy measures in this Budget have a sufficiently material impact to justify adjusting our post-measures potential output forecast."
ie. it's a budget which does nothing new for growth. Managed decline goes on.
There's no obvious way to materially stimulate growth whilst keeping to the fiscal rules. Both the small state way (slashing taxes) and the big state way (borrow to invest) would risk a run on gilts and a potentially ruinous increase in debt servicing costs.
There are many non-fiscal interventions that could be used, and Chancellors have in recent years not been shy of announcing regulatory changes that touch on the economy during the budget.
One of the particularly low notes of today's budget speech was the self-congratulation on planning reform, when so little has been achieved. If you properly reformed the planning system you'd go a very long way to improving the economic contribution construction is likely to make over the next several years.
I feel confident that there are a whole host of other reforms that could be made that would be beneficial, and not require a direct financial investment, or forgoing tax revenue, to implement.
They are focusing more on that area (planning and infrastructure) than recent governments. Low bar admittedly. It is important, I agree. Flunking it would be a big disappointment. And yes of course they should in general be doing as much as they can, within the space shaped by the public finances and the gilt markets, to promote sustainable economic growth. But it's quite a small space. This is really my point. Maybe it's an obvious one but I'm not sure it's too widely appreciated. The support for populist parties of left and right suggests that it isn't.
The important point about what Reeves said is that she was congratulating the government for stuff not done. Good intentions are meaningless without delivery.
Still, the self congratulation isn't quite yet on this level.
I don’t like being drunk so, while I do drink, I am relatively abstemious. However, I realised today that my optimal operating mode is after slightly less than two pints/glasses of wine. That Mitchell and Webb sketch is actually true.
I take a barbell approach to drinking - stay sober or get drunk. Being slightly tipsy is what I don't like, you get the mental impairment without the fun of really letting go. I'm lucky that I don't tend to behave stupidly when drunk so it's less risky than it might be for some. Hangovers get worse with age though. Alcohol is definitely a suboptimal intoxicant.
I don’t like being drunk so, while I do drink, I am relatively abstemious. However, I realised today that my optimal operating mode is after slightly less than two pints/glasses of wine. That Mitchell and Webb sketch is actually true.
I take a barbell approach to drinking - stay sober or get drunk. Being slightly tipsy is what I don't like, you get the mental impairment without the fun of really letting go. I'm lucky that I don't tend to behave stupidly when drunk so it's less risky than it might be for some. Hangovers get worse with age though. Alcohol is definitely a suboptimal intoxicant.
I couldn't disagree more. Being slightly tipsy is wonderful, you feel happy, confident, more attractive and chatty. Being drunk means the evening is over as you're no longer capable of much. From a personal perspective, my stutter gets worse the more I drink so I am totally unable to speak when drunk.
I don’t like being drunk so, while I do drink, I am relatively abstemious. However, I realised today that my optimal operating mode is after slightly less than two pints/glasses of wine. That Mitchell and Webb sketch is actually true.
I take a barbell approach to drinking - stay sober or get drunk. Being slightly tipsy is what I don't like, you get the mental impairment without the fun of really letting go. I'm lucky that I don't tend to behave stupidly when drunk so it's less risky than it might be for some. Hangovers get worse with age though. Alcohol is definitely a suboptimal intoxicant.
OBR - "We have assessed that none of the policy measures in this Budget have a sufficiently material impact to justify adjusting our post-measures potential output forecast."
ie. it's a budget which does nothing new for growth. Managed decline goes on.
There's no obvious way to materially stimulate growth whilst keeping to the fiscal rules. Both the small state way (slashing taxes) and the big state way (borrow to invest) would risk a run on gilts and a potentially ruinous increase in debt servicing costs.
No, cutting taxes and spending simultaneously will stimulate growth over the long term, especially if the cuts are targeted on taxes that reduce growth the most, like business profits and payroll taxes, and the spending savings are on those that disincentivise work, such as our gigantic and ballooning welfare bill.
That's a staggeringly obvious way, overwhelmingly supported by economic theory, international empirical studies and our own experience. And common sense - if you let people who create wealth keep more of their own money, they have greater incentives to create it. Of course our cretinous government is ideologically programmed to do the exact opposite - it loves benefit layabouts and hates business - so our stagnation will continue.
That's politics dressed up as science. But, sure, if a party can run on that and win, good luck to them.
Yes their bizarre desire to make the world a better place is really a sight to behold.
Charities have become overbearing during the last couple of decades.
This is like Elon Musk saying empathy is the "fundamental weakness of Western civilization".
Many of the better known charities are funded by the state and spend their time lobbying the state.
Most charities for disaster relief are set up and run by religious institutions and are notable for their speed in response compared to state-backed charities.
Chancellor giving a press conference in front of a group of NHS nurses. Not sure why they are being used as political props? Particularly as there didn't seem to be anything specific about the NHS in the budget.
Because no businesses will have her?
That's got to be it! No performative pulling of a pint in the Dog and Duck this year, for shame.
Pubs definitely won't have her. Minimum wage up, NI up, business rates up....crippling the industry.
What odds can I get on Badenoch leading a minority Conservative government after the next GE with Reform confidence and supply? She is clearly growing into the job. It will suit Farage to influence government policy without having to be fully responsible. Labour’s only hope is to ditch Farage, ease left and gain Green support.
Labours real hope is peace in Ukraine, which would have economic dividends and lower cost of living. If that happens in 2026 a lot of western governments will get re-elected by 2030. If the war continues they will get mostly kicked out.
What the governments do has far less influence than we would like to imagine.
If this is true, that she had this belief in herself then it underlines just what a dud she is. Will preparation and scripting actually gloss over the absolute lack of ability. Perhaps but lets hope she never gets near power (again)
Evidence suggests that humility isn’t the USP that enables these folks to climb their way up to the top of the Tory Party?
Comments
Or 6.4 for Conservative most seats.
Both unusually long for a LOTO when a government is deeply unpopular.
@KevinASchofield
“It is a disaster. We are on the wrong side of every statistic, argument, policy and public opinion.”
Senior Labour figures fear Rachel Reeves's £26 billion tax gamble will backfire.
https://x.com/KevinASchofield/status/1993714370384437360
(* obviously apart from the freezing of thresholds, but there seems to be a political consensus that this particular cheat is allowed). The only negative was Badenoch buying time as Tory leader, bad news for Labour because they need the Tories to take votes off Reform.
What sort of budget do you expect if the chancellor is a Labour one?
Yes, I do tend to fear that will be true of any Labour budget, but I gave them the benefit of doubt that they’d actually at least try to do some sensible stuff alongside it. Blair and Brown, to their credit, did.
What the governments do has far less influence than we would like to imagine.
As I said earlier, I think Badenoch PM it is the optimum result for people who want less PC talk, less woke, and so on. A 60-something, white man with credible reports of nasty racial behaviour in his background could do more harm than good
So, if your income is between £12,570 and £45,530 freezing the threshold will cost you £261 in the third year.
But if your income is above £50,270 (and still below the additional rate threshold) freezing the threshold will cost you £1,307 more.
So over 7 times more for higher earners.
While I can now very much see why Reeves froze the higher rate allowance, I'm still scratching my head as to why Reeves felt it politically expedient to freeze the basic rate allowance, rather than raise equivalent funds by further removing the tax advantages on higher rate pension contributions or reforming CGT.
The political landscape looks very different if the Tories claw back even 2-3% from Reform.
NEW THREAD
Good intentions are meaningless without delivery.
Still, the self congratulation isn't quite yet on this level.
Ajax program awarded excellence in project delivery last week.
https://x.com/TBrit90/status/1993592115784565012