This should help Labour and Burnham’s popularity in the short term at least – politicalbetting.com
This should help Labour and Burnham’s popularity in the short term at least – politicalbetting.com
The new government is taking immediate action to give people some breathing space on the cost of living.From 1 October, VAT will be removed from domestic electricity bills – helping households with energy costs this winter and funded within existing budgets. pic.twitter.com/OCiAIUXb9Q
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https://www.foxnews.com/media/obama-warns-vance-pushing-blood-soil-version-we-people-mantra
Short term it’s a rounding error justified by a very large figure attached to ID cards that were also hated and that Burnham also scrapped
As @Wulfrun_Phil points out Andy has the political nuance that SKS and co utterly lacked
Now to get rid of it on everything else as well…
Not true. Perfectly permitted within the EU.
There was zero in Government budget for Digital ID.
I see the holy cow of gas remains untouched, and still sets the wholesale energy price in general.
Thank fuck Supermanc resisted the urge to put in some thick-as-shit ex-forces type like Robocarns.
But happy to be corrected - this is from memory.
But policy only lasts 6 months.
So it’s 100% unfunded and the saving is not what Government is claiming.
Equally I actually doubt anyone country would care about exempting energy from VAT regulations.
There was no specific funding, but there was a commitment to find the money from within existing budgets, and that commitment has been removed.
Since the measure comes in on Oct 1, and the Chancellor will announce a budget shortly after that, all this is just quibbling.
The announcement is simply signalling that any pre-budget commitments will have at least some fiscal credibility. The markets will postpose their judgment until the budget so long a Brnham doesn't take the piss.
The ID card project was stuck in the quicksands. Burnham had the choice of investing significant political and actual capital into the project or let it hang around as a zombie. Instead of which he makes a show of closing it as [non-existent] money savings that he can pass on in the form of lower energy bills.
Granting the new O&G licences shuts down the nonsense about a North Sea bonanza and allows Miatta Fahnbulleh to quietly carry on with Ed Miliband's energy policy and transition.
Burnham is a lot better at retail politics than Starmer I think
Epic day yesterday with Burnham sacking Starmer's loyalists and replacing them with excellent appointments not least John Healey but also Streeting in defence, Mahmood remaining at home, sidelining Miliband to Foreign Secretary, and ending Phillipson's time in Education
His cut in VAT is good politics and if I was a Labour supporter I would be very encouraged going forward
Certainly Burnham has stamped his authority on his government and whilst he has many problems ahead Healey should at least reassure the bond markets
The Defence Investment Plan, for example, is a ridiculous work of fiction, and the sums and issues involved can't really be kicked into the long grass again.
He's certainly a better salesman than Starmer. But are the goods he is selling any good ?
Which might not be without merit, but he’ll end up ballsing up the redundancy packages, sacking all the wrong people and finally leaving us with pretty much no military at all.
Schrödinger’s navy, simultaneously being Leyte Gulf-ed on a daily basis while posing an massive threat to this sceptred isle.
The FACT is that money was "set aside" for ID Cards, this is a small immediate pay-back.
Its for 6 months (a) because that takes it to fiscal year end e.g next Budget (b) it covers far more expensive winter period as it starts on October 1st, (c) it adds to £150 reduction already announced in last budget and (d) and politically most important it add "breathing space".
"Breathing space is not a one off £500 saving for everyone per annum but it will be an amalgum of 6-10 smaller cuts that will have aspiration to achieve that sort of figure.
Burnham is politically VERY ASTUTE , he talks the language of the common man, talks about affording nice meals out, a day at a theme park, a day at the footy , a short holiday...we're not talking 3 weeks in Hawaii here but aspiration..
He will politically want to say at Annual Conference in Autum, here are 6-10 small measures we've already taken to save money, give breathing space and an extra £500 in your pocket...a short break in Brighton, Blackpool , Torquay , Clacton, Scarborough etc...a ticket to the footy, a day at Alton Towers, Legoland
BREATHING SPACE!
The bigger decisions and the start of genuine realignment comes at the first Healy Budget
Defence Bonds (Streeting)
Major shake up of Social Care (Cooper)
Alighnment of CGT to IT rates
etc
TBF, I've no idea whether he'll be any good in the role; he certainly has the ability to bend civil servants to his will, which is necessary to being an effective minister, but on its own that's hardly sufficient.
FWIW, he sounds willing to kill a few sacred cows:
https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/wes-streeting-defence-spending-concerns-5HjdbgC_2/
Burnham knows that if you get in first with a simple story the complex counter argument will never be heard
But yes there's a sleight of hand going on.
We went through this in 2022, didn't we? Cutting prices this way gives most of the benefit to people who need it least and attenuates the "someone needs to be using less" signal that needs to operate during a supply crunch.
But I'm sure it will be popular.
I'm just struck by the lack of a party line on the appointment.
That’s not altogether the opinion of people who had to put up with him…
Given that Andy isn’t going to change what SKS said and Iran is a mess of Trumps own creation - I can’t see Andy allowing bases in the UK to be used. So Trump is going to be unhappy
Reality is - the US isn’t a country we can deal with honestly anymore
A tannoy blaring "6-4 to the Ing-er-land..."
I really do think Burnham has made an excellent start and certainly will give all the opposition something to think about
Only to discover that the fall will around 2%.
Or do you think he has a new Citizens Charter or Cones Hotline for later today?
In the longer term, government beats politics.
The catch is that, in the long term, all political careers are dead.
(And if we're still in a hole in the winter, that 2% will become a somewhat lower price increase anyway. To be fair, energy boffins seem keen on the nudge towards electrification, but this seems a bit short-term for that.)
Belfast Telegraph
This could be the first stop-gap before wider reforms. Let's do as Burnham says and hope
Selebian is right though - standing charges should be abolished ASAP if you really want to help poor households.
Compare and contrast with Starmer/Reeves first announcement being to cut the WFA...
Governing is a bit more difficult that getting positive media stories.
Edit: Though it is good that the cut is restricted to electricity.
Trump will be remembered as a catastrophic president. Though the really bad things probably won't start to happen until after he is dead.
Hoyle will be rightly frustrated
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2026/jul/21/764-network-gamification-of-harm-the-com-cybercrime-ntwnfb
But we now have a much more political PM, so the success criteria are a bit different.
We used to have "no standing charge" tariffs - self-builders or renovators who had cut their energy use by 50-80% loved the, - and they did not survive when economic circumstances became more astringent.
In the UK we have had out of line prices compared to peer countries in Electricity being very expensive vs Gas (this is retail), with relatively far cheaper gas. There were steps made to rebalance that over the recent period, but there's more to come I think.
Price signals are very important, there is far too much distortion in the domestic energy market (in both directions).
However, putting VAT on domestic fuel amplifies the price signal, making domestic gas relatively cheaper than than domestic electricity per Kwh - (Vat being about 1p/Kwh on "normal" price electric and about 0.4p/Kwh on gas).
This is a big problem when for policy reasons we are trying to shift people from a cheap solution (gas) to an expensive solution (electricity) for space heating and hot water.
Personally, I think the electrification policy is dumb, given how insanely expensive we've made domestic electricity, but cutting VAT on electricity is at least rational in the context of the policy.
The potential massive win that so far everyone is ignoring is binning ROC obligations on gas generation. Because gas drives the electric price most of the time, there is a gearing effect where scrapping ROCs (and thus cutting the cost of electric generated by gas) would significantly lower the average spot cost of electricity across all types of generation, not just gas.
A one-off connection fee makes sense. And they already exist.
Yet when the bills come people will not have any noticeable reduction on the bottom line.
And then they will ask where the 'promised 20% cut ' is.
Yes, I know its not what was promised but people have a way of self-entitling themselves and creating memories to justify it.
Natural gas is fuel.
Heating oil is fuel.
Petrol is fuel.
Electricity isn't fuel.
BTW, anyone done a map of the constituencies of the old and new cabinet? My impression is that the Granadaland mafia thing is real, but I'm not sure and some evidence would be good.