2024 UK politics - now with Labour in charge
Comments
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Not great for politics in general that both are only a whisker ahead of Reform. Notwithstanding that voting intention for an election more than 4 years away is pretty meaningless.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
I suppose we should give them a chance. I'm sure Reeves budget on the 30th will turn things around for them 😃
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
Yes so either 1981 or 2008 depending on how you count.
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Sorry, that should have read Austrian Government. Sounds like some Le Carre character.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
"Look, the public hates them almost as much as us" is a weird brag.
Regardless of the colour of the rosette, they are the government until 2029. I'd like them to get their shit together and stop dicking about.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition1 -
Stop apathy?
Anyway, it won't be a case of 'almost' before long, given how much and how quickly they're messing up.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
The good thing about having a large majority and no cohesive opposition is that you should be able to push through policies that aren’t popular with the media. This is especially the case when you have 5 years for the policies to pay off and people to forget the initial criticism. It’s definitely frustrating to see another Government testing their policies in the court of public opinion (or rather what the media are saying is public opinion) then capitulating. Have the courage of your convictions and take your chances in 5 years.
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Im not convinced they have any real programme. Starmer is not a conviction politician - look at his attempt to ride both horses in tne palestine conflict, his cynical use of the manufactured (see Asa Winstanley's research) anti semitism row to get rid of Corbyn, his bs about smashing the gangs when we've just had the record for migrants arriving illegally without a peep from him. He'll say and do whatever suits him at the time. Of course he's going to make policy based on public opinion - that's who he is.
[Castle Donington Ladies FC - going up in '22]2 -
Agree.
And good point about migrant crossings. Someone was claiming recently that they were coming down and just last week we had around 1,000 in a single day. That's what happens when you do nothing effective about the issue.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
If you take the word of the journalist who thinks all Jewish MPs are a front for the Israeli state and whose entire X timeline is a stream of anti-Israel conspiracy theories (Jon Lansman who ran Momentum was apparently a Jewish saboteur; October 7 was mostly an Israeli inside job; that kind of thing), then I can see why you might think that antisemitism in the Labour Party was 'manufactured'.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Yes, that too. They seem to have forgotten that while they did very well at the election, people's patience for nonsense is in pretty short supply.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
I think this is a mis-read. He might campaign like Bungle from Rainbow and sound like he's got a blocked nose, but I think Starmer is far more hard-nosed than most people realise.
He also, I think, highly intelligent and has a good idea of what he wants to do, but we don't know what it is yet. The Labour campaign was "anyone but the tories" and completely vanilla in order to avoid spooking the morons who voted for Boris last time.
They are boxed in by this manifesto for a while, but the next King's Speech (whether that's one or two years in) will be more interesting.
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I hope you're right. I remember during the Brexit negotiations thinking that the UK's approach was to look incompetent / clueless as part of some grand strategy to lure Barnier into making some wild concessions. Turns out the UK's approach looked incompetent and clueless because it was. I fear that Starmer and his senior team look like they are not suited to governing (*) because they aren't.
(*) I'm not saying they're bad in general or bad people. It's just that governing is very difficult, particularly when you've boxed yourself in over tax policy to the extent Reeves has.
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Latest budget related story is that Reeves has approached two large pension providers to ask about the impact of reducting the maximum PCLS from the current £268,000 (ish) to £100,000.
That really would be a stupid move and scupper the plans of many people who have planned to use their tax free cash to repay mortgages and other debt. It would also dent confidence in pensions which Labour have always hammered as a soft tax take target (remember Gordon Brown's £5 bn pa raid in his first budget creating the savings gap). Just at a time when Auto Enrolment has been a huge success.
Having really pissed off those already retired, this would really piss off those approaching retirement.
There would also seemingly be grounds to challenge it through the courts.
She's bottled the easier and fairer way of upping the tax take from pensions in ruling out flat rate tax relief on contributions.
Another example of policy making through the press.
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I have always assumed that this would be removed before I got to the point of drawing on a pension. £268k tax free seems to high to me.
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Re changing the tax relief on contributions regime, I've read that Reeves abandoned this after pressure from public sector unions due to the potential impact on higher rate tax payers in the public sector who are "ordinary hardworking" types e.g. senior nurses and teachers.
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I have said similar on other threads, Starmer is pretty ruthless and if you are not in the inner circle then you are basically a pariah in the Labour party. I agree, he played it very safe during the campaign. There will be a longer term plan and as I have said before I suspect it will lean more left than centrist, the guy is a Socialist at heart.
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It's also somewhat concerning that Reeves appears to be formulating her pensions tax policy "on the hoof". The fundamental issues haven't changed recently (or for several years tbh) so one would have thought an "on-the-ball" Opposition would have had its ducks well and truly lined up on this one, as Brown did in his early days. (His policies may not have been ideal, but he knew what they were long before he became Chancellor.)
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Yes, my point was that if it started in 2008, the planning process wasn't that bad. You may have other views on how quick it should be.
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Several years to determine whether the site of two nuclear power stations, one still in active use, is a suitable location for a nuclear power station, feels like rather a long time.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
I think you're being a bit unrealistic. Or maybe I have normalised it.
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Agree, it would be a bad move for them as well as a lot of those approaching retirement, as well as disincentivising saving for retirement generally.
Hopefully my retirement plans will coincide with a time when this shower are no longer running the show. Either that or or the legal challenge succeeds.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
I don't believe it would reduce saving if people with pension pots over £400,000 (per person, not household) could only take £100,000 tax free, and had to make do with the 40% tax relief on the rest. Or if it did, then it wouldn't be a problem for the country.
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I agree. The purpose of the tax free element was to encourage people to save; however, £100k is probably enough to encourage people on the basic tax rate to save. It may mean that people with £400k in the pot who now do a retirement job at the basic rate are discouraged from saving, but that is a pretty small problem.
The policy is much more sensible than taxing higher rate payers on the way in.
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Surely to be fair, any change to the TFLS needs to be phased in over several years to allow for retirement finances to be re-planned. If the limit is reduced from circa £250k to £100k overnight, then a top rate tax payer would be getting stung for north of £60k if they retired shortly after the change. Given all the debate around how many "ordinary people" have large pension pots, that's a lot of ordinary people who would have a change of plan forced on them in the short term.
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That's true, but it's like people planning to make massive tax free capital gains when they downsize. Should there be an entitlement to tax free gains? Similarly, the capital gains tax rate changes all the time - that has an considerable impact on some people. I paid 28% on something. It's now 20%, but may rise in the budget.
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You might not believe it would have an impact, but industry experts disagree.
And most people don't get 40% tax relief on the way in, they get 20%.
Part of the reason for the wealth gap increasing in the last 40 years has been the significant reduction in tax relief on pension contributions for basic rate tax payers. It is grossly unfair that higher rate tax payers effectively get twice the tax relief.
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They don't if they pay the higher rate on the way out and those getting 20% relief are much less likely to be affected by a drop to £100k.
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Oh pension experts think pensions should get lots of special tax treatment? If they are right and people with large pension pots save a bit less and spend a bit more, why should the government care?
I mention the 40% on the way in because this is large pension pots only that would be affected.
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The difference with pension TFLS is that it is such a significant element of retirement planning which affects so many people that I don't think you can so easily dismiss the impact as "Sh*t happens" which paraphrases your observation above re CGT.
I think it's fairly well established that a stable, predictable tax regime is best all round, other than for politicians looking for a headline, ideological indulgence or a quick boost to tax revenues.
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