[Politics] The Labour Government

[Bold Seagull]

I think more will return to the Tories but since you asked these are all very business friendly Reform policies:

Reform said it would reduce the main corporation tax rate from 25 per cent to 20 per cent and raise the threshold for paying the tax from £50,000 to £100,000.

Its other proposals for the economy include the abolition of IR35 regulations introduced by the Conservatives in recent years to govern off-payroll working.

Business rates would be scrapped for small and medium firms, while an online delivery tax, levied at 3 per cent, is intended to “create a fairer playing field” for high-street businesses versus online competitors.

The VAT threshold would be raised to £120,000 to “free small entrepreneurs from red tape”.

It would be like Truss and Kwasi never left office.

 

[dsr-burnley]

Great, but since they also want to end immigration where are the workers to support this growth coming from?

We don't need a million new workers every year. (OK, I get that only 300,000 of them are workers and the others are non-working people, mostly members of their families.) But we have over 5 million people on out-of-work benefits. Many of them want jobs but can't (apparently) find them. Plenty of slack in the system without needing to import workers.

 

[Weststander]

We don't need a million new workers every year. (OK, I get that only 300,000 of them are workers and the others are non-working people, mostly members of their families.) But we have over 5 million people on out-of-work benefits. Many of them want jobs but can't (apparently) find them. Plenty of slack in the system without needing to import workers.

A radio phone in covered exactly that. Many want to work, but are caught in age old cost of childcare v potential wages dilemma. Hopefully the recent changes will help.

 

[dsr-burnley]

Which manifesto promise is being breached?

Not this one - because that clearly applied to the NI I pay, not the NI my employer pays - and that's how I understood it: “Labour will not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT.” They are not 'increasing the tax on the worker' so the context of the manifesto is being kept to.

Obviously there are two ways of interpreting the manifesto. Many people understood "we will not increase National Insurance" to mean that they would not increase National Insurance, which (if a manifesto was a contract) would certainly be the legal interpretation. But as a manifesto is not a contract, it can be made as misleading (deliberately or otherwise) as they wish, and if people niss the hidden trap, the party can laugh and say "fooled you".

Why do you think they didn't make it clear and say "we will not increase employees' National Insurance"? Was it because they had no intention of raising National Insurance at all and have now changed their mind but don't want to admit they've changed their mind? Was it because they didn't understand that National Insurance comes in two parts? Or was it a deliberate attempt to mislead?

 

[dsr-burnley]

A radio phone in covered exactly that. Many want to work, but are caught in age old cost of childcare v potential wages dilemma. Hopefully the recent changes will help.

Which is where Reform would say, and with some justification, that paying people as much to stop at home as they would pay them to work, is a sure way to collapse the economy. The obvious first step is to reduce the cost of childcare, as (I think) Johnson proposed, but too many people's incomes (especially the beaurocrats') depend on keeping the system complex and labour intensive.

 

[Weststander]

Which is where Reform would say, and with some justification, that paying people as much to stop at home as they would pay them to work, is a sure way to collapse the economy. The obvious first step is to reduce the cost of childcare, as (I think) Johnson proposed, but too many people's incomes (especially the beaurocrats') depend on keeping the system complex and labour intensive.

Is that the very British belt n braces thing? Look at the cost of new railways per mile compared to on the continent, there’s an astonishing stat I once posted on nsc. Similarly new housing building, even without the profit.

The UK in 2024 is a bloody expensive place.