The right language aimed at the wrong level. This was a Budget focused on micro-management. The Chancellor used the right language about the need to help workers and business, but it was predicated on ‘the state knows best’, with significant interference through targeted spending and tax hikes. The Red Book contained no fewer than 98 […]
Making sure it always pays to work is political motherhood and apple pie: something so obvious it’s barely worth saying. Odd, then, that last week when Kemi Badenoch suggested changing childcare rules which leave successful parents facing crazy 100%-plus tax rates if they earn more than £100,000, she faced a barrage of criticism. The critics […]
Imagine borrowing £10,000 from the bank, lending it to a friend, then telling everyone the debt’s gone – because your friend owes you the money. That’s obviously nonsensical – you still owe the same £10,000 to the bank, regardless of what you did with the money. But that’s Labour’s approach to our public finances. Let […]
When John Healey sits down next Wednesday, the press gallery will focus hard on his headroom against the fiscal rules. In March the OBR put this at £23.6 billion against the main rule, which requires day-to-day spending to be covered by revenue by 2029/30. A recent Reuters poll of economists suggests it has since shrunk […]
Let’s go fly a kite? There has been rather less briefing about proposals to be announced in next week’s Budget than in recent years. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, John Healey, has been far less forthcoming than his predecessors, Rachel Reeves and Jeremy Hunt, whose plans were dribbled out weeks in advance. Some have suggested […]
Today the Tax Foundation updates its annual International Tax Competitiveness Index. It’s not great reading for the UK, which comes 30th out of 38 countries. This is one place better than last year but two places worse than 2014, the first year of the Index. The Index aims to measure how well a tax system […]
Should banks be taxed more? That seems to be one of the routes that the Chancellor will go down in the Budget, according to news reports from Bangkok, where he is attending the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Thousands of bankers will be in attendance and he is likely to […]
The remarkable thing about Britain’s tax burden is that however high it rises, the government always manages to spend more than it can afford, and John Healey’s first Budget looks unlikely to be any different. Businesses are expected to swallow higher taxes, workers are expected to give up more of their earnings and anyone lucky […]
The IMF has just published its biannual World Economic Outlook. The report appeared to be modestly good news for the UK, predicting higher-than-expected economic growth of 1.3% in 2026, up from a 1% forecast in July. But one thing that caught my eye was the way that the IMF reported that the UK would see […]
For the past 10 years, the European Centre for Entrepreneurship and Policy Reform (ECEPR) has been mapping Europe’s knowledge-intensive jobs in a recurring study, with a particular focus on how the geography of knowledge is shifting. The 2026 index shows the UK ahead compared to other large nations in Europe, but also reveals that smaller […]
The Chancellor seems to be weighing up a rise in capital gains tax (CGT) in the Budget later this month, with some suggesting it could be equalised with income tax rates of up to 45% – in line with Wes Streeting’s proposal earlier this year, when he was jockeying for the Labour leadership. For a […]
As the dust of party conferences settles and journalists try to read the runes of what they mean for the coming political year, two things are already clear. The first is that Andy Burnham’s conference speech was a masterclass in tickling the tummies of his party faithful, with a heady mix of teary emotion and […]
Just as there is a battle on the Right in Britain, so too is there a battle inside the Conservative Party for what the party should focus on. There are those who are concerned about the threat of political Islam, the damage to the social fabric of the Boriswave and other elements of mass immigration, […]
When William Buckley went on the front page of Time magazine, the title was simple: ‘Conservatism Can Be Fun’. That is what Kemi Badenoch has done at this conference. Conservatism can be fun, can be serious and can learn from its old mistakes. But most importantly, what makes it the world’s oldest party is its […]
Andy Burnham used the Labour Party conference in Liverpool this week to commit the Government to a National Care Service, universal and free at the point of use, while promising to ‘stick to our fiscal rules to get borrowing and debt down’. The service is due in the next Parliament and is supposed to be […]
A year ago I ended the Growth Commission’s annual Growth Budget with the prediction that if the then Chancellor Rachel Reeves continued with her policy of tax and spend, she – or more likely her successor – would be back in a year’s time asking for more. So the Government can’t say that they weren’t […]
Earlier this month, the Government announced it would pause its wide-ranging plans for Local Government Reorganisation (LGR), which would have redrawn local council and parish boundaries and overhauled a system that has been in place for centuries. As focus shifts to Andy Burnham’s less wordy – but no less ambitious – plans for devolution, England’s […]
For most of the post-war period, each generation in Britain could reasonably expect to be materially better off than the last. Since the financial crisis, that has changed. Productivity growth has been exceptionally weak and improvements in living standards have stagnated. This was the starting point for ‘Boosting Britain: A blueprint for radical financial and […]
Britain’s political class loves to talk about ‘reforming welfare’, but everyone knows the limits of that ambition. Voter Welfare – the £333.7 billion the state is forecast to transfer from taxpayers to households in 2025–26 – is politically untouchable. A population brought up on free cake is unlikely to vote for the plate being removed, […]
If rumours are to be believed, Kemi Badenoch and the Conservative Party are thinking about scrapping inheritance tax. Inheritance tax is a pernicious tax that punishes people for doing things that we are supposed to do: building things, saving and investing. Crucially, it is also a tax on loving your family and wanting to leave […]
This morning, John Healey delivered his first major speech as Chancellor. He set out his vision for the economy and, while it was encouraging to hear his determination to drive growth and solve the NEET crisis, all while claiming to be committed to fiscal discipline, it was quite light on detail. However, one specific point […]
When Andy Burnham arrived at No 10 in July he came with a bold message of change. 40 years of neoliberalism have left Britain hollowed out: wealth has drained from those with the least to those with the most; capital ran riot while the state stood back and watched. It’s a powerful story, and evidently […]
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