Labour's assault on property rights is blowing up the housing market - "It would get Britain building again so that there were more properties available. And it would beef up the rights of renters so that they were better protected from greedy, unscrupulous landlords. Before the election, Labour campaigned as the ally of renters, and no doubt many of the twenty and thirty-somethings that rely on the lettings market voted for the party hoping that it would make the system work better. However, we learned today that the number of properties available is collapsing at a record rate. According to the monthly statistics from the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, landlord instructions have hit minus 37 per cent, the lowest reading it has recorded since the height of the Covid pandemic (when, understandably, no one was moving). Meanwhile, average rents are now increasing by close to 6 per cent annually, according to the Office for National Statistics, well above the rate of inflation, and unless you happen to be a tube driver, a lot more than most pay packets as well. The rental sector has been plunged into a vicious cycle – and right now there is little way out of it. It is not hard to work out why. In her last Budget, the Chancellor Rachel Reeves put up stamp duty for second homes, which hit buy-to-let landlords, while her recently departed colleague Angela Rayner, when she wasn’t expanding her own property portfolio, has been pushing through a “Renter’s Rights Bill” that will make it far harder for landlords to manage their properties. Reeves is reported to be planning to impose National Insurance on landlords in her next Budget, effectively collecting 14 per cent off the monthly rent in additional taxes, presumably regardless of whether it is profitable or not. The result? To the surprise of absolutely no one except a few blinkered ideologues from the Left, landlords are quitting the market in doves, and as the supply shrinks, prices inevitably rise. Any sane government would realise it had made a mistake and start searching for the reverse gear. Unfortunately, however, it looks like this one will just slam its foot on the accelerator. The easiest way to win votes from Labour members during the upcoming deputy leadership election will be to pledge to impose rent controls. On the backbenches, and among the activists, the pressure will rise and rise for extra controls on the rented sector, and powerful big city mayors such as Sir Sadiq Khan and Andy Burnham will demand powers to set prices in their jurisdictions. Once rent controls are introduced, the lucky tenants who are already in place may benefit in the short-run, but supply will collapse even further, as has been shown countless times around the world."
Starmer has proven the hypothesis that Labour can never be trusted in power - "Consistency is not always ideal. For example, every Labour government but one has left office with the economy worse than when it came in. The exception was the first short-lived one in 1924. It would have required astonishing ineptitude to wreck things in only nine months. In fact Philip Snowden, its Chancellor, was a proper Gladstonian liberal determined to avoid Labour getting a reputation for economic mismanagement. The administration that failed in 1931 could blame world events to an extent – the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash – but imploded because most of its cabinet refused to contemplate spending cuts. Labour left office in 1951 and 1970 after devaluations forced by grave economic under-performance; in 1979 after the mother of all Sterling crises, spending cuts forced by the International Monetary Fund as a condition of saving Britain from bankruptcy and, finally, the Winter of Discontent; and in 2010 after a global financial crisis that Gordon Brown’s stewardship as Chancellor had left the country poorly prepared to counter because of another spending binge. No-one would pretend this Government had a fine economic inheritance, but at every turn it has aggravated matters, whether in managing the economy or through other policies. Labour continues to spend far more than Britain can afford, notably on the welfare state, but also on almost all else, not least Whitehall itself. Faced with the choice of raising taxes or cutting spending, it unfailingly chooses the former... If fewer people, and businesses, pay taxes, and wealth creators flee, where does the money to fund this welfare state come from? Leaks last week suggested Rachel Reeves nonetheless intends to attack wealth creation, and wealth creators, thus making matters worse. As Allister Heath suggested in last Thursday’s Telegraph, a wealth tax based on property values could destroy the middle classes: the one glimmer of light is that our incompetent state would take so long to set up the machinery to revalue properties accurately and to levy such a tax that that Labour (which, come what may, is heading for defeat) would be out of office long before it was ready. No-one seems capable of learning the lessons of failed wealth taxes. Look at France. President Mitterrand introduced one in 1988; between 2000 and 2016 around 60,000 high net worth people left France. President Macron abolished the tax in 2017, admitting it was wrecking the country’s prosperity. Is that what our Government wants here? The Prime Minister was a teenager in the 1970s. He must remember the devastation done to Britain’s economy by tax rates of 98 per cent on so-called unearned income – that is, dividends on investments often bought out of taxed income – and 83 per cent on the highest incomes? There was no incentive to work hard, invest or save. Is that what he wants? Because it is what Labour patronisingly calls “our people” – those dependent on the state and on the services funded by taxpayers, and who can’t afford to move abroad – who will suffer most when those services collapse. Less than two months ago Sir Keir spoke of the “moral imperative” of fixing the welfare system. He was right. It is demoralising for there to be an estimated four million people of working age on benefits who are under no compulsion to improve their lives. It is demoralising for the rest of us to pay heavier and heavier taxes so they – the group the Victorians rightly called “the undeserving poor” – can be demoralised too. It is demoralising for his Work and Pensions Secretary, Liz Kendall – one of the more intelligent and reasonable members of the cabinet – to have devised a plan that would have begun the remoralisation process, only to have it torpedoed by Sir Keir in a spasm of panic about the welfarist mania of his backbenchers... Sir Keir has lost the next election anyway: why not have a moment of courage, the domestic equivalent of the leadership he showed in going to Washington last week to support President Zelensky against possible Trumpian caprice and stupidity, and tell the British people straight that we can no longer afford such incontinent public spending? He could add that it is even more appalling to do so when we cannot afford to fund the Armed Forces properly in the face of the threat from Russia; when we underfund the police so much that London is turning into one big permanent crime scene with the so-called war on drugs (the cause of most crime) long since won by the drug-dealers; and when we are freeing criminals who are a danger to the public from jail early because we say we cannot afford to build more prisons? This brings us to the other aspect of this government’s scandalous profligacy: that it runs so much so badly that yet more money has to be spent clearing up the consequent mess... The Institute for Fiscal Studies assessed the cost of illegal migration at £6.4 billion in 2024: it cannot but be higher this year. Apart from a ludicrously inadequate returns “deal” with France, the Government has simply stared helplessly into the headlights, doing nothing to deter more from arriving. Money is wasted on overmanned public services – the NHS defines just 53.9 per cent of its 1,375,679 full-time equivalent workers as ‘qualified clinical staff’; and the number of management staff rose from 239,000 to 248,000 in the 22 months to April 2025. Any business knows that to save money you cut payroll. Even without cutting a single clinical post the Government could save money cutting NHS bureaucracy: but they fear what the unions, which are powerful within that cadre of the workforce, would do... More tax rises would be the equivalent of a suicide pill for the economy. But they could also be one for Labour, because the British electorate is reaching the limit of its tolerance for a party and a discredited ideology that have failed too often already. Labour just won’t see the truth that stares it in the face."
The world’s money men have lost patience with Labour - "Higher taxes will not repair the chronic erosion of the UK’s public finances. Labour has hit the mechanical limits of the Laffer curve. This country is either at or beyond the critical point where further taxes become self-defeating. They undermine the productive base of the economy. They lead to a systemic flight of capital and talent. They end up subtracting from the GDP base that sustains the state. In short, they feed the vicious cycle rather than stopping it. Stephen Jen and Joana Freire, from Eurizon SLJ Capital, warn that the UK is crossing over onto the “wrong side” of the Laffer curve, switching places with Italy as it returns to the “right side” after staring long and deep into the abyss. “We are worried about the UK. Until there is a political and social recognition that a welfare state funded by ever-higher taxes is unsustainable, the fiscal trajectory will likely deteriorate until there is a ‘Starmer Moment’,” they said – in reference to the “Truss moment” when the bond market turned against the former prime minister... The UK has no shortage of tax revenue. Eurizon says the tax-take jumped by 51pc between 2019 and 2024 due to bracket creep, compared to cumulative inflation of 24pc and a rise in nominal GDP of 28pc. The money has been frittered away paying people not to work. Precious little has been spent on investment that lifts growth. Jen and Freire say it is astonishing that Britain has ended up with 17 times more working-age people per capita on jobless benefits than America, often on grounds of unverified mental illness. They note that Labour has made wealth so unwelcome that some 16,500 millionaires have emigrated from the UK so far this year, double the number of Chinese millionaires fleeing Xi Jinping’s China. This class war has consequences. The top 10pc of earners in the UK generate 60pc of income tax revenue. Many are decamping to Milan, where Giorgia Meloni is rolling out the red carpet. Eurizon says the UK is now so far along the path towards welfare dependency that the “fundamental economic DNA” of the country is changing, subverting the implicit contract that it has with its global creditors and the owners of UK equities... Dowding said Labour’s retreat on welfare reform has been toxic: “They are telling the world that the only lever they can use to control the deficit is more tax, but more tax is never going to work. “It has been very damaging to the UK’s credibility. Ever since that moment we have seen gilts underperforming other debt markets,” he said. BlueBay estimates that interest costs are already over 10pc of total tax revenues. That level is typically a red warning for rating agencies."
Public sector hypocrisy over inheritance tax is even worse than I feared - "Little has provoked as much ire from Telegraph Money readers since Rachel Reeves stepped into Number 11 – and gosh, hasn’t she provided enough options – than the inheritance tax raid on pensions. In just over 18 months’ time, any money left unspent in a pension will be subject to inheritance tax at 40pc if the tax-free allowance has already been used up by property, Isas and other assets... the new rules only apply to “defined contribution” pensions. These are the dominant form of pension savings used by the majority of workers in the private sector. “Defined benefit” pensions will be spared because they cannot be passed down in the same way – payments generally stop when the scheme member or their spouse dies. Millions of public sector workers, including MPs, will therefore be left unscathed by Reeves’ reforms. The inheritance tax benefits of a defined contribution pension are – were – their only real advantage over public sector schemes, which are underwritten by the taxpayer and are guaranteed to rise by inflation every year. Telegraph Money reader and retired financial adviser Christopher Mellor wrote to me recently, pointing out exactly how unfair this change is – and how it drives an even greater wedge between the bloated public sector and the rest of us."
Young people are rejecting work. Why? - "Louise Murphy, economist at the Resolution Foundation think-tank, says mental health is one driver of rising Neet numbers: in 20 years, the proportion of young people reporting a disorder such as anxiety or bipolar has increased from a quarter to a third. This makes them more likely to be out of work: an RF report found between 2018 and 2022, 21 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds with mental health problems were jobless, compared with 13 per cent of those without. Niall O’Higgins, an International Labour Organization economist, suggests younger people are also disenchanted with the quality of jobs on offer, and are “lacking prospects for development, workplace training and the ability to build up their options”... “I resent the accusation that young people don’t want to work,” Morgan says. “Everyone wants to contribute, but the reward for devoting your time to doing so is no longer worth it in many cases.”"
Time for even more 'awareness' about mental health
Clearly increasing benefits will get more young people into work
Borrowing costs surge as Britain faces ‘moron premium’ under Reeves
How much taxpayers are really paying for Labour’s addiction to debt - "The Government says it paid £124.7bn in debt interest on outstanding debt of £2,925bn in 2024-25. GDP was £2,895bn, so debt interest as a percentage of GDP was 4.3pc – but as a percentage of Government expenditure (£1,285bn), it was 9.7pc. That puts debt interest in third place of spending categories, behind social security (including the state pension) and health and social care but ahead of education and way ahead of defence, which is about half the debt interest figure. If this sounds bad, it is. But there’s much worse. The Government completely ignores a huge amount of interest which it is incurring every year in addition to these published figures."
Pub closures hit Home Counties hardest amid Labour’s tax raid
Private schools, pupils and their parents lose historic High Court bid to stop Labour introducing VAT on school fees : r/unitedkingdom - "The rich people who reject society leave, and the rich people willing to engage with everyone else stay."
Left wingers cheer killing the golden goose
How Britain made private schools the envy of the world – and then destroyed them - "More than 150 British private schools have set up overseas outposts since Harrow opened the first one in Thailand in 1998, according to the left-leaning Private Education Policy Forum think tank. There are plans for a further 28 to open in the near future. For these schools, business is booming – abroad. Yet in Britain, the reality is starkly different. Around 250 private schools are expected to close in the next three years – 100 of those as a result of the VAT raid, according to government figures. Britain effectively created the private school system, turning it into one of our biggest success stories, a lucrative export helping to deploy soft power around the world while attracting global talent to these shores. Now, it has been undermined on home turf, its influence lost to savvier nations... Today, these schools continue to be envied across the world, contributing an estimated £16.5bn to the economy according to advisory firm Oxford Economics, and by luring international students, acting as a vital tool of soft power. A 2023 study by Higher Education Policy Institute found 25pc of world leaders – either monarchs, presidents or prime ministers – were educated in Britain. Of those, one in five attended British private schools. Despite the huge success of Britain’s private schools, Labour has long flirted with the dream of abolishing them... It wasn’t until Jeremy Corbyn’s 2017 manifesto that the idea resurfaced. Speaking at that year’s Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference, chairman Chris King, said: “It is endlessly ironic that UK independent education, one of the most valued and enduring global brands, should be so sneered at in its country of origin.”... The reputation of Britain as the leading country for independent education took a hit last year, according to luxury magazine Spear’s. Its index of the leading 100 private schools in the world showed the total number of British schools had fallen this year from 40 to 35 as a result of Labour’s VAT levy, combined with the abolishment of non-dom status... Smith says it is curious that while British private schools remain the envy of many foreign countries, a sizeable part of the UK population remains hostile to their existence. A fifth of the country would support an outright ban of private schools, a poll by YouGov found, while more than half (55pc) are in favour of applying VAT to fees, according to an Ipsos survey. “There is a very different attitude to success and wealth than exists in America, for example,” he adds, where Harrow School is opening an outpost on New York’s Long Island this month. “I think it’s something ingrained in our national psyche. But politicians, across both sides of the aisle, have increasingly taken the opportunity to divide their supporters from another group of people, and it’s definitely had an impact on the perception of private schools.”... “Schools in the middle will be the ones most likely to suffer,” he says. “The ones at the very top are still going to attract this international cast of parents and pupils because they have the brand name, the cachet and they really do offer something that is incredibly special. “But where fees are going, I would expect our system will start to more closely resemble Switzerland and the US, where private school is reserved for the true elite. Rather than reducing inequality, strangely [Labour] might create more elitism.”"
How Labour’s private school VAT raid sparked a barrage of abuse - "For months Ben* was heckled by local school children on his way home. A group of them targeted him on the bus, shouting “posh boy” whenever they saw him. The taunting was so relentless that for a while last year the 15-year-old changed the time he left school to avoid running into his aggressors. He has asked that we don’t use his real name so that he remains unidentifiable. His mother says that this happened in autumn last year, when Labour’s anti-private school rhetoric was at its peak. In October, Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, tweeted a viral post in which she caricatured private schools as out-of-touch institutions with embossed stationery and AstroTurf pitches. Ben is far from the only child who has faced abuse in the wake of Labour’s VAT raid. The Education Not Taxation group, which includes more than 25,000 private school parents, said it is aware of dozens of examples of children who say they have been abused on their way to and from school. Private school children have often been a target of bullies in the past. But the group says the language and rhetoric used by Labour ministers in the past year to justify adding VAT to school fees has poured fuel on the flames, and created a reason to accept this behaviour. Phillipson’s viral post on X, seen by more than six million people, is one of many examples of language some have deemed to be divisive and creating an “us vs them” mentality. Conservative MP Luke Evans said her comments “reeked of prejudice and propagates a class war”, while shadow minister Nigel Huddleston said they were “shockingly ill-judged”. Both called for her to apologise. In April, the Education Secretary accused private schools of “crying wolf” over the impact of the 20pc levy, despite more than 75 institutions closing since October, according to the Independent Schools Council. Recent figures from the Department for Education also revealed four times as many pupils have left private schools in the past year than the Government’s forecast. Mary*, from London, is both a private school parent and a state school governor. Her eldest child goes to an independent school while her youngest is at a state school. Mary, like Ben, does not want to use her real name because she is scared of experiencing further backlash. “It can be confusing because it feels as if Labour cares about my daughter but not about my son,” she says. “The language Labour has used is dangerous. It’s given people ammunition to say things to your face.” In a recent meeting with other state school parents, Mary says she was heckled and told “you are part of the problem” because one of her children attended a private school. She says: “In my role as a governor, we had to explain the financial difficulties to parents. I was in a meeting and a mother stood up and said I was part of the problem because I had denied funding to the school by moving my child to an independent school. “There were 30 people in that room and nobody said anything. Nobody stepped in, that was the shocking part. People afterwards messaged me to say she was out of line, but the fact nobody wanted to speak up… I felt publicly shamed.” One private school family putting their heads above the parapet are Sarah Lambert, 59, and her 14-year-old daughter Ava. The Telegraph revealed in February that the local council is now spending more than £8,000 a year in taxi fares to take Ava to the nearest available state school 25 miles away, after the family were no longer able to afford her school fees. Lambert, a nurse practitioner, says the fallout from appearing in the media has been “brutal”. While more juvenile comments focused on cliches about their supposed wealth, she says that at its most sinister, online trolls trawled through her social media accounts to find images of her daughter. “They found a picture and said ‘well she deserves it because she’s so ugly’. Another one said ‘who would want that child in their school?’. It’s been horrendous. There have been things like ‘oh dear so your poor child has to mix with normal people’. “Don’t talk to me about normal people. My sister works in retail. My mum is a retired social worker. I’m a nurse. How much more normal could you want?” She adds: “I found myself thinking, how is this normal for people to be able to feel like they could attack a 13-year-old child? I truly believe it was the rhetoric that the Government gave at the time. They wanted people to think we all drive Chelsea tractors."
It's never dangerous rhetoric when it comes from the left
I got a bursary to a top private school. Labour’s tax raid would’ve sealed my fate - "According to the Private Education Policy Forum, 34pc of private school pupils receive some form of financial aid. These aren’t just the children of bankers and lawyers. Many bursary students come from single-parent households, carers, or families with fluctuating incomes who would otherwise never consider private education. This isn’t just a personal story. Labour’s decision to impose VAT on private school fees from the start of this year risks shutting out thousands of children from the kind of opportunities I enjoyed. Bursaries are one of the few tools that private schools have to support social mobility, giving bright children from all backgrounds a chance to thrive. Labour’s tax raid is reshaping the landscape of private education. The VAT raid – a wealth tax by any other name – has hit working families, while the truly wealthy have been able to avoid the extra fees by paying, in some cases, for the entire cost of schooling up front... Once again, a government policy aimed at raising revenue is missing the intended target. Instead of targeting those with extreme wealth, it’s the working and middle-class families, those just managing to stretch for a better future, who are feeling the squeeze."
‘Stretched’ definition of mental health ‘costing UK £16bn’ - "Public services have been pushed “to breaking point” by a misguided readiness to diagnose children and young people with mental health conditions, according to a report backed by Jeremy Hunt. Right-leaning think tank Policy Exchange said common definitions of ill mental health and neurodivergence had been “stretched too far”, resulting in “widespread overdiagnosis” among the young. The trend is fuelling a £16bn a year bill for children’s health benefits, special educational needs and disabilities (Send) support, and mental health services. Policy Exchange said “poor incentives” in these systems had prompted “diagnosis-seeking behaviour”, which was putting public services under unsustainable strain. Crucially, the result has been worse support and outcomes for children and young people with the most severe needs, it warned. Jeremy Hunt, Britain’s longest-serving health secretary, endorsed the findings, and said: “Across the political spectrum, and amongst a growing range of practitioners, it is now recognised that there is a level of ‘overdiagnosis’ in our system. “Rather than assuming that more money or ‘more of the same’ is the answer, we need to ask more fundamental questions. Is a cash transfer – or a label that means young people are treated and come to see themselves as different – the right way to help them?” The Policy Exchange said “concept creep” and public anxiety about supporting children’s mental well-being had led to a “new normal” where misbehaving, feeling sad or being a late bloomer could result in mental health diagnoses “often with shaky or unreliable evidence”... One in five of all schoolchildren in England are now classed as having a special need or disability. It comes amid a sharp increase in disability welfare payments for children fuelled by conditions like ADHD and autism. Meanwhile, among 16 to 24-year-olds disability payments for depression overtook those with down’s syndrome in 2025 for the first time. Half of all government expenditure on schools has been dedicated to the Send system since 2015, Policy Exchange said, with spending on taxis for students with special needs alone set to hit £1.1bn by 2030... the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) on Wednesday warned that the Government’s welfare reforms were likely to save next to nothing this decade. The benefits overhaul aimed to reduce the rise in the welfare bill by more than £5bn, but a rebellion by backbench Labour MPs forced Sir Keir Starmer to water down the proposals."
Too many young people signed off for struggling with hard work, says employment tsar - "Too many young people are being signed off sick for struggling with hard work, the Government’s worklessness tsar has said. Sir Charlie Mayfield said a mental health crisis among the young was being made worse by GPs writing sick notes for stress or anxiety caused by difficult tasks at work... Climbing rates of anxiety and depression are a large factor behind the growing rates of economic inactivity in the UK, particularly among those aged under 35. Around a quarter of those who are economically inactive because of ill-health are younger than 35, and young people with mental health conditions are nearly five times more likely to be economically inactive than others in their age group. ating worklessness by writing sick notes for anxiety caused by challenging jobs Emma Taggart Related Topics Jobs and employment, Mental health, UK economy 24 August 2025 9:00am BST 330 Sir Charlie Mayfield, the former John Lewis boss, who is leading a government review into worklessness crisis Charlie Mayfield, John Lewis’s former chairman, says ‘work is meant to be tough’ Credit: Eddie Mulholland for The Telegraph Too many young people are being signed off sick for struggling with hard work, the Government’s worklessness tsar has said. Sir Charlie Mayfield said a mental health crisis among the young was being made worse by GPs writing sick notes for stress or anxiety caused by difficult tasks at work. The former John Lewis boss, who is leading a government review into Britain’s growing worklessness crisis, said: “On the mental health issues among young people, the fact is your experiences at work are a very important contributor to that. “Work can be tough. It’s meant to be tough. Sometimes you’re meant to find it hard. You’re not meant to ace everything or get everything right. And so there are times when it’s challenging. “If you’re within a supportive environment and something that goes wrong, and you’re challenged ... it can be a supportive and constructive process of improvement. “If you’re in a situation where you don’t feel supported, you just feel criticised and you’re already feeling a bit vulnerable, it pushes you in the other direction. You may start to feel anxious, you may start to feel stressed. “And of course, when you don’t have a system in place to support you, and you go to see your GP and you say, ‘I’m really anxious and I’m really stressed out at work,’ then what the GP may often say is, ‘Well, we better give you a fit note to sign you off work.’” Climbing rates of anxiety and depression are a large factor behind the growing rates of economic inactivity in the UK, particularly among those aged under 35. Around a quarter of those who are economically inactive because of ill-health are younger than 35, and young people with mental health conditions are nearly five times more likely to be economically inactive than others in their age group. Sir Charlie said mental health struggles should not be minimised but said problems were being “over-medicalised”. He argued that recommending people take time off for things like stress and anxiety risked making these problems worse, rather than treating them. He said: “You go home, and you sit at home for a month, let’s say, with your anxiety or your stress, and then at the end of that month probably nothing’s happened other than the fact you haven’t been at work. But then the prospect of going back to work at that point may be even scarier than it was when you left it, because you’ve been away from it. “The fact is workplaces are social environments. They’re communities, and it’s important to be a part of that community. A lot of mental health issues are made worse by not being engaged with some kind of community. You know, isolation is a bad thing for most mental health issues.”... There are now 2.8 million people classed as economically inactive because of long-term sickness, up from 2.1 million at the start of 2020, according to the Office for National Statistics... Sir Charlie said Britain could learn from Denmark and the Netherlands. Both nations emphasise the importance of participating in the labour force in any form, whether voluntary, part-time or full-time work. “They make that point both from the economic benefits of it, but also the social and the integration benefits that come from working,” he said. The former John Lewis boss said that a failure to address health at work would simply make the problem worse as more people seek medical treatment for issues that could be dealt with in other ways."
Time for even more "awareness" and less "stigma"
The Greens have got an insane new policy – and it’s even worse than net zero - "The Greens are determined to show voters that they aren’t a single-issue party. Yes, they may spend most of their time arguing for net zero. But there’s a lot more to them than that – because they’ve got utterly bonkers policies on all kinds of other issues, too. And to prove it, they’re currently promoting what may well be their daftest scheme yet. To reduce wealth inequality, say the Greens, they would make all businesses follow a strict maximum pay ratio of 10:1. Which would mean that a business’s highest earner could be paid no more than 10 times as much as its lowest earner. A fascinating plan. I look forward to seeing how it would work at a Premier League football club. Because, if the club’s star player is being paid £300,000 a week, the tea lady would have to be paid £30,000 a week... Premier League clubs would be forced to slash their star players’ wages – which would cause those players to leave for clubs in Spain, Italy, Germany, France, or any other country where they could still earn big money. English clubs would be left with vastly inferior players. And, in consequence, the Premier League – which is one of the most successful industries in this country – would be screwed. As, of course, would the rest of our top businesses, for the very same reason."
Angela Rayner defends buying £800,000 seafront home in Hove - "Angela Rayner’s allies have been forced to issue a defence of her decision to buy an £800,000 seafront home after accusations of hypocrisy... Following news of Ms Rayner’s new flat, the Tories accused her of hypocrisy given Labour’s crackdown on second homes."
French PM: Don’t let France become like Britain - "France could become like Britain if MPs tax the rich to solve its debt crisis, the French prime minister said in a parting shot before being ousted by MPs. Francois Bayrou said economic meltdown and high taxes could force the wealthy to flee, as they had done in the UK... In his speech to MPs, Mr Bayrou warned that taxing billionaires to shore up the economy would simply see them “move away”. “They have a plethora of countries where they can find tax refuge in Europe itself, such as Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands, for businesses,” he said. He then cited the UK’s tax decisions as a cautionary tale: “Our British neighbours decided to tax foreigners who were exempt from taxation. Those foreigners moved away, and the immediate consequence was an explosion in property prices in Milan.”... In his 45-minute swan song, Mr Bayrou warned that France was in a “life-threatening condition” and “drowning in a tide of debt” that risked “enslaving our youth”. “You can overthrow the government, but you can’t erase reality,” he told MPs. “France has not known a balanced budget for 51 years,” he said, as French public debt stood at 114 per cent of GDP. But slapping punitive taxes on the wealthy, such as Bernard Arnault, the LVMH head who is Europe’s richest man, to shore up the economy would simply make them move away, he warned."
Why even an IMF bailout couldn’t save Britain now - "There is also the question of whether Britain is simply too big to rescue, even for the IMF. The world’s lender of last resort is funded by its 191 member countries, from Austria to Zimbabwe, which together have provided the fund with financial firepower worth roughly $1tn. Its current bailout programmes are worth $120bn with Argentina by far the biggest recipient of IMF cash at $40bn, followed by Ukraine – which has a $10bn rescue programme – then Egypt and Pakistan. There are strict rules surrounding how much the IMF can lend to countries in crisis. Every nation has a so-called quota of cash known as special drawing rights, linked to the size of its economy. The UK’s is worth roughly $30bn, compared with $120bn for the US and $43bn for Japan. IMF bailout rules deem that countries can borrow up to three times the amount they have put in. Anything above that and the government of the day has to apply for “exceptional access”, which is linked to harsher conditions and much higher interest rates. The sums involved are not insignificant: roughly three times Britain’s quota would be £67bn. But in reality £67bn would just be about enough to keep the NHS running for four months or pay the state pension for six. The Government is expected to borrow just shy of £120bn this year alone to plug the gap between tax receipts and government spending. It also has to issue more than double this amount when refinancing is taken into account. There is also the political challenge of going cap-in-hand to an institution with a reputation for punishing the populations of countries it lends to. If Britain were in need of more than £67bn, the IMF’s whole lending model could be under threat... “It’s useful to have the IMF as a type of bogeyman,” says Tordoir. “It’s part of the IMF’s function to be the bad cop on the outside that people can blame for tough reforms.”... Scapegoat or not, Reeves cannot ignore the fact that growth is weak, inflation is high and borrowing costs are likely to stay higher for longer... The stigma associated with an IMF bailout is long-lasting. Last time Labour went cap in hand, it left the party in opposition for the next 18 years."
Only drastic spending cuts can get the country out of its economic bind - "John Polenski (Letters, August 27) informs us that Nigel Farage owns four homes in the UK and asks why people don’t criticise him the way they do Angela Rayner, who has three. The answer is very simple: to my knowledge Mr Farage has never mentioned the “evils” of second home ownership, while the Deputy Prime Minister goes on about it all the time."
Angela Rayner barred by court order from revealing tax details, says No 10 - "She has come in for criticism since she bought the flat in Hove for £800,000 shortly after she removed her name from the deed of her constituency home in Greater Manchester. Because the flat was then classified as her primary home, she avoided having to pay £40,000 more in stamp duty than she would have done if it had been her second property. Meanwhile, she has listed the constituency house as her primary residence for the purposes of council tax, meaning she does not have to pay council tax on her grace-and-favour apartment in Admiralty House in Whitehall. Over the weekend it emerged that she had put her Greater Manchester home partly into a trust in 2023, an arrangement that could help her children avoid paying inheritance tax should they take ownership of it after she dies. The property was listed at the time as having a value of £650,000 – the threshold for paying inheritance tax on a bequest from two people."
If only she were willing to use parliamentary privilege to clear the air
How can Britain hope to boost investment if we treat tycoons with contempt - "data published in July showed foreign direct investment in Britain collapsing to a record low, with a 12pc year-on-year fall in the amount of money flowing into the country... These problems didn’t start with Labour’s election victory. A data centre planned for Buckinghamshire that could have helped build the artificial intelligence industry was turned down by Tory ministers in 2023 because it spoiled the view from the M25. The developers of the spectacular Sphere in Las Vegas, the world’s best concert venue, were refused permission by Sadiq Khan to build one in London on the grounds that “light pollution” might spoil the famously tranquil streets of Stratford, east London. When Donald Trump arrives for a state visit next week, we will hear a lot about investments from the likes of Nvidia and OpenAI, but they had better make sure they don’t use up more than their fair share of water. The list goes on and on. Add it all up, and one point has become perfectly clear. The country is closed for business, especially to foreigners. It is not good enough. As we learned from yet another dismal set of GDP figures published on Friday, the economy has stagnated, with zero growth in the latest month and with little prospect of any acceleration later in the year. It will take huge amounts of investment to create the new industries we need to start expanding again, but it is very hard to see that happening right now."
Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos ends all UK investment - "Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s energy empire has stopped all investment in Britain over Labour’s tax raid on North Sea oil and gas production... Sir Jim, the billionaire industrialist who also owns Manchester United, has warned that Britain’s high energy prices, mostly caused by green levies, are making such plants impossible to run profitably. Mr Gilvary said: “We have stopped investing in Britain. Our future investment will not be [in] the UK. There’s no question of that. “The problem is that the UK has become one of the most unstable fiscal regimes in the world from a perspective of natural resources and energy. “It means we cannot invest with any certainty because we can’t be sure what future tax rates will be.” It comes after the boss of Octopus Energy backed calls for the UK to restart drilling for oil and gas, adding to pressure on Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, who halted all new exploration licences within days of taking office. Greg Jackson, the chief executive of Octopus, said exploiting North Sea resources was more environmentally friendly than relying on costly foreign imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), which generate more emissions than domestically produced energy... like other UK offshore operators, Ineos’s operations have been hit hard by the windfall tax on oil and gas profits, first imposed by the previous Conservative government at 75pc and raised to 78pc by Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor... Britain’s industrial electricity prices are the highest in Europe, with official data showing costs rose from 14.8p per kilowatt hour in January 2021 to 26.0p at the end of 2024 – a 75pc rise. Similarly, industrial gas prices more than doubled from 2.5p per kilowatt hour to 5.5p over the same period. Even over that very short period, those high energy prices – which are up to five times greater than in the US and three times higher than in the EU – have had a devastating impact, driving the output of energy-intensive industries down by 33pc."
Time to double down on net zero and destroy the economy further
Clearly, companies in the UK are over 5 times greedier than in the US, which explains why energy is 5 times the cost, even though renewable energy is cheaper than fossil fuels
