Labour, Conservative and Reform on 80% of the vote want a growth policy. Greens and Lib Demās are not so sure.
So what do we think of the ideas for growth?
Taxation
Countries grow faster that set lower tax rates. Ireland has shown how to hoover up overseas Ā investment by setting a low rate of business tax. They collect so much more per head as a result. The U.K. had many more self employed before bringing in IR 35 tax. More self employed means a more responsive economy and a bigger nursery for growth businesses. High taxes on wealth, savings income and gains drives rich people away and assists a brain drain. The more you tax Non Domās Ā the fewer rich people stay to pay. If you introduce so called Windfall profits taxes and forget to take them off when the windfall dwindles you put companies off investing or even coming to your country.
If you want faster growth you need to be realistic about progress to net zero. Charge high carbon and emissions taxes and you close factories and power stations. Ban fossil fuel products too soon and they will be made somewhere else. Keep your own oil and gas in the ground and you will import your fossil fuels, losing well paid jobs and tax revenues at home.
If you want faster growth you need to keep regulations under control, leaving companies free to direct themselves more. Common law systems work better than code systems, allowing you to do anything you like that is not banned where Code systems only allow what the lay down.
There needs to be a sector by sector review of damaging taxes and over the top regulation. The government needs to get better at buying things, encouraging more U.K. supply by its purchasing. It needs to switch farm subsidies from wilding to food production. It needs to take back control of more of our fish and promote a bigger industry. The vast national forests need to grow and harvest more softwood. Steel policy needs to change to keep U.K. blast furnaces. We need to build a new fleet of medium sized nuclear power stations and urgently commission more gas generation back up. We need to get more of our own oil and gas out of the ground in place of imports. We need to expand our water and waste water capacity.
That is a few of the things that would speed faster growth.
June 25, 2024
I agree with your ideas. Getting rid of ESG regulations is also a necessary condition for growth. It is unfortunate that the obsession with net zero is shared by all the main parties. It means that their declarations about growth have no meaning. No wonder the investment industry has substantially abandoned UK stock markets. Even the MPs’ own pension fund has only a tiny proportion of its investments in UK equities.
June 25, 2024
Reform are the only party who will ditch the Net Zero scam. There will never be any real growth whilst we pursue this ruinous policy.
Of course Starmergeddon aided by the 2 kitchen idiot Millipede will double down on this insanity creating good well paid jobs in China and Scandinavia.
June 25, 2024
Ian,
The Tory party had 14 years in Office to create growth and slash taxes. Its reason for being elected in 2010 was to sort out the economy after the banking crash- where no one was held to account. 80%/20% cuts to tax rises we were promised along with a balanced structural deficit by 2015. Tories never even tried. Instead lie after lie year after year. When it was apparent the goal posts changed to proportion of GDP etc. date changed to 2017, 2019, 2021 then abandoned!
We also witnessed lying with manufacturing being sent to China and India, that does not help the planet but make it worse. Still industry, a national security issue, systematically destroyed, same for energy and food. Food for goodness sake. Paying farmers not to grow food because we should eat less meat because of net stupid! A policy Tory party called Marxist, they gold plated it without debate or mandate. JRās blog seems to miss all key points his former party were responsible for. We could also highlight lock step to EU environment policy which hamstrings our economy and any growth the govt. might want to achieve.
June 25, 2024
And thatās why Africa, Russia, Asia, Middle-East, Far-East and South America ARENāT following policies of net-zero ā¦only the decadent political elite west
June 25, 2024
Indeed Labour, Tories and Reform claim to want growth but nearly everything Labour and the Con-Socialists have suggested or have done is hugely anti-growth.
Reform does at least have some sensible suggestions like rowing back on or preferably killing net zero, cutting red tape, reducing the size of the state, encouraging more private education with tax breaks, cutting taxes, simplifying taxes, reducing those claiming benefits, reducing low skilled immigration levels both legal and illegal.
June 25, 2024
See also this article:- Labour’s Great British Energy Suicide Note
Labour’s numbers on energy bills, cost of renewables, jobs and funding do not add up
DAVID TURVER
The Conservative agenda is almost as bonkers.
June 25, 2024
Letās have Labour crash the grid. That will do for them forever.
Here is Reform, on the brink of replacing the Tories thanks to FPTP – and he wants to change the system š¤Æ
Stark staring mad!
June 25, 2024
“He” being whom?
June 25, 2024
along with some very foolish ideas such as a new tax based on the nationality of an employee, ‘net zero’ migration (so we don’t want any billionaires or entrepreneurs to move here?), exemption from tax for certain public sector workers (what about lower paid ones in the private sector?), and now it seems a foreign policy based on offering apologia for Putin. no doubt there others I haven’t looked.
June 25, 2024
Oh dear, net zero migration still leave plenty of scope for billionaires and entrepreneurs about 750K PA in fact. Higher NI for migrants workers makes sense as the government will often end up funding their health care, schools, housing, dentistry, roads, police… and they have not paid anything it for this. So it is fair for the employer to make a contribution if they are getting a lower paid worker relative to higher paid local workers so as to encourage the former. Exemption from tax for certain state worker is just the same as paying them a bit more (as for a state sector worker all the tax and NI goes back to the state anyway).
June 25, 2024
Net zero anything is not acceptable. The more British people driven from their homeland, the more room for immigrants. Immigrants have an incentive to drive us out of our houses, towns and country.
June 25, 2024
Indeed the ESG agenda is total lunacy.
What does a growth policy look like? Well the state sector needs to be halved in size, stop wasting billions and stop doing mad things like net zero, the lockdowns, the net harm Covid Vaccines, HS2, soft loans for worthless degreesā¦ that spend Ā£billions to do huge net harm. The government has also created endless, essentially parasitic, jobs in the state sector in areas such as law, accounting, HR, planning, taxation and other over hugely over regulated areas.
June 25, 2024
essentially parasitic jobs in the private and the state sector rather.
June 25, 2024
What does a growth policy look like? Well just do a 180 degree turn on everything the uni-party stands for – Rip off Net Zero energy, ever higher taxes, open door immigration levels, the vast and still increasing size of the state, our do nothing to deter crime police criminal justice system and police, the ever higher taxes, ever more red tape & employment laws, our very ineffective and inefficient public servicesā¦
June 25, 2024
Indications are that conservative people don’t just want the Tories sent out of office for a couple of terms but to be disbanded. Reform does this whilst sending the signal that this didn’t happen because they were too right wing.
June 25, 2024
Good morning.
We have the highest tax take since the WWII. If you go any further, and I think the LibLabCON will, then we will soon reach a tipping point where the economy will not recover. The State is hoovering more and more of the Private Sector Wealth up and, those with skills and talent will just leave for better shores. Brain drain v2.0. All to be replaced with foreign barristers, motorcycle food delivery drivers and other low wage, non-tax paying workers.
Which is the very reason (no other) why I voted BREXIT. But true Capitalism also thrives under such conditions not the Soft-Socialism of the last 14+ years.
June 25, 2024
It was not really very much āsoft socialismā for the 14 years of total disaster under Cameron, May, Boris, Sunak – net harm lockdowns, ācoercedā net harm Covid vaccines, the insanity of net zero. But it is certainly likely to get even worse under Starmer or whomever the left of his party replace him with fairly soon.
June 25, 2024
It’s like a role call of vintage British entertainment- The “Adventures of Flashman” (Cameron),the “Carry On” period under May,Boris,Truss(Matron,Camping,Don’t Lose Your Head) and,as for Sunak,well,”Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em”.
June 25, 2024
and for those Americans ‘One flew over the cuckoo’s nest’ – culminating in the choice of the crazy two.
June 25, 2024
Don’t include Truss. She is the one true conservative in your list
June 25, 2024
excellent article.
June 25, 2024
Growth over the past 14 years would have been much greater, had we not allowed so many successful British firms to be sold off to foreigners with deep pockets, in order to obtain foreign exchange for the Treasury
The latest is selling off Royal Mail to the Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky, who has firmed up an offer of Ā£5bn including assumed debts, for the company which employs more than 150,000 people.
His offer includes the usual commitments to retain the name, brand, UK headquarters and UK tax residency, as well as protections for employee benefits and pensions.(will they be able to ensure this? Ed )
June 25, 2024
We have to sell everything to pay for windmills.
June 25, 2024
Sensibly-applied lower taxes are better all round.
June 25, 2024
The UK tax levels are at a point where increasing tax rates will not raise any more tax but rather less. They government may grab a little more in the first year of so but future investment will be deterred, and people will adjust behaviour and leave so the state will get less in subsequent years or in other taxes as people will have less to spend. The government will spend and invest any money they do grab more far less efficiently than the people they grabbed it off so the tax base and wealth of the country will get far worse.
June 25, 2024
Indeed and simpler taxes too. Rather like Aesop Fables the best was for example to get more money of the rich for education or health care is to encourage them to go privately with some tax breaks. The Reform policy of tax breaks (the total reverse of the Labour one). Give them say 20% and the state the. saves the other 80%.
The North Wind (Labour) and the Sun (Reform) had a quarrel about which of them was the stronger. While they were disputing with much heat and bluster, a Traveler passed along the road wrapped in a cloak. “Let us agree,” said the Sun, “that he is the stronger who can strip that Traveler of his cloak.”
June 25, 2024
Starmer declared himself a Socialist. Socialism is the enemy of productivity and therefore the enemy of economic growth not a promoter of economic growth. Quite simply, Starmer is full of shit and those who vote for him risk delivering this nation into the hands of cranks, Anglophobes, racists and despotically minded extremists
June 25, 2024
And OMG how this country is devastated, eviscerated, utterly, utterly demolished.
Unusually ( I try to avoid madness) I went out yesterday.
But actually EVERY normal route out of our enclave was totally blocked off. ROAD WORKS!
By dint of back ways and turning round mid stream etc we reached our destination.
Then coming back a different wayā¦well!!! The demolition and furious building that is going onā¦.
The execution of trees and the ruination of views.
I still feel ill and rather desperate actually!
I daresay the woke Council Tax jaws are salivating and the builders are most pleasedā¦.
June 25, 2024
Starmer says he want growth, growth. growth… but the all policies he proposes (and these are only the ones he actually admits too before the election) are hugely anti-growth. Not a single pro-growth policy in his Manifesto or coming from Labour all will suppress growth. Abolition of Non Dom tax status and VAT on School and more energy taxes will all do huge net harm – and not even raise any net taxes for Labour to waste.
June 25, 2024
Hugely anti-growth, anti employments and anti-investment into the UK too.
June 25, 2024
Princess Anne has apparently been injured in an incident with one of her horses at Gatcombe Park. Unfortunately, her trip to Canada, planned for the end of this week, has been postponed as HRH is in hospital
The Princess Royal has avoided the infighting, public disgrace and underwhelming literary efforts with which her extended family is associated. HRH is held in great affection by the nation and it is hoped that eventually, her visit to Canada will be as successful as the recent state visit to Nigeria by her nephew Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex
June 25, 2024
Best wishes to her. She also very sensibly avoids the deluded, climate alarmist, gross hypocrisy that is so loved by the King Charles, P. William, Harry, Sunak and Emma Thompson types.
June 25, 2024
Statistically horses are however rather dangerous. Certainly more dangerous than most other dangerous sports – like off Piste Skiing – and even more so for older riders for whom a fall etc. might well become very serious.
June 25, 2024
Well, I am glad you got that important contribution off your chest.
I am now even more excited to know what your ideas for growth are, which I think is today’s topic.
June 25, 2024
Bingle,
Perhaps it was in one of his deleted posts?
He has only managed thirteen today.
June 25, 2024
Sarcasm?
June 25, 2024
I trust the horse was OK.
June 25, 2024
What are you on
June 25, 2024
You can speak for the nation? Who told you to do that. I would remove āroyaltyā from our constitution, repatriate their lands and money to the people and give them proper jobs.
June 25, 2024
We moan on about needing homes for the illegals and the economic migrant legals.
The Royals have so many castles, mansions, estates that could be wonderful homes for us if we could give up our present home in exchange for the new residents.
A vote winner? But not many – granted.
June 25, 2024
And everything to which you refer points to the damaging policies of the present government, all of which you have warned it about previously.
We know what a budget for jobs, growth and prosperity would look like because you have presented those but instead we had the dead hand of Chancellor Hunt directing our misfortunes. Ms. Reeves is likely to be more Hunt-like than anything else, alas. Poor old Britain.
June 25, 2024
Sir John,
All sensible and, to be honest, obvious measures.
It strikes me that, those in politics could do with reading the story of The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg. Politicians of all parties seem determined to kill the goose.
June 25, 2024
I reckon that the poor old āgooseā is on life support.
Letās hope heās āgone privateā!
June 25, 2024
Yes to all that, but very few understood it in the last Parliament and who will in the next. Reform apart, they all speak of spending. Spending equals tax, control and a society of dependants. My advice to anyone with talent is get out, you have no future under consocialism. I accept that this is negative, but life is short, there is not the luxury of time to await the realisation among the political classes that they have created a charnal house for enterprise. Politicians are the problem not the people.
June 25, 2024
The gamblers at CCHQ are continuing with their election “project fear” apace. The wildest allegations of Labour’s intentions in government have now reached the level of the ridiculous, if not the sublime.
Here are a few of the more outlandish seen recently;
1) Labour will impose the Ā£65,000 “double death tax” on bereaved families that Hunt wanted to put into his last budget
2) Labour will shut down oil/gas extraction in the N Sea and sack 50,000 oil industry workers
3) Labour will impose capital gains tax on the sale of family homes that Hunt proposed in 2023
4) Labour plans a “wealth tax” on savings over Ā£50,000 – as apparently the “working class” do not have savings
5) Labour will raise taxes every year for the next five years – as Hunt has already planned
6) Labour cannot be trusted on defence, but will continue the Tory policy of cuts to the armed forces capability
7) Country sports including the legal shooting of badgers will be banned as “classist”
8) Labour will force everyone to buy an EV and rip out their gas boilers in favour of heat pumps
9) Migrants in France are waiting for the Labour government
10) Labour will close the offshore tax loopholes that cost the country Ā£35 billion a year. Labour might actually do this
11) Labour will abolish the House of Lords and sack the 350 Tory peers who never turm up to debates
None of these “project fear” allegations have had any effect on the polls – except to widen the gap
June 25, 2024
“There needs to be a sector by sector review of damaging taxes and over the top regulation. ”
Isn’t that exactly what Kemi Badenoch proposed when she was being interrogated about Retained EU Law? The Party only wanted a spectacular bonfire of EU laws which was not happening and never would. What happened to her emminently sensible idea? I’ve conducted such reviews myself in Australia. They can be done much faster than most people would think, no more than three months. The Party leadership’s obsession with the performative gesture of a bonfire of EU law blinded the Party to the need to prioritise regulatory changes whether to REUL or any other regulation or law, according to the expressed needs of industry. Was industry even asked in a structured and useful way about its priorities for regulatory change during that period?
June 25, 2024
Badenoch herself scuppered her own āideasā. The Civil Service advice was taken and all the support she had from people like JR was junked.
She just does not have the wherewithal
June 25, 2024
Surely Pareto applies to regulations just as much as.
June 25, 2024
+1 another failure from the fake ConSocialists.
June 25, 2024
A vistor from Mars would look at the UK and conclude its governments desire to shut it down, do nothing for itself and import everthing it needs from the rest of the world. Not understanding the language a visiting Martian would judge them by their actions.
June 25, 2024
Oh donāt worry.
All our leaders would be immediately āparleyingā with the aliens ( if remotely friendly)
Vying for favours and selling us down the you-know-what.šŖ
June 25, 2024
Sorry to have to say it, but the last remaining true 50 Conservatives missed the opportunity to accelerate necessary change approaching the end of the last Parliament. They should have moved to Reform. Such catalystic action would have sped the path to necessary change. No doubt they all had their reasons, but now the bus has left the depot, they can only ponder what if.
June 25, 2024
1. Lower taxes (Corporation Tax; higher tax thresholds; lower VAT overall and completely remove VAT from household improvement products/services)
2. Stop importing hundreds of thousands of poor, low-skilled immigrants and their dependants every year, who immediately claim financial support via the welfare system
3. Scrap Net Zero. It’s a scam.
4. Ditch the EU Regulations which Rees-Mogg had identified and Sunak refused to do.
5. Scrap Equality Act and the EDI nonsense. People should be recruited/promoted on their merit, not to tick boxes.
6. Cut the size of the State. Light the Quango bonfire; scrap the Police and Crime Commissioners.
June 25, 2024
Donna :.
Absolutely correct.
June 25, 2024
To cut the size of the State needs far more extensive measures than scrapping the Police and Crime Commissioners.
Try launching healthcare insurance policies for people of working age to opt out of the NHS entirely, with tax incentives.
Push the benefits system onto the voluntary sector. Those who plead for the needy will be invited to put their hand in their own pocket, not other people’s.
Phase out the state pension.
Introduce an insurance scheme for care homes – no more depending on the local council.
Rather than put VAT onto school fees, introduce a tax break for those who opt out of the State system.
June 25, 2024
Correction, not hundreds of thousands millions. Namely 4 million since 2019!
June 25, 2024
Donna,
Fully agree – In a nutshell š
June 25, 2024
ā I had a dream ā . You are so right , the path to prosperity is clear but we need to elect a Govāt that will push us down this path.
June 25, 2024
+1 and the Mayors, Lords and reduce drastically the number of MPs, Councillors etc.
June 25, 2024
That should be the one-page tory manifesto
June 25, 2024
All very well, but Labour and Conservatives only SAY they want growth. They are actually following an agenda (net zero) which means An End to Growth. There I am quoting the title of the globalist UN publication that started the Green movement and its fanatical opposition to the fuel sources that have powered economic growth. In your usual forelock-tugging to this over-powerful creed, you speak, Sir John, of ‘progress’ towards net zero. I would not use that word.
June 25, 2024
Little chance of any of this there is about to be a Labour govt. more likely is the opposite: wealth destroying increased or new taxes on capital; more persecution of the self employed to try to shoehorn them into employment, preferably unionised; re-introduction of (expanded) EU regs into all sorts of sectors; even worse productivity in the public sector as pay is increased for no improvement and nonsense such as 4-day weeks is introduced; turbo-charged net zero policies which raise the price of energy and decrease security.
You get the picture. Anyone not voting Conservative is voting for the above.
June 25, 2024
Let’s be clear, Richard. Whichever way you vote, you will get the above. The only issue in this election is whether there will be a credible opposition to it. If you believe it will come from CCHQ’s green-blue Tories, you’re deluding yourself, I’m afraid.
June 25, 2024
š¤£šyou think the Conservatives are offering a growth agenda? Is your real name Hunt?
June 25, 2024
Holden sent his own election address to the wrong constituency! š³so that is going to make the potential constituents really love him and run to the polls to vote for ā¦ well, someone.
Itās like living in Africa. Incompetence, corruption, idiocy, arrogance, undiluted stupidity.
North West Durham is delighted to see the back of him.
June 25, 2024
Well Sir John, summarising what we need for growth and wealth creation.
Cancel Net Zero.
Hope that simple message gets out of moderation today, unlike my comment yesterday.
June 25, 2024
Increase the personal tax allowance, next year to Ā£20,000pa. The extra money in peoples pockets spent would not be dangerously inflationary.
And as for business here do what the Irish have done.
We need fresh minds. Almost all the current minds in the Tories are dead.
June 25, 2024
We have to protect British intellectual property much more. A real concerted effort to slow down the rate at which the best leading IP leaks to cheaper cost base economies to undercut us. This plus the skills of our workforce are THE ONLY THINGS STOPPING US DROPPING TO THIRD WORLD COUNTRY STATUS. Especially IP generated fully or partly by public funds, in universities, or with state grants, etc we need to protect that IP far better.
We need to charge import duties on goods in proportion to the amount of anti pollution, safety, and copyright costs which are missing in the source countries compared to those which would have applied had they been produced here. We have got to stop imposing massive costs for things like anti pollution measures here only to import goods from country which have far worse pollution than we did in 1945 for the equivalent production.
We have got to stop taxing foreign workers in this country less than locals.
We need to stop the state constraining the numbers of British students allowed to study a given subject. The social engineering done by the state by artificially constraining the numbers of grads in many subjects, forcing a situation where foreign workers need to be imported, needs fixing.
June 25, 2024
How are you defining growth? Growth in GDP? Or growth in GDP per capita? Or some other definition?
I do not understand why you want growth. The production of more what, precisely?
Letās say you could get improved productivity. Each person could produce the same amount of goods in less time. What would be the result? The production of more goods or the ability to work fewer hours but produce the same quantity of goods? You can only produce more if demand goes up. Why should, or would, demand go up?
It strikes me the desire for growth means more consumerism – more waste and more use of finite resources. Not desirable however you look at it.
reply Growth in person capita real income. I want people to be better off
June 25, 2024
Do not worry you will not get much growth with Labourās anti-growth, anti-jobs & anti-investment agenda.
June 25, 2024
So, growth in wages. Why not say that instead of the vague word āgrowthā – taken by most to mean growth in GDP.
June 25, 2024
Why do you want growth?
Particularly for Labour, less so but still substantially for the other parties it’s so the government can tax and spend more. That is their ambition.
For the individual, small and medium enterprise they want growth for their own benefit, so they can prosper. Tell them it’s all so they can be stifled through tax and understandably they are reluctant to put in the effort.
Until the politicians get it into their heads that the people want growth to make their own lives better it will languish. Right now they feel wealth is something it’s their duty to take away to spend and waste on their priorities which so often aren’t ours.
June 25, 2024
The blog describes the rightwing view of growth. I think it is correct and it is roughly what Liz Truss aimed for. Sunak doesn’t believe in it and has avoided talking about growth in this election and Farage has neither emphasised growth nor geared his hypothetical or ‘for discussion’ tax cuts towards generating growth.
Nor do I believe this is what Starmer and Reeves want to do when they speak of ‘growth’. There is an alternative left wing theory initiated by Keynes about 100 years ago that a government can generate growth by a growth of state and state financed spending, especially on infrastructure projects. I am sure that is what Labour mean by growth. I think it is very flawed because the state is so very inefficient and the poor value and escalating costs of HS2 is just one example of that. Labour doesn’t say how it is going to finance its growth notions and for good electoral reasons as it would engender massive criticism. Maybe Labour are thinking of just printing money but I think they intend to borrow a lot of money increasing the national debt which will increase inflation and increase national interest payments and therefore tax without getting value for money in extra infrastructure.
June 25, 2024
āWhat does a growth policy look like?ā It starts with trusting the āPeopleā releasing the people, well letās call it what it is āthe tyranny of centralized Governmentā. Its call not only hearing but listening to what the others are saying, then being able to work with others. We have a bunch of dictators that prefer diktats and fighting ā the playground bullies, that in every direction appear clueless that have no grabbed the high ground.
Catchy political speak phrases of ālevelling upā etc. are nothing of the sort they just seek to mould people into someone elseās image. If things need to be done and there are many, the worst people to do it is the Political Class, with their centralized group think. The people that things affect can always get things done quicker without drama and without cost. To that end constraints of laws, rules and regulations made as a one size fits all do the opposite, they might work in Metroā land but are a shear waste of costs and energy elsewhere. Just as all people are different so is every nook and cranny of the Country ā failure to recognize that is the failure of the manipulative Political Class.
In some-ways the dreaded thought of devaluation the way it was implemented was a crack-pot ālook at meā ego trip for the Politicoās, it was still centralization to control the masses ā so it failed. Instead, if as much as possible was at the lowest level, the closet to the situation, the more that would have been achieved. Its about letting those that āDOā get on and do things ā but that appears to be beyond comprehension of most of the Political Class, āthe thought that others can do things better!ā.
First remove the Empires the Political Class have built, that are there in the first instance to protect themselves. The question of cost verses benefit should always be asked when spending others hard earned cash. If money is spent, laws etc. created to mitigate a situation that has happened once in a millennium, is that not a sledge hammer to crack a nut a knee jerk reaction. That all it does it employ a couple of guys that canāt get elected or work elsewhere to create protective empires as great cost.
My suggestions are too subtle to be understood by our Dictators.
June 25, 2024
Labour and Conservatives both buy into the net zero religion. Labour and Conservative both buy into mass immigration. Labour and Conservatives both agree that benefits should rise with inflation.
This is conducive to a high tax, low growth environment. Immigration is a huge net cost and is net zero.
June 25, 2024
Good morning Mr Redwood.
I absolutely agree to all your points raised here – especially the part about IR35 which took away 46% of my income and my company was effectively destroyed. I now have to pay an umbrella company to administer my payroll – costing me more than I previously paid an accountant.
When IR35 was applied – myself and many hundreds of others had to seek contracts elsewhere because we simply could no longer afford to go to work. The stupidity of this is – we were working on a UK government defence project at the time. This project is now late and over budget. What an own goal.
Why this government thought it was a good idea to inflict a Labour Party tax policy on their own core supporters is a mystery indeed – I don’t remember this in any manifesto. It seems to many of us currently: “vote Conservative – get Labour tax policies anyway”
The results of this have been absolutely devastating in my industry – power generation for offshore. The oil price hike in 2021 – inflation – NHS waiting times – cancellation of HS2 – all of these were affected by IR35.
As I lifelong supporter of Conservative policies and member of the party, I have very little desire to vote for a party that did more damage to me personally and the wider economy than any government in my entire 40 year career.
June 25, 2024
This is a Conservative agenda. We will not have that on offer until we have a Conservative Party (by another name).
Can you see why we are desperate to sack the imposter?
June 25, 2024
You have said it all before, but that makes it no less important. If only the PMs and Chancellors of the last few years had listened and acted on your words of wisdom.
We would not now face five years of misery under a sour, resentful Labour Government.
June 25, 2024
If a āgrowth policyā means increasing our standard of living then we need to end Net Zero, end mass immigration (legal and illegal) and end diversity replacing meritocracy.
But is this the āgrowthā that our existing Parliamentary parties seek as we have seen substantial growth in many other areas such as ;
National debt as we expand all the state services, employees and benefits without the means to pay for it.
Taxation ā removing wealth from citizens to the state.
Wasteful spending to give a reason for high taxation.
The size of the state and the number of laws and regulations to curb free speech and enterprise.
Crime (but no increase in prison places though).
Lawyers and litigation.
Imports as we de-industrialise with Net Zero.
Illiteracy as we import millions who cannot even read and write in their own language and increase the numbers of children who start school unable to speak English.
Chaos as the state funds extremist groups who sue the Government and cause disruption to citizens work through protests.
Useless university degrees to devalue degrees and increase personal debts and hence reliability on the state.
Black market and modern slavery run with illegal immigrants.
Behavioural psychology using the BBC to implement Net Zero and further the decline of national pride.
June 25, 2024
Original Richard +1 – not recognised by those incapable of thinking things through, when the overriding priority is their personal self-esteem put above their paid for job of managing, creating and causing growth
June 25, 2024
Net Zero is not a scam actually. Itās just a product of gross ignorance. Whct UK does is futile and pointless. What the rest of the world has done in reducing CO2 is negligible. There is not a chance that the Keeling curve will checked. Luckily it doesnāt matter because CO2 doesnāt drive the weather, scientists say
June 25, 2024
No it is a scam driven by vested interest and corruption in the main with a few deluded religious nutters helping it along. We are in a period of a dearth of CO2. A bit more CO2 (plant tree and crop food) from here is a net good. The world has had ice ages with 20 times the level of current CO2.
June 25, 2024
āThe Elephant in the Roomā Taxation it has become another over complicated map of extraction, manipulation that then needs hand-backs, allowances etc. to repair the damage it does in most situations. Tax is used as a political weapon and it is not equal to all. Taxation has also become a sound-bite virtue signal of look at us we can spend, spend and spend some more.
Taxation is needed clearly to fund the infrastructure that causes and economy to happen, to keep us safe and secure. It should be kept simply to that, nothing else, itās spend should be kept well clear of political ideology. We must all ask our politicians why we have āNetZeroā Laws, ideology and punishment when the same on this great big Planet of ours donāt exist in any or our competitor nations. We have Governments whose focus has become to cause destruction and harm to the UK based on personal ideology, while primarily funding and growing other Nation before the UK.
Ideology spend should not happen period, but if it is to happen it should be from a growing economy after all other systems are funded and we are all kept safe and secure. It is not the Governments money it is ours.
June 25, 2024
Where do you find someone that recognises that controlling expenditure, budgeting – is not what is meant when extraction of tax is prioritised so as to remove money that causes the economy to happen
June 25, 2024
Absolutely agree with every sentence.
I would add a reduction in public sector expenditure to that list. The public sector should be a contractor of services not an operator with radical improvement in procurement and contract management.
Public sector operations like TFL and NHS prioritise the producers over the consumer.
However, I find my philosophical position compromised in defence expenditure where it appears that outsourcing has had a negative impact on training programmes and in-field equipment performance.
June 25, 2024
What makes you think the Conservatives want a growth policy ? When Truss tried to implement one they threw her out immediately. They have increased taxes to record levels, hiked Corporation Tax by 6% in a single step, enshrined Net Zero in law, cancelled proposed laws on planning reform, specifically allowed record levels of low-skilled immigration – frankly it’s a ridiculous claim they want growth. It may say that in their manifesto, but we know how worthless those “pledges” are. And yet you have consistently supported them and have voted for every single budget that increased taxes so it doesn’t look like you’re that keen on growth either.
June 25, 2024
Correct
June 25, 2024
For growth a bit of creative destruction is needed. One side of the Uni-party needs to be destroyed for the other to wither. At least that’s what we hope.
We’re finished.
14 years wasted.
Not a single Tory MP should be left – if only for revenge.
June 25, 2024
Oh and by the way after 14 years of your Conservative “growth” policies the UK’s GDP per capita now ranks alongside that of the poorest USA state Mississippi. Well done.
June 25, 2024
Probably far lower still in PPP terms. Their energy for example is about 1/3 of the cost of ours thanks to Sunak’s net zero renewables lunacy.
June 25, 2024
…and why after 14 years do the tories keep telling us that crime is down, when we hear today that our prisons are ‘full’
reply Both are true, indeed more criminals locked up means less crime
June 25, 2024
Seeking growth ought to equate to increasing our standard of living.
These last 14 years has shown us that the wealthy, the connected, the establishment oh and the crooks have felt the warm hug of increased standard of living, while the workers (I use rather loosely) have seen a regular reduction.
So time to say a not-so-fond farewell.
June 25, 2024
As a matter of curiosity, where did you find those GDP per capita figures?
Reply ONS annual figures
June 25, 2024
Sensible comments but those in the management seats of every quango and every organisation that serves the public – or should that be supposed to serve the public…. have lost the willingness to do their jobs.
They enjoy the perks and salary as well as the ability to move from one quango to another so easily, leaving failures behind them.
Our country is failing due to a lack of management – Nobody is planning for the future. The plan it seems is to not create a decent future but to allow what we have to slowly crumble due to no management intervention.
If our country is to survive and even grow closer to its potential, then we have to postulate it, and this is the job of government.
Wealth transfer from this country is ruining us and only helps those already rich, while pouring money into the spiteful war against Russia is getting us nowhere. We need a new consensus, a new heading.
Installing Real management at the top would be a first step in improving our lot, but only if that management were totally honest, had vision and could think for themselves.
June 25, 2024
‘That is a few of the things that would speed faster growth.’
I’ve recently heard Nigel Farage argue for quite a few of them.āBut not the Tory Central Command.
Post election, some Tory MPs and ex-MPs will have some thinking to do.āIf it looks like Reform UK is on the up then will it do even better at the next General Election, however soon that may be, just as UKIP prospered.āRUK will continue to attract: the conservative, especially the social conservative which is Old Labour; and the liberal or libertarian who wants a smaller state.āBut it probably lacks talent at the top.āMore Ben Habibs might be found, but it may want to import talent from other parties.āRe-fight your seat next time as a Conservative or, if you were popular but the party wasn’t, stand for Reform UK instead?
June 25, 2024
I rarely disagree with anything Ben Habib says. But then he did read Nat Sci at Camb. and had business and property experience and is of a similar age. So fairly similar to myself though I was not born in Karachi.
June 25, 2024
Even if you had been born in Karachi you would still be British, just as many born in Britain remain true to and proud of their genetic nationality.
June 25, 2024
Excellent points Sir John; surely the most important priority for any Government after the Nationās security is energy. Energy is the cornerstone of any economy, industrial, transport, health, education and indeed military. The abysmal failure of Labour and Conservative administrations since the millennium has been energy policy and their flawed obsession with Net Zero by setting arbitrary targets long before affordable practical technology was available. Effectively they scorned Nuclear the obvious choice and failed to see our own secure natural resources eg gas was the perfect transition fuel. This I believe is why we are in such a parlous state aggravated by the nonsense of gender and Wokeism. Of course they also failed completely on security as our southern border remains wide open. These egregious errors is why Reform has struck a chord with so many voters.
June 25, 2024
That was on the cards nad Was Jacob Rees-Mogss remit and your leader cancelled it!
June 25, 2024
āencouraging more U.K. supplyā It was shown some years back that our Continental neighbours when making purchases using taxpayer money they had to factor in loses to their own tax system as part of the overall price and cost if they purchased foreign goods.
In the US under Biden taxpayer subsidies are only permissible for home grown/domiciled companies under his recent acts. Also, the reason why some former UK companies now have the US as their home. The US logic is the money trickles down and goes around it is still part of their economy.
Taxpayer money works when it filters around the home countryās economy as it is just recirculation, it is part of the economy. Under this Conservative Government and accelerated by this Johnson cohort, sending UK money out of the Country to fiancĆ© other regimes has become the de facto policy. The bulk of our energy supply is in foreign state owned hands. Sometimes called offshoring NetZero as if it makes a difference. Redistribution of UK wealth out of the Country at the expense of the UK economy while increasing World emissions ā go figure!
June 25, 2024
We need economic growth to raise the living standards for all in the UK. The three keys to economic growth in the UK to my mind are:-
1] A lower tax take by Govāt ; it needs to get down to about 33% of GDP
2] Cheaper power; the UK suffers from far more expensive power than Europe or the USA. SMRs are the answer. We are in the forefront of this technology and must press ahead to gain first mover advantages
3] Reduction in the numbers of the civil service. Adding numbers during Covid has done nothing to improve services, in the NHS or elsewhere, and the civil service productivity record is abysmal.
June 25, 2024
Encourage incentives and those prepared to invest if growth is on the menu . We must not push intelligence and asperation under the carpet ; those with good ideas and expansion must be given opportunity including tax boosts . The world is a competitive place and we must not strangle our chances .
June 25, 2024
It is simple Sir John,
A study of the Industrial revolution shows that prosperity comes from cheap energy. So Net Zero fanaticism is the road to ruin.
June 25, 2024
From what I can gather, Labour wants growth through state-owned companies and what seems like gambling with our pension savings: “consolidation of pensions to free up long-term investments.” I wonder if people in the compulsory workplace pensions (WP) get any say on that. A lot of these WP get automatically put into small-return green investments right now if people don’t go in and change their settings.
They say they are going to grow onshore windfarms and crush nimbies (coming to a field near you), if not a windmill a pylon to transport the electricity. Starmer is a self-proclaimed yimby which is easy to be when you already live in a built-up area.
Has anyone discovered what money the Labour party are using for 40% of all new homes being social homes? Bulldozing planning restrictions may get rewards from large private builders but these companies labour councils use for social homes right now are taking two years longer than normal builders to complete.
Anyone can appear to be growing by taking on a load of debt. Oh, look, they’ve got a nice new extension, a nice new car, and they’re going on another exciting holiday. That is what we face.
June 25, 2024
Has the NMW caused ‘low growth in real terms’ wages in the UK?
An interesting article in the Guardian where the Resolution Foundation says real wage growth is only up by Ā£16 per week in real terms in the last 14 years. But 14 years before that the growth was Ā£145!
In 1998 the NMW was Ā£3.60ph or Ā£7020 per year (37.5 hr week).
In 2010 the NMW was Ā£5.80ph or Ā£11,310 per year
In 2024 the NMW is Ā£11.44 ph or Ā£22,308 per year
is Ā£5.64 per hour increase or Ā£211.50 increase per week in real terms only worth Ā£16 per week.
June 25, 2024
52 weeks x 14 years x Ā£16 = Ā£11648
22308-11310=10998
not exact agreement but the proper order of magnitude is there.
June 25, 2024
What they should do is compare the minimum wage over each period against inflation for the same period and be clear of the statistics they are representing because this is why people arenāt trusting of stats, it automatically looks like a fudge. What was each years increase compared to inflation for the same year and what was the cumulative over those periods because I just donāt believe this. Inflation was very low for the best part of 13 years from 2010 to 2023 but minimum wage went up a lot higher than the inflation rate and it went up 10% this year and 10% last year, so why not just compare the minimum wages, donāt worry about averages, that can be affected by hours, people are working less hours now, it can be affected by more people doing part time because they get flexible rights now. Just work on the absolutes. Compare a minimum wage for a 37.5 hour week which is the only thing that a government has control over. I get so sick of people trying to obfuscate information.
June 26, 2024
As said by RG Ā£16 is the per hour increase averaged over 14 years. Your question (your misunderstanding more than their obfuscation?) came from you comparing instantaneous values in 2010 and 2024 with this time average.
If one wants to bring inflation into the picture, one should over a given period compare the rate of change in NWR with the inflation rate, obviously keeping a given reference in number of hours worked, say 37.5hr/week.
June 25, 2024
Itās hard not to reflect on the politics driving the UK and its taxation it is used for ideological personal self-gratification, the use of political inspired laws and regulations that none of our competitor Nations have embraced, are just used to be able to say look at me I rule the World. But in truth every utterance suggests the desire to destroy. It does not put the Country and its future first.
Reading the medias view of Starmer and his useful tool red Ed, it is suggested they (Starmer, red Ed and Labour) wish to punish the UK, and have the UK and its taxpayers fund the growth of Chinese Industry, by banning UK output and wealth creation. They call it āNetZeroā but there is no Zero, there is no Net, just greater World CO2 production. That makes them either politically naĆÆve, clueless Dictators or hypocrites looking for a non-existent virtue signal to stroke personal ego. This is just an extension of the Socialist World the Conservative Government has brought us in the last 14 years, embedded by May, accelerated by Johnson, the embraced by Sunak/Hunt duo.
We have the Clowns in Parliament incapable of thinking things through, unable to grasp the logic, un-able to listen to what they themselves are saying. Fighting a Country and its People is not serving and building a future that we can all benefit from.
June 25, 2024
IR35 had zero effect on genuine self-employment. It merely stopped employed people posing as self-employed by operating through limited companies. This was rife in the computer services industry. The issue that is important in that industry is the effect of off-shoring of computer systems support to countries like India which deprives English people of jobs, creates extremely wealthy third worlders who arbitrage the wage rates between the third and first worlds and who also bring in third worlders via visas to work on their projects and who never return home. No wander that under the Tories third world immigration has been rocketing.
June 25, 2024
You will hold back growth, too, if you spaff tax take on welfare instead of spending it on upgrading infrastructure.
June 25, 2024
Now that Reform UK is second in every major poll will you Sir John, add your voice to the growing call for Nigel Farage to be included in the coming leaders debate? The BBC is failing the country and the democratic process.
June 25, 2024
Very clear BBC bias against Farage. They even had absurd attacks on him (for his rather sensible comments on Ukrane/Putin) as the first item on the news for a couple of days. Plus the PPC do not allow any sensible or balanced discussion on Net Zero and Climate Alarmism yet the now second party sensibly wants to scrap it.
June 25, 2024
No harm done to Reform for acknowledging the westās roll in provoking yet another war.
British people do NOT want to go to war. The USA has joined France stating in terms that no American/French boots will be on the ground in Ukraine. The US ambassador to Russia was called in and told that the cluster bomb on the beach was an act of war by the USA and would not go unpunished, she looked shocked.
We have taught Russia the tactics to deploy. I think the Houthies et al might start sinking US aircraft carriers with Russian Kinzhal missiles, guided by Russian sats.
Donāt squeal. All you warmongers have asked for it. Thank God for Putin who will NOT target civilians in the west and who does not want more territory.
June 25, 2024
Dear Sir John,
The famous growth graph shows that between 1870 and about 2000, real income per head in the United States grew by an average 1.8 per cent, pretty steadily apart from the Depression and subsequent boom. The UK managed something similar in the second half of twentieth century, perhaps mainly because the two-earner household became the norm. The labour participation rate rose strongly to recent levels in the 1970s. So we should be realistic about potential growth.
The best thing any government can do is to avoid making things harder and riskier for the wealth-creating sector: that means stable prices, a rolling balanced Budget, save only for fully commercial investment, which would help us stop selling our best business assets aborad to pay for our excess consumption. It means simpler, more predictable and least distorting taxes: a basic/standard rate of 20 per cent for many taxes would help. It also means interest rates aimed at equalising UK savings and investment at a good level across the cycle: the Taylor guideline suggests Bank Rate of 3.5 to 4 per cent as centre of the range.
Best of all, just now, would be to align our carbon reduction programme with the the main carbon-emitting countries. “Setting an example” to the world is equivalent to imposing a protective tariff against our own producers.
June 25, 2024
Dear Sir John,
When you have a little time, may I urge you to take a look at the recent history of graphene, the wonder material created at Manchester University that was hailed by George Osborne a decade ago as the harbinger of a new high-tech, high- growth British economy. In short, it has not happened. The main British graphene company, essentially the inheritor of Manchester, now has a market value of just Ā£1million on the AIM. The original production process has thus far proved unscalable at a reasonable cost, at least for the pure graphene that could revolutionise electronics.
No big UK company has been available to take up the challenge. So the existing production and the infant new process engineering for graphene are now centred in Canada and the United States.
Perhaps the UK’s growth potential has shrunk in part because we have lost the world-scale engineering and electronics companies that could afford to undertake such research and have also lost the capacity to raise large sums on the markets for new and speculative ventures.
June 25, 2024
@outsider +1
June 25, 2024
There are graphene applications in audio equipment, in making more resistant road ātarmacā, in āplasticā supermarket bags, in battery technology, ā¦ but it is true the companies developing these applications, most of them start-ups in the mid-2010, are mostly based in the USA (graphene semiconductor Georgia Tech), Canada (Ora), China (Huawei), Italy (Directa Plus), UK/Norway (Toraphene), Germany/Estonia (Skeleton Technologies) or supported by the EU (G+BOARD, several projects in the automotive industry).
Sad isnāt it.
June 25, 2024
One good reason to vote for Reform is – there is a belief that Labour will take us back into the EU. If that were on the cards, a big vote share for Reform in this general election would worry the EU. If we rejoined, the EU would know that, in EU elections, Reform would get the biggest number of seats in the European Parliament- just as UKIO did in 2014. With the rise of so called āfar rightā parties across the EU, they wonāt want another lot of MEPs from here. So a vote for Reform will help to ensure we stay out of their clutches.
June 25, 2024
John,
This evening I used the pupils loo in the sixth form of a big state school in the middle of randomshire…
Even I was shocked…
All the walls covered in Reform UK posters.
That’s right all of the walls covered in Reform UK posters.
In a loo used by 17 and 18 year olds.
I have never seen the like in my life.
Just thought I’d give you a report from out in the real world.
Cheers
June 26, 2024
Lots of great points.
Retrain the jobless and workshy to skills we need, eg db admin (I’m aware of positions unfilled for yrs for this). Check benefits claimants better and find some work they can do.
Get inmates to work and earn to pay for their stay.
Stop “postitive” racism & sexism that is filling boardrooms with lemons.
Better support and easy access to quality mentoring for small biz (it can be transformative).