The Prime Minister was right to want to keep the UK corporation tax rate at the lower end of the advanced countries tax table. We need to carry on attracting large investment flows into our country and leaving domestic businesses with more of their profits to put into new investment.
It appears the PM has been persuaded to row back on this promise of her election campaign to “ensure economic stability”. I do not think this measure does that. After the 2.30 announcement yesterday there was a sharp sell off in long bonds. Interest rates on the 50 year paper rose by more than 0.4% or 40 basis points. As the PM’s critics wrongly think the UK bond markets currently move on changes of government policy they need to explain why when the PM did the main thing they wanted the bonds sold off sharply. Maybe long bond movements in recent days have more to do with Bank of England management of the market.
Sterling was unchanged after the announcement instead of rising as her critics implied.
Instead of changing individual items in the tax proposals the new Treasury team needs to bring forward the spending proposals and show us forecasts of the deficit. We need a menu of tax and spend options with prices to influence and judge the full budget and fleshed out growth plan. The PM promised MPs a series of meetings and consultations over the next week preparatory to the full budget. These talks need the government to keep open tax cuts as well as increased spending on priorities and cuts elsewhere. If they have already taken the key decisions the talks are pointless.
I am all in favour of actions to get the deficit down.I have been forecasting a higher deficit this year than the £99 bn OBR budget estimate. To control it I would look first as the biggest change by far that the new PM has announced, the energy package. It should remain very supportive for people on low incomes, but there could be more burden sharing for higher earners who burn a lot more fuel.
October 15, 2022
Good morning.
Have you considered the possibility, Sir John that the PM may have been less than honest in her campaign to get elected, and that this Tory rebellion could be manufactured in order for her to move to the Left of the party without being seen as dishonest ? She folded a bit too quickly for my liking.
😉
As mentioned by, Peter B yesterday, all that money borrowed and not a murmur from the Tory Backbenches but, as soon as a little more is borrowed for tax cuts, all hell breaks loose.
Very suspicious.
October 16, 2022
Yes. Anything remotely Conservative and the country becomes ungovernable.
October 15, 2022
Good Morning,
Could it be: Right Plan….Wrong PM?
We’re discussing that which will not be placed before parliament, and therefore a waste of time.
New Management to present new ideas shortly, methinks.
October 15, 2022
“It appears the PM has been persuaded to row back on this promise of her election campaign to “ensure economic stability”
To ensure her survival is more likely, with Kwarteng offered as a scapegoat . A power struggle which she lost.
Better consideration of the reaction to these policies and sound media management were not much in evidence.
A continuation of what was on offer before.
October 15, 2022
JR,
Is there a remainer plot? Johnson gone, new PM forced to change UK from being more competitive than EU and forced to have Hunt as chancellor? Clarke trying to force protocol to remain the same?
Truss signing up to EU political community and military Pesco transport! Fishing waters under EU control, immigration under EU control, ECJ and ECHR still apply, monies still being given by the tens of billions!
What next Hammond back to cabinet, perhaps Soubry, Wollaston, Allen, Greive all enabled to have in cabinet as well. Your party is now a certainty to be sunk. Tory Remainers will not care as they sided with Labour to collude to prevent it.
Your party is truly treacherous and depressing in equal measure.
October 19, 2022
Hammond is now in the HoL and Anna Soubry, Sarah Wollaston, Heidi Allen, and Dominic Grieve have lost their seats or were not candidates anymore in December 2019.
Some commentators on Sir John’s blog are certainly worth following … 🤪
October 15, 2022
Hunt is presenting no new ideas – just the same-old-same-old Treasury managed decline: higher taxes, pseudo-‘requests’ for government departmental efficiency (which everyone knows will be sulkily derided and ignored by the civil service) over-cautious kowtowing to the OBR and more wooing of the economically inactive, with out-of-work benefits indexed to a level of increase that workers could never dream of for their own wages.
The country is shafted – we might as well have Labour in power immediately. The best thing Truss can do is call an election now, in which large numbers of Conservatives will abstain.
October 16, 2022
+1
October 15, 2022
Tax cuts, yeah. Kwarteng walks. ERG losers
October 16, 2022
Lentona says higher taxes is what we need atm.
October 15, 2022
CAMILLA TOMINEY is right today:-
Tory MPs have given up on Conservatism
The party appears to be on a suicide mission, turning against the very values that it is meant to stand for
October 15, 2022
ALLISTER HEATH too was spot on a few day back:-
Britain’s zombie economy is crumbling and the real culprits are getting off scot-free
Truss is being blamed for the collapse of the debt-fuelled Jenga society that she was trying to replace.
October 15, 2022
John,
Agree with it all except…
I would have got the last manifesto out and went back to implementing a lot of it which has been forgotten, it has after all been voted on properly.
I don’t agree with more means testing, in this case power support. Plenty of people living on their savings desperately trying to avoid claiming benefits deserve help too. Admin costs of means testing costs more than it saves in many cases. I would be scrapping means testing for almost everything, significantly simplifying tax and benefits systems to remove a lot of the cost of administration of them from the economy.
October 15, 2022
Of course the fundamental problem being that the parliamentary conservative party will not vote for conservative policies, it is wrapped up in woke, liberal, fake green, davos, public sector blob nonsense. Completely out of tune with the wider party and voters who want more individual freedom, far less immigration, lower taxes, smaller state, far better services based on good systems in other countries, reducing the national debt, an economy which is not socially engineered to just do financial services but is more balanced and not constrained by our own rules and taxes.
October 16, 2022
Young professionals having to live in single rooms are effectively paying top rate income tax when their student loans are added. They don’t qualify for means tested benefits of any sort but are trapped in a squalid, bedsit life.
Having their own home and children are an unaffordable luxury for young, educated, middle class people. Unlike their uneducated and unprofessional counterparts they must delay having children (if at all) into their mid thirties.
Therefore the country loses IQ and sinks in a twisted reversal of Darwinism and it’s no wonder much of the place looks like there’s been a hospital prison break out.
October 16, 2022
funny I had to live in shared houses well into my 30’s as a young professional
October 15, 2022
Why she has chosen such a dire person to be chancellor is beyond me. She needs to start getting some ideas from your diaries John. Not only from yourself but from the comments and suggestions. She’d do a lot better than she has until now. I find myself worrying more each day. Even though we have no mortgage our cost of living is rising fast and we are concerned about our income in the form of mediocre pensions. If Truss fails to turn things around and Labour get in we are all going to hell in a hand cart. There are so many obvious things she could do but it seems your party has pushed the self destruction button. Interesting talk last night on GB News about Labours plans to decarbonise electricity. It will be impossible without the same amount in backup and it needs nuclear. There simply isn’t the time and to go down tge renewables route will lead to mega failings and mega prices as we will have to pay for two systems as we do now. Just how low are our politicians going to take us? Their refusal to listen to the people with knowledge and expertise in these things is beyond belief.
October 15, 2022
Let’s face it SJR, the Conservative Party that you joined has gone. Your best option, along with some other competent true conservatives is to leave and become the first Reform Party MPs. It can only get worse with Green Socialist nutters now in charge.
October 16, 2022
+1
October 15, 2022
Sorry JR.
Like Johnson with the plague ( It’s just the flu….no I’m locking you up).
I don’t think she ever had the slightest intention of being a conservative.
It’s a tactic to make it look as if it’s not their fault. Handwringing.
Well it doesn’t wash!
October 16, 2022
That’s what I think.
+1
October 15, 2022
New Chancellor Hunt, arch remainer, wanted us locked down for longer.
There is only one way forward now. Sir John, I am unashamedly providing the link to the Reform Party, the party which upholds those conservative values long since abandonned by this Government. I hope that you will one day join the Reform Party too. Your Diary entries have shown that the Reform Party would be your natural home, and your knowledge and experience would be such an asset to our beautiful but oh so battered country.
https://www.reformparty.uk/join_us
October 15, 2022
They’ve done it again – Another PM backed into a corner and made powerless, sterile. Isn’t this great theatre?
The forces of the global establishment that now control so much of what happens on EARTH couldn’t possibly have Truss enact sensible economic policies when they are intent on ruining us.
So this is how life goes for us – Democracy totally stymied, it might as well be dead.
We have a parliament that not only goes along with global dictats to punish the people, even the Tories have capitulated. Not only has parliament failed to protect the people of this country, so many – CLEARLY – have turned traitor on us.
….and all the time the media circus and pantomime goes on to make it look like normal times.
October 15, 2022
‘Truss supporter Christopher Chope said “time will tell” if she had done enough to secure her position, calling those plotting to remove her “hyenas”.’
Exactly – hyenas describes them perfectly. They hunt in packs, and are ravening and vicious, dragging down the victim before the kill. What is there to like in such operatives? What of the advisers, that should have protected her from the wilds of Westminster? Perhaps they were not heeded. Very sad.
October 15, 2022
After the appointment of Jeremy Hunt, today’s Facts4EU.Org explains what our future looks like:
‘Your new tax rises will now be based on wildly inaccurate forecasts from OBR & IMF’. Worth a read, if grim.
October 15, 2022
The problem for the PM is not what she does but there is no coherent policy on how she can both reduce taxes and maintain government spending. If she did this, the problem would be rapidly alleviated but, because of the mini-budget, this has become almost an impossible task. Confidence is all- and that has been lost. She was always likely to lose the Conservatives the next election, this seems a foregone conclusion now. The extraordinary thing is that she has placed seats like Sir John’s in jeopardy- something we never would have believed, even 3 months ago.
October 16, 2022
Sadly that is true.
Some big names are going to be lost at the next general election.
October 15, 2022
I think Mrs T had a plan re benefits and free healthcare and schooling. ie to do away with them.
“Chip away”.
Suppose that rumour had been true. And acted upon.
Would be be in this situation now?
Doubtful.
Too much wool has been pulled over too many Tory eyes. Too many crocodile tears shed.
The “poor” are doing very nicely thanks and need no more help with fuel than MPs do!
October 16, 2022
Wages are already chasing index linked benefits.
October 15, 2022
It’s always someone else’s fault.
At least this article doesn’t try and blame the EU for once.
Maybe the bond sell off was an expression of confidence in this Conservative government and investors decided to move money to where it looks like the government actually knows what it’s doing from one day to the next.
October 16, 2022
The mass movement of gilts was the result of forced selling pressure on LDI-invested pension funds with margin calls from the banks that sold them the LDI products. This is well-known, though the BoE pretends it had no idea, and Bailey is still behaving as if it’s not his business. It is.
October 17, 2022
I presume that you are aware that those LDI investments were stress tested, and stress tested well beyond the previous record for changes in bond yields?
The problem occurred because the mini-budget/fiscal event caused a reaction the effect of which was a change of about 3x the previous record, so any stress testing of, say 1.5x to double the previous record still proved to be insufficient once the previous Chancellor had got to his feet and announced what he did.
Given the instability in this government and its policies, it would be no surprise if many investors were choosing to sit out the UK at the moment and waiting for things to calm down.
Reply The bonds fell first on Fed tightening then on Bank of England proposing sales and then on mini budget. Selling worst on LDI.
October 15, 2022
Having Remainer Jeremy Hunt in charge of the nation’s finances moves backward.
October 15, 2022
A few days over 42 years ago…
“I have only one thing to say .You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning. I say that not only to you but to our friends overseas and also to those who are not our friends.”
Margaret Thatcher.
How things have changed!
October 16, 2022
And on those words showing her determination not to kowtow to the EU, her EU-obsessed enemies in the PCP began the move against her, that unseated her as PM the following month.
They are still there, the latest generation of them grousing away in the backbenches or tacitly conspiring on the frontbenches: longing like puppydogs for a patronising pat on the head from Brussels.
October 15, 2022
In my view this financial crisis is not so much about tax levels, but about market reactions to the grim prospects for the future that the Tories’ growing debt mountain has created. Truss is not herself responsible for creating this situation, even though she was a member of a government that has borrowed money like there’s no tomorrow, but she is responsible if she continues with it. I get the impression she thinks the magic money tree is still there. We’re still throwing billions of taxpayers’ £££ into the coffers of the pharmaceutical industry, and now her foreign policy will need vast sums of government money to be spent on the armaments industry too, not to mention another £2.8bn bung straight to the regime in Kiev. I do not call this living within our means.
October 15, 2022
Re fuel help…
I thought that means testing upset the Left?
Can’t have that can we?
October 15, 2022
So the remainers have won
Continue following EU policies. Keep the UK uncompetitive and prolong the recession.
Just in time for a liblabsnp coalition to complete the job of trashing the country.
Traitors the lot of you.
October 15, 2022
I suppose this is the end of north sea exploration and fracking.
Capitulation to the EU and the end of all the other sensible ideas.
Back to the same old, same old, brexit must be seen to be a failure.
Captured by the blob.
October 15, 2022
I have run through the options and lower corporate tax whilst shrinking Government is the best option by far.
The rejected options include increasing taxes, inflating the pound, increasing borrowing, growth through migration, cutting personal taxes, cutting indirect taxes.
October 15, 2022
Sitting on the side and watching aĺl the skirmishes as the Tory politicians start sliding out from under their rocks it is signalling the end of the type of representatives that have been selected over the last twelve years.
Unwittingly the people of this country are looking at one big vast snake pit that has been allowed to grow unchecked. The whole parliament has been affected and the country suffers.
What price honour and loyalty? Less than 10% of the members are worthy of the position they hold in one shape form or another. The nest of vipers has to be removed as does all the outside influences on the fringes pulling the strings and pushing buttons from afar.
October 15, 2022
$500bn wasted on the viral political project and the energy bailout and the bond market doesn’t blink. $40bn on a tax cut and Bailey maliciously starts selling to bonds to incite chaos for political profit. It’s almost as if those who now run the UK have an agenda that looks suspiciously like big State authoritarianism and any policy that doesn’t conform to this vileness is condemned, demonised and actively opposed.
It seems Brexit has made not one jot of difference to the manner in which this country is governed. When you have the Baileys of the world playing politics to bring down governments then democracy and accountable governance is no longer necessary
October 15, 2022
Do government energy support packages make an assumption that the consumers make no reductions in their use of energy? If they do, then the schemes are too generous. (My consumption is down by 60%.) The government really must initiate a public information campaign to encourage people to reduce their energy demand this winter. Truss’s refusal to take this simple measure defies belief.
October 16, 2022
You’ve answered your own question. People know prices have risen and will automatically reduce consumption with probably a resultant reduction in supply prices which means the support scheme might cost £50bn and not £150bn as the scheme pays the difference between supply price and the retail price cap. With the reduction in prices paid for renewables or “windfall tax” on them, this will also return more money to government.
October 16, 2022
Absolutely so. There was no account taken I think of price driven demand reduction in their calculations. Rather like Covid, the way to handle it was support the genuinely vulnerable via tax reductions and let the rest of us get on with life.
October 15, 2022
Off topic
Jeremy Hunt? What was Liz Truss thinking? Or was she pressured into putting him in place? Jeremy Hunt apparently knows nothing about the Treasury, was a failure at health…
What he is, is a remainer; he very much admires China’s way of doing things…would have introduced vaccine passports, got infected people removed from their homes etc etc.
What was Liz Truss thinking??
October 15, 2022
And in a remake of a famous film, now called the sinking of the Conservative party (incidentally now contravening the Trades Description Act) Captain Truss sets a course for an iceberg, shoots the helmsman and gets into the lifeboat first having blamed SS Bank of England.
Her new helmsman doesn’t believe in the course being set but like her ships officers and subservient crew, do not care where the ship is going as long as they have jobs, and of course the protection of sinecures when once again they crash the boat.
Equally they couldn’t care about their passengers who are now desperate to get off having been promised a different destination and intend to keep them prisoner for the next 18 months in the hope that lifebelts will magically appear that stop them drowning financially and erase the memory of the nightmares that they are all experiencing.
In the meantime other mariners who they promised would be stopped have free protected passage with hotel accommodation, food, healthcare etc costing vast amounts of money that the trapped passengers are having to pay for.
October 15, 2022
Well, he was lazy, and his press operation was diabolically bad, but on reflection regarding Johnston – perhaps the electorate was right first time?
October 15, 2022
I really like what you say John, but your party is a complete shambles.
Why is Liz Truss still the PM? Here flagship leadership campaign policy has gone up in flames.
Instead of an initiative to get the country going, we’re back to the spending, debt spiral policy. If the government can’t balance the books this year, it will be more difficult next year and the year following, and so on, until the whole sterling bubble collapses.
We are planning to double the size of our factory, partly on the strength of Truss policy. Now tell me, why should I bust a gut when my efforts will just be funnelled into government waste?
October 15, 2022
Bunch of amateurs – we are not going to get to get the type of inward investment we need because our reputation has been shot to pieces over the brexit business and then our position in the disgraceful follow up talks. Also we should be aware that this stuff of investment from outside cannof be just whistled up we have to work hard 6at it probably for decades to lay the ground – a good part of it would be in network building for which we are in the slow lane. Am afraid that any notions some have is still wide of the mark. This is England – think ‘England’ the land of the railwaymen going on strike – government seeking to export our problems to Rwanda – overturning international agreements and all the rest of it going on in the background for years and then on the other side think ‘investment fund managers’? – so you see – no chance
October 16, 2022
All the usual clichés from Mr Multi-ID.
October 15, 2022
The Corporation Tax reduction should have been kept if you want to encourage businesses to start here.
Large companies move tax around to lower tax jurisdictions, whilst SMEs here cannot and end up in a low growth pattern or don’t start up at all. Why should I pay CT when I start a business on my first few years’ retained profit which just goes into working capital/inventory in the company? It’s incredibly tough, and I thought the whole point of leaving the EU was to design our own economic policy?
Strikes me this faux Thatcher is just that-no bandwidth and lacking intellectual rigour for her ideas she just caves in, like her predecessor but one.
October 15, 2022
Who is advising Truss on these matters, leading her to conclude sacking Kwarteng and sacrificing her election pledge would sooth the angry market gods? What is their knowledge and experience in this field? And what are their incentives?
Most of the modern financial industry is not going to be happy to return to the old normal of a base rate around 6% because they’ve long been raking in the crop falling from the magic money tree of effectively zero or negative rates. This Cantillon Effect needs to stop but it’s been going on too long as no politician, here or in the USA, has had the guts to explain the problem to the public. When we at last seemed to have a PM with a Chancellor well versed in the history of money and its failings, especially fiat, we find the Government isn’t powerful enough to weather the storm. Like Steve Baker, I now wonder if there’s any way back and only catastrophic failure of fiat money will cause change.
October 15, 2022
It’s all turned into a shambles and an absolute farce, for the simple reason of little preparation, little real thought, and once again POOR COMMUNICATION.
Yes the Government had to do something about energy costs, and do something quickly. That was a no brainer.
Yes it would be sensible to keep tax rates low, but was there a need to make an announcement rapidly, before a proper Budget which was only a few weeks away, Absolutely not.
The idea of releasing the cap on Bankers bonuses was just plain stupidity from a political point of view, especially with millions of people struggling.
The most sensible tax reduction would have been to have increased the personal allowance, where everyone would have benefited by the same amount, especially given that any substantial rise in the State pension will now mean that people who do not normally pay tax, may now start doing so, and will thus feel cheated out of some of the rise.
The fiscal drag on all other taxes should have also been resolved, once and for all !
Am I convinced that all this turmoil was all about the mini Budget, absolutely not, but it certainly added fuel to the fire.
Has Truss made the right decisions now, NO, she has just made a rod for her own back as everyone now knows she does not mean what she says, and can be forced to change her mind.
Is Hunt the right choice for Chancellor, I seriously doubt it given his past record, thoughts, statements, and actions.
What a mess !
October 15, 2022
Ah yes support the low paid who are already in receipt of generous benefits but expect higher earners to pay for themselves. Mirror that successful Social Care policy because that works so well.
Hand outs must be universal or non existent.
Higher paid jobs carry more stress and responsibility or require more skill. There needs to be a benefit it doing them, mostly that benefit is higher income to spend on things of your own choosing. The differential needs to be maintained.
Make your cuts elsewhere Sir John. Start with the diversity budget.
October 16, 2022
It’s worse than that – the gap is widening the other way. An economy where the pay of junior doctors now stagnate but their effective tax rate goes up while they live alone in single rooms in houses of multi-occupancy. Their standard of living isn’t able to keep up with the uneducated people they treat who are having broods on index linked benefits.
October 15, 2022
Doomed, we are all doomed. Well, but only those who want a UK with justice, equality, growth and stability. The ride is going to a car with no suspension, a flat tyre and bouncing over very high bumps and deep potholes. The future is going to jar your teeth and make a smile impossible.
I wonder who Starmer, who wisely keeps quiet, will pick for a Cabinet.
October 15, 2022
“I am all in favour of actions to get the deficit down. I have been forecasting a higher deficit this year than the £99 bn……..”
The Government’s tax take is not entirely within its own control so any forecasting of the deficit is problematic. For example, if we receive money from the Government, say a tax rebate, we might choose to save it. If we do this the Government will only get back its money as a loan when we buy, perhaps some premium bonds or save the money in a bank and the bank then buys some gilts. This does add to the deficit but is largely economically inert.
Alternatively, we might choose to spend the money. The transaction will likely attract government taxes so the deficit will be lower than if we had saved the money. It will be even lower if the remaining money is spent and re-spent in subsequent transactions. This spending is not economically inert, so a lower than expected deficit could be a sign of inflationary pressures in the economy. A higher than expected deficit could be sign of a sluggish economy.
October 15, 2022
Kwarteng was sacked whilst attending an IMF meeting in New York. It’s pretty obvious who is really running the UK and it certainly isn’t the Prime Minister/Government.
We are ruled by Globalist Organisations using the British Civil Service and tame placemen in Parliament to get the Globalist policies THEY want.
Conservative Party Members were given a choice of Globalist Sunak, a former Goldman Sachs banker who was offering more of the same policies which have effectively bankrupted the country; or Truss who was offering a different agenda but intended keeping the Manifesto tax promises the CONs were elected on, which Sunak had broken.
As far as the Globalist Organisations are concerned, the membership made “the wrong” choice and are correcting it.
This country is not a democracy. Voting is an exercise in self-delusion.
October 16, 2022
Quite! Just look at the leadership of the OBR – the top two have direct links to the Treasury and professional links with the IMF, and the IMF’s current head is an EU Commissioner from Bulgaria – a country that is 71st down the world’s economic ratings, and only 2.7% the size of the UK’s economy.
October 16, 2022
‘This country is not a democracy. Voting is an exercise in self-delusion.’
It never has been.
Think Justice, Supreme Court, Police, CCHQ, Unionism, Media, Education….
October 15, 2022
In the last general election Corbyn ran on a manifesto commitment to increase corporation tax to 26%. With an 80 seat majority the Conservatives have increased it to 25%. So, the difference in policy from an actual Marxist is 1%. What’s the point ?
October 15, 2022
Yes, there is absolutely no point to the Tory party anymore. They are so left-wing as to be indistinguishable from Labour, not just economically but in every other sphere too, from immigration to Northern Ireland. And when, by chance, the PM has a decent policy the MPs won’t support it because they have been selected not on the basis of being ideoligically right-wing but because they fill the female or ethnic or other quotas. The Tory party is now dead for two election, and good riddance to it. I am sick to death of a party that fails to do what you want from it.
On taxes, for instance, what I demand is:
1. An increase in the personal allowance (the threshold for paying tax) to £20,000, with this applied to everyone (no taper for higher earners). This is a GENUINE tax cut, not the FAKE one of cutting 1p off the basic rate, which as the IFS pointed out represented an actual tax INCREASE and dragged an extra 1.4 million people into the tax regime. Raising the personal alowance to £20,000 ensures that no-one on minimum wage will pay tax, and will free up resources in HMRC to focus on the big tax payers.
2. Increase the threshold for the 40% to £75,000 and increase the 45% tax rate to 50% but apply this at a threshold of £250,000.
3. I want different rates of VAT depending on the cost of the item you are buying. So I propose the following rates: (i) NO VAT on anything under £10; (ii) 10% VAT on items between £10-25; (iii) 20% (the current VAT rate) on items from £25-150; and (iv) 25% VAT on items over £150. This would benefit everyone who is just buying their daily essentials, but would mean that those buying luxury items over £150 would pay a little more to help balance the books. Essential services, like energy, would also be zero-rated.
4. Corporation tax to remain at 19% to attract foreign companies, but a focus on getting businesses here to invest more to grow. This should be done through a ‘super-deduction’ of 120% relief against tax on ANY and ALL investment in new buildings, plant and equipment, or R&D. This would mean that the more companies invest and grow the more they save, and that’s an offer that no finance officer could refuse! Corporate investment would surge, increasing the size of the economy.
Kwarteng’s budget didn’t fail because he cut taxes too much, but because of his stupendous stupidity in failing to offer a BALANCED programme of tax cuts AND spending cuts TOGETHER. His lop-sided budget was the most idiotic thing he could have done. Get a list of radical cuts together, add this to a tax-cutting programme and tell MPs that if they don’t support it they will lose the whip for good. THAT is the way to proceed.
October 15, 2022
Rocky Horror Show ‘take a step to the left’
The Greens are the new Communist Party; Labour are the new Greens and the Tory’s are split between the new Labour & the LibDens
October 15, 2022
So Mr Hunt says some taxes will have to go up. So we are back to where we started before they ousted Boris. The fact that I read that yet again the parliamentary party is plotting to oust Liz and replace her with………… yep, Fishi and Penny caretaker government. Stuff what was voted for. How ridiculous we public are to think voting actually means something. It doesn’t.
Our own MPs along with the media and all their friends are acting in the same was as Brussels did to Greece. Do as we want, ignore the vote or we will collapse your financial system. Greece capitulated, as will Liz, but this is by our own MPs. Our own party.
I am still in favour of cutting corporation tax to make us more competitive. But being more competitive is not allowed but not allowed by whom.
October 16, 2022
BW: C/Tax – Your last paragraph, I totally agree. To increase to 25% at this time is the mistake, not the right time and you are likely to be correct in there being something within that decision that we are not aware of. We can’t be allowed to keep a competitive rate. They will increase it and then make things more complex by fiddling around with exemptions, incentives etc., or whatever they do elsewhere. Just following the rest. How does that increase figure with Northern Ireland’s future business etc. It would be interesting to know if Mr Hunt was a stand alone decision by the PM or if she was ‘advised’ I detest the fact that those members of the public who may not be particularly engaged with all the daily politicking and markets are being led to believe everything is down to Brexit and also that recent announcements have tanked the economy. Pleased to have heard Alastair Stewart correct a Labour commentator on the latter just recently. Those schemers ( & I’m being polite ), who so far do not seem to be identifiable, need to calm down & sort themselves out before they do any further damage to this country. A great many people have already given up totally on this Conservative Party. We deserve better.
October 15, 2022
Either Truss is a fool or a WEF plant. I believe she is working for the Globalists. She’s made so many U-turns she’s spinning in a circle. The final humiliation is her appointment of Hunt as Chancellor. I have no trust in this government or any of the main political parties. It’s time for the voters to get behind a new party that will put the British people first. For me, this will be the Reform Party. Stop listening to the media telling you that voting Reform is a wasted vote or that it will let Labour win. There are just as many disaffected Labours voters out there as there are Conservative voters. We just need to wake people up and cut through the media lies. Current MPs with a conscience should band together and quit their lying deceitful parties. Most will lose their seats anyway so make a statement rather than go down with the ship. The country deserves better.
October 16, 2022
+1
October 15, 2022
Many of your colleagues in the party seem to have no concept of the damage they are doing to both the government and the country in trying to oust the Prime Minister. They are acting like recalcitrant schoolboys, thinking that they can say what they like and there will be no consequences. If they do not rally round, they will see a Labour/LibDim/SNP coalition running the country after the next election. Do they really want to see Blackford or Sturgeon in a cabinet led by Sir Kneel A Lot and Ginge?
Like yourself and my own MP, Chris Chope, I too regret the abandonment of the policy on Corporation tax.
We might even see the tax take reduced by putting the rate up to 25% but it does appear to be what the markets are demanding. The government seems to be in no position to argue so better to retreat and bring the policy back in stages when the economy is stronger.
I am deeply suspicious of Andrew Bailey, the Governor of the Bank. His withdrawing of bond support came at a most inconvenient time and looks as if it were designed to cause damage to the government and the pound in the markets. It was completely unnecessary, considering he had spent only a small fraction of the £65bn that the policy was predicted to cost.
October 15, 2022
Crisis What Crisis.
A much needed measure and direction created a situation badly communicated, then the panic button. I don’t care about the UK its about ‘ME’. Now the UK and the Conservative Party have a full blown crisis that cant be recovered from.
The UK taxpayer will pay and pay over and over again for successive dumb leadership that have forgotten what it means to serve those that pay the wages.
The alternatives now? There aren’t any we need a proper revolution.
October 15, 2022
More piss down the drain government “investments”:- The company building Britain’s first battery “gigafactory” is in emergency talks with investors including a major carmaker amid fears it could run out of money before the end of the year. Britishvolt, a government-backed developer of battery cell technologies, is reportedly holding talks with seven potential investors after recent market turmoil led to prospective backers pulling out of its latest funding round. In the Times today.
England is not a place for competitive battery factories as we do not have cheap on demand fossil fuel energy, not the raw materials, nor cheap flexible labour all of which are need to be competitive in battery manufacture and indeed many other industries.
October 16, 2022
It’s reported that BMW are to re-locate production of the electric Mini to China.
October 16, 2022
No surprise. This government continues to kill our country and its economy and cares more for immigrants than the indigenous. It’s priorities are ALL in the wrong places. Throw money at the takers and bankrupt the contributers. What a way to win loyalty and support. It will fail! Brain dead morons at work!
October 16, 2022
Shirley
Your comment has a lot more truth in it than many would care to admit, the politics of envy and the so called redistribution of wealth will just leave us with the takers, and £billions of debt.
October 16, 2022
Shirley M : Breitbart.com/europe reports today 16/10 a letter from the Border Force union ISU ” Border Force warns increase in illegal migrants poses national security risk” to Ms Braverman Home Secretary citing amongst other things a noted changed demographic in arrivals, overcrowding at our reception centres & the risk of unrest and it would seem that migrant checks have still not improved and have become “unbelievably awful” with a failure to complete the most basic of steps. Worth a read.
October 15, 2022
Jeremy Hunt on LBC just now 9.17. He is quite good at arguing that black is white but his tax to death policies are totally wrongheaded. His record at the NHS for nearly six years appalling, his Covid “Chinese type” of agenda insane plus he is a remainer and a PPE Oxon. graduate. No thanks.
The party clearly has a death wish!
October 15, 2022
https://twitter.com/jeremy_hunt/status/1488220491374632963?lang=en
Jeremy Hunt explaining why he favoured compulsary vaccination.
October 15, 2022
Once again obsessed by historic qualifications, now irrelevant but agree on rest. He was eliminated in first round of PM elections and now he is in everything bar name. More contempt for the voters only looking after themselves.
If Truss had a scintilla of self awareness as opposed to boiler plated arrogance she would have stood down.
October 15, 2022
+1
And I reckon they have almost been granted that wish.
October 15, 2022
+1
October 15, 2022
We have the highest taxes for seventy years, the Kwasi “budget” was not really even a tax cutting budget as many allowances are still frozen, now we are to get 25% increases in C. tax and income tax and yet Jeremy Hunt cannot even rule out even more tax increase.
All this and yet public services (especially the NHS, border force and the police/criminal justice are dismal and still declining.
Well done Cameron, May, Boris, Hunt their dire Chancellors, health Secs. and our generally dismal & very poor value state sector “workers”. Often delivering zero value and positive harm.
October 15, 2022
Too right LL!
Hunt now has unlimited power, since Truss cannot threaten another forced resignation. He is effectively our new PM. To me it seems the only hope for the Tory Party is an uprising from its membership, the grassroots.
Although no longer a Tory voter, I am as concerned as any at the slide to the left by the Conservative Party, the way it is riven with dissent and now its path to disintegration.
October 15, 2022
Morning Sir John
I still think you should have been chancellor because of your real world knowledge and experience.
It seems we are governed by media at the moment in this country. It worries me because they attack those who don’t conform to their Liberal lefties agenda.
I am also concerned that the PCP mps seem determined to override the choice of Conservative members and drive Ms Truss out of number ten. If they manage to carry this out, I expect the party will lose members quickly as there will be little point paying membership fees if they can’t influence leadership choice.
Off topic…
Sir John
Last night I overheard a couple of locals talking about a major redevelopment programme in Wokingham TC involving a new shopping mall where the old M&S was.. Have you heard any such story?
October 15, 2022
Truss was desperately bad at the press conference. And not much better at PMQs. The argument for her in the leadership was that she might be a wooden presenter unable to think on her feet, but she would stop 2 bad tax rises Rishi was proposing and would push through free market measures. Now we’ve got one of those bad tax rises back anyway what is the point of Liz Truss? She surely has no hope of winning an election unless we have next to an economic miracle over the next couple of years. And presumably is now completely in hock to Jeremy Hunt on any other measures she might want. We wouldn’t be in anything like the mess we are if we had just gone with Rishi Sunak who can at least give an articulate presentation of what he thinks.
I suggest the govt makes the energy price cap a floor so the money is re-coupled like a ‘green’ tax when wholesale prices fall (and can even be presented as such), and cancels HS2, saving £10bn pa at least for 10 years. Hunt should at least go 1/2 way and say corp tax will go to 21 or 22% not all the way to 25% which with the UK’s other disadvantages is uncompetitive.
October 15, 2022
From the outset of the last Conservative leadership competition (yes a ‘me to’ competition) the flaw I saw was that it was members of the Cabinet itself on the ballot paper. That never made sense, BJ was a flawed personality that failed time and time again and failed to get Brexit done Big Time. He was never a Conservative but a left wing metro Europhile. The Cabinet is a position of collective responsibility, meaning BJ’s flaws were inherited by the members of his Government – they were in his image. Logic being the Conservative Leadership Competition was for the continuation of flawed policies – what did we get ‘A continuation of flawed policies’
The Country is now consigned to being in ‘Andrew Bailey’s’ own words and with a lot connivance from him a ‘Basket Case’.
To much belief in the ‘New World Order’ and very little in democracy, the UK and its people.
October 15, 2022
We now have a new PM, the loser from the previous contests, imposed on us by the media and the boatrockers in the PCP, with help from the Blob. Just as we got Lidington after the 2017 election losses.
October 15, 2022
Liz Truss got it wrong first time.
It was pure political IDEOLOGY as opposed to business-like PRACTICALITY.
This isn’t the early 1980’s when drastic measures were needed to reverse years of severe socialism. And even here, economic policy led to an OVER-HEATING of the economy and boom and bust (and which eventually led, later on, to the gambling and incompetent bankers having to be bailed out by the tax payer). I don’t blame Tories then (back in the 80’s), too much, for over-heating / boom and bust as they were desperate to get the country out of the claws of 1970’s socialism.
But there is no excuse for that now. People should have learned the lesson by now.
A hard black-and-white economic policy doesn’t work with a sophisticated economy such as ours (which is more than just the financial sector / The City of London) but an economy with small and medium-sized high tech companies – and much, much more. Not forgetting the political fall out as well – and how something too drastic, too soon, could easily bring Labour into power.
And slowly, over time, one hardens economic policy. But not in one jolt.
October 15, 2022
What was the point of the mini-budget? Do the Tories never think of anything other than tax reductions and tax increases? When is the Tory Party going to produce some supply side reforms by removing the red tape which is strangling businesses instead of offering them to keep more money to deal with it? It was clearly actions of the Bank by a Governor that they themselves appointed which unsettled the markets. Furthermore, there is something deeply amiss with the economy if it can only be stabilised by massive interventions in the gilts
market.
As for Truss blaming Mr Putin for her woes; that will not wash. It was entirely the US State Dept’s bullying of NATO countries to commit economic hara-kiri as well as using other means to support their regime change policy in Ukraine which is the major cause of the economic woes facing Europe. We live in dangerous times when the leader of the ‘free world’ and the ‘rules based order’ came to power under questionable circumstances and refuses to take a medical test of intellectual competence. One good sign is that the French have started to demonstrate against both NATO (US occupation force) and the EU (nation abolition force).
October 15, 2022
The People voted for Brexit and were denied it for years (and even now it has hardly been implemented).
The People voted for a Conservative government and got a Socialist government.
The U-turn yesterday was a victory of BIG government and BIG business V the People.
Not all big business of course but those many corporations for whom the State is directly or indirectly its biggest client and collaborator.
We are heading for dangerous times if the government continues to deny the People their will.
October 15, 2022
@Kenneth +1 Who do we get over to people that voting for the established political parties is succide.
October 15, 2022
The people voted for reduced immigration but got vastly more of it.
80 seat majority to get on with it.
Clearly the Tory Party IS the problem. I doubt even Sir John’s seat is safe now.
October 16, 2022
I agree.
October 15, 2022
There is no democracy. They either ignore it or manipulate it by giving us a choice of two virtually identical choices, example: a choice of a pro-EU socialist candidate or another pro-EU socialist candidate (from ALL the main parties), for the last few decades. We need another UKIP moment where people vote against the main parties. The main parties all lie and deceive via their manifestos in their attempts to get elected, with absolutely NO intention of honouring democracy in any shape or form, and their reliance on being ‘slightly not as bad’ as the opposition tells you just how much they care about the country and its people and even their own party policy, which is very VERY far from being pro-UK in ALL the main parties.
October 15, 2022
That’s what happens when you vote Conservative: you are BETRAYED.
So the answer is simple: Stop voting Conservative!
We need to all switch our votes to a genuinely patriotic, nationalist party. That’s what I’ll be doing, for sure.
The argument that this ‘will let Labour in’ has no weight anymore, since the Conservative party is now completely indistinguishable from Labour! Which of these two parties wins no longer natters a jot. So don’t vote for EITHER of them.
October 16, 2022
+1
October 16, 2022
+ many – LibLabCon – a cartel with each being as bad as the other, kick them ALL out!
October 15, 2022
Spot-On Kenneth
October 15, 2022
We are told in the Guardian we need to save 40 billion euros. We have been paying 49bn and 47bn euros per year but this was supposed to drop from now so what is going on.
We have been told we’ve been cut from this science project and that project yet we appear to be paying for them, what a rubbish job May did if this is still the case but she’s getting her personal reward.
October 15, 2022
Easy to save that and more just scrap net zero, kill all subsidies for renewables, cull the soft loans for pointless degrees and let them get a job and do night school, scrap HS2, fire the civil servants who do no good or net harm… that should be a few hundred £billion saved already.
October 15, 2022
If you want to save £150bn …easy, just scrap HS2
October 16, 2022
No – we got stitched up – its mostly committed already…..too late.
October 16, 2022
HS2 was for Europe, it is not for UK residents, it was agreed years ago Blair/Mandelson, Cameron/Osborne, all agreed to it, it is too late to stop it. This is what Boris was going on about a bridge to Ireland, it won’t be a driving bridge it will be a freight train facilitator to keep Europe connected to Scotland and Ireland whilst they ride roughshod over England.
I’m still unsure if the tracks will allow Eurotunnel trains to continue from HS1 to HS2 and through the country without having to touch a national rail track or a British train provider.
October 16, 2022
If HS2 was solely a private enterprise and the analysis showed it unfeasible, over budget and no longer fit for purpose …it would be shut down tomorrow – and so it should be for public enterprise
October 15, 2022
What is going on, a-Tracy, is that we were lied to. What’s new?
Remainer Truss is trying to integrate us into Europe again with the European Political Community. Note those three words in the title. The ‘European Community’ was the old name for the EU, and it was a ‘political’ project. Could anything be more blatant?
October 16, 2022
https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/default/files/about_the_european_commission/eu_budget/2021_eu_accounts_adopted_web.pdf
Here is the source.
October 17, 2022
“Page 24 Consolidated revenue – main developments in 2021 In 2021, the consolidated revenue, comprising all revenue categories, amounted to EUR 178.9 billion, compared to EUR 224.0 billion the previous year. The main reason for the decrease of EUR 45.1 billion or 20.1% was the decreasing impact of the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union, which had increased the 2020 revenues by EUR 47.5 billion, but contributed only EUR 1.1 billion to the 2021 revenues. Excluding this specific revenue, the consolidated revenue of 2021 amounts to EUR 177.8 EUR billlion, which is comparable to the adjusted consolidated revenue of the previous year (EUR 176.5 billion).”
October 15, 2022
For amateur Chancellors, this is the identity you have to satisfy. (S – I) = (G – T) + (X – M); the three sectoral balances (the terms in brackets) have to sum to zero at all times. The sectoral balances derived are: (HT; Prof Bill Mitchell)
The private domestic balance (Savings – Investment) – positive if in surplus, negative if in deficit. A deficit means the private domestic sector is spending more than its income and vice-versa.
The Budget balance (Government spending – Taxation) – positive if in deficit, negative if in surplus (as written). A deficit means the government is adding net financial assets to the non-government sector and vice-versa.
The Current Account balance (X – M) eXports minus iMports – positive if in surplus, negative if in deficit. A deficit means that the external sector is draining domestic demand (spending) and vice-versa.
For the left-hand side of the equation to be positive (that is, the private domestic sector is running a surplus overall) then the sum of the budget and external balances must be positive and equal to the left-hand side. The OBR Chart shows the result.
https://www.economicshelp.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/sectoral-net-lending.png.webp Notice the Covid hit to the government’s spending in 20/21. The latest version of this chart due soon, will be interesting. Particularly how the “growth plan” is going to pay for those imports in 2027.
October 16, 2022
OBR charts make Nostradamus look plausible.
October 16, 2022
acorn
This isn’t about economics, it is about politics. Different ball game.
October 16, 2022
The government should tell us what we are importing in such high quantities to create such a deficit, the big numbers are they the things we should be concentrating on doing for ourselves. Are their cheaper alternative suppliers in friendly countries that aren’t after the UK paying their bills for them or fining us.
Tell us the products perhaps those of us that care can stop buying them. I no longer buy Irish Cheese, Danish butter, Dutch flowers, I choose UK meat and fish, I no longer have German cars, we’re being much more picky when people verbally attack my country I try to not give them my money. However, some items just aren’t made in the UK any longer.
October 15, 2022
The conservative in Parliament is now overdrawn on its Conservative following in the country. They are largely not Conservative and after the vote among their membership are far from democratic, having adopted the current we know best attitude to democracy.
I would add that Boris is not the answer, clubable though he may be. His nett zero is one of the contributary factors in us finding ourselves where we are today. I salute him over Covid and the Ukraine, but his route to nett zero has impoverished the nation, check your fuel bills.
If you believe manifestos then the Reform Party is much closer to true conservatism than is the current original, check it out. What we have in Parliament is a globalist social democratic cabal that is still pinning for its lost love, the EU. This explains all the outstanding unresolved loose ends that remain from our departure. A political revolutionary change is what is required, akin to that effected by the Brexit Party during our last involvement in EU elections. The unfinished business arising from Brexit, desired by the people but lacking acknowledgment in Parliament, needs resolution, but few in Parliament realise this. Consequently , excepting the few , the present incumbents have no place there.
October 15, 2022
It was the PM’s assertion that ‘she would not cut State spending’ that frightened the horses! Idiotic in the extreme. Of course the state must be reigned in, it has run away with the country and reached an unsustainable speed over the 2 years when magic-money-Johnson dug his spurs in. Even Johnson was going to cut state employment by the 90,000 increase he had engineered.
Now, because our policies have been mucked up by a weak and inexperienced team who cannot defend their policy because they don’t really understand it, and therefore can’t extrapolate it, the death from the left is shuddering into life again.
I have no hope – Hunt is hoping to prove Brexit a failure. Let’s hope the EU and the USA, whose bonds and therefore pension shortfalls are much more severe than ours, leave him no option but to row his own boat.
October 15, 2022
The thing which frightened the horses and made them speed up the coup was when she said she would remove EU directives from our law. They want to keep us aligned, both in regulation and high taxation. Ready for going back in under Starmer.
October 16, 2022
Cummings for PM !!! Ha Ha.
October 15, 2022
Your party is a coalition between one-nation conservatives and people with more free-market views like yourself. It means not everyone will not get what they want all of the time.
Your members have just elected a leader with free market ideas. She has a simple program to roll back the policy mistakes of the last 30 years, which have destroyed growth. Now the rest of your parliamentary party will not allow her to implement her policies.
It means for people who want free market solutions, there is little point in voting Conservative anymore. It will make no difference if Labour or the Lib Dems are elected, as no one will consider their views.
It now makes more sense to vote for a new party dedicated to free market ideas. It will demonstrate a block of such voters exists. Their policies will be better aired, debated and then copied.
I wish you luck in your consultation meetings, but if you cannot implement most of the reforms your members have just voted for, there is little point in your party.
October 15, 2022
One quibble: please don’t call them one nation conservatives. They don’t believe in the one nation and their allegiance is elsewhere, to the EU Commission. They have been working for decades to dismantle the one nation. That is what they are continuing to do now. The free marketeers on the other hand do believe in the one nation and setting it free.
October 15, 2022
“Liz Truss reverts to tax rises she said would ruin economy ” says it all really
October 15, 2022
She is the Tory ‘C’ team PM after all.
C Team of an already useless party.
October 15, 2022
She is a puppet taking orders from the wet, socialist, remainer, Hunt section of Tory MPs. She might as well resign now.
October 15, 2022
The elephant in the room is energy poilicy, if we dropped the net zero nonesense the financial defecit caused by the Energy Bills Support Scheme. Truss seems to be lost.
October 16, 2022
Basically the members wanted her – only just – but the motley yesterdaymen plotters didn’t.
Result – meltdown Party. Death throes unsurvivable. DNR.
October 15, 2022
Sir John,
It seems that there is quite a section of your Parliamentary Party who are economically illiterate enough to think that they can tax themselves out of an impending recession…
October 15, 2022
Well the three recent Chancellors Osborne, Hammond and Sunak were the people who created this economic mess with their insane policies of tax to death, borrow, print, currency debase, lockdown and coerce dangerous and largely ineffective vaccines into peoples arms.
Well done you complete economic idiots!
October 15, 2022
Dear Atlas–There are also a good few that simply don’t believe that lowering taxes has much if anything to do with encouraging growth or productivity. That’s the camp I am in. Seems to me if you give people a pay rise by reducing their taxes they might slacken rather than increase their efforts, eg by staying at home rather than bothering to go to work at all. Saying the opposite does not make it so.
October 16, 2022
Leslie, how do you explain the doctors then? Retiring early because of the cap and extra tax on their pension pots? We are talking about people that get the best buzz ever from their work being able to save people.
October 15, 2022
The Conservative Party is no longer fit for purpose. It has been taken over by fifth column socialists either naturally through Robert Conquest’s second and third laws of politics or even deliberately through infiltration.
It is no longer is even trying to look like it is intending to fulfil its manifesto promises.
We know where the country will be heading if the extreme left are in in control of both Parliament and the media. “Cancellation”, the socialist’s euphemism for the intolerance of any freedom of speech, will lead us into permanent authoritarian rule and poverty as evidenced by many examples – Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, China.
As an example, Ed Miliband’s proposal to decarbonise our electricity by 2030 will ensure our electricity is both very expensive and intermittent.
Until now I have always preferred the FPTP system of selecting MPs but I now believe that the only way out of our downward spiral to authoritarianism is PR having seen the results of the Brexit referendum and the Brexit Party winning easily the 2019 EU MEP election.
But once in power I doubt that the socialists in the Uni-Party (Con/Lab/LD/Green/SNP) will vote for PR and hence allow other parties to rise up or possibly even exist at all.
October 15, 2022
We now know the Treasury is anticipating the Corporation tax rise to raise £18 billion annually in additional revenue. People in government must be advising this is the case. Who are they? What is the secondary impact of less economic growth? When, as we expect, it does not raise this amount, can we hold anyone to account for the fake forecast?
October 15, 2022
According to the BoE there has been increasing pressure on the UK pensions industry – forcing them(the BoE) to bail the industry out. This has been building for many years(FT state 20years) now due to flawed over-site.
The FCA provided this over site …. who was the CEO up until recently?
October 15, 2022
I am in despair at this government. there are no words to describe the failure we see happening before our eyes.
The PCP and the Lords have got their way and replaced a conservative chancellor with J Hunt, globalist, socialist and very establishment with a past record of failure as Health Secretary.
We should now prepare ourselves for the replacement of Truss with Sunak. We are indeed sunk.
October 15, 2022
Truss is now Hunt’s and the Treasury’s puppet they pull the strings so PMIn name only so there only to satisfy her ego.
What’s the point of her? Indeed the Tory Party. We may at least have someone (Starmer) who is honest in what he will do. I see the Tory spin is wealth taxes and Net Zero. So what have we got now? Precisely.
October 15, 2022
“[The energy package]… should remain very supportive for people on low incomes, but there could be more burden sharing for higher earners who burn a lot more fuel”
That’s the first time I’ve heard you sound like a socialist. People who “burn more fuel” may not have a choice at this juncture. They may have made choices in the past to live in larger houses but they still may be living on the edge of their means without a bean to spare due to higher costs along with their higher earnings.
They don’t deserve to be punished for having made an effort to do well in life, that’s the kind of people we need to encourage, not to discourage.
Every time such people see the “less well off” being given handouts while they are expected to make do… somehow… you make another group of people wonder “Why should I bother?”. And yet another group in education (or not long out of it will wonder) “Why should I have kids and find I can’t afford to pay for them when some random economic meltdown happens? The next 20 years is a long time”.
And the politicians wonder why the (indigenous) population is falling. Always more tax to pay for the life choices of the indolent, the under-achievers, the non-achievers, people who came here from abroad etc etc. No incentive to do well for the people who started out here.
October 16, 2022
+ many, XY – I worked many years into retirement. With hindsight, it was a foolish thing to do. Once retired you are expendable and not valued, so I should have enjoyed my retirement while I could instead of feeding the beast that wants rid of me.
A place in the Lords would maybe make me feel valued. I am sure I would be more useful than that undemocratic pit of self serving vipers.
October 16, 2022
XY – +1
It starts when the incompetent are rewarded for having children they don’t know how to look after and have no means of support for themselves let alone the child, the benefits system is set at a higher rate than the national living wage, if the money is to raise the child then why aren’t more questions asked when they fail at that one single job they’re paid to do? The less they look after the children they have the more they can get, from free taxi’s to school (half a million per week councils spend on this one – oh and the parent is probably getting mobility allowance to keep for themselves), a one-on-one assistant for the unruly, disruptive and barely out of nappy five year olds. We have to give them breakfast and lunch or they’ll starve. When we have interviews with these parents with two or three children lets hear the full benefits package – everything, rent, rates, help with school uniform, free school dinners 30% of children in the North East.
October 15, 2022
YES YES YES
October 15, 2022
It seems that most of your colleagues would be happier in the Labour Party. Why do they not just go there?
The Conservative Party clearly counts party membership a very low priority, or is singularly inefficient at dealing with it. I have had two letters telling me that due to a change in my card my subscription cannot be debited, and giving me a number to ring. I have done so more than once but get told they are very busy and email instead. I have done that too, but have had no reply after two weeks. Why can they not just email me the code I am told I need to subscribe online?
October 15, 2022
By the way, what is the point in a Conservative Party which is so infiltrated by lefties that whenever its right wing gains the ascendancy, its left immediately trashes the china shop?
This “broad church” thing has run its course. The manoeuvres by the left of the party show that the right are only kept in the party to avoid splitting teh vote – the left of the party will continue to play socialist politics to get elected and to stay in with the Davos crowd.
Bailey’s actions seem strange to me. A Sunak appointee, Bailey seems to have timed a number of actions (which on the surface appear incompetent) to have maximum disruptive effect in the economy. The announcement of bond buying strategy to coincide with the min budget, spooking markets and giving vredence to teh idea that the budget was responsible… no alarm bells ringing tehre?
This tells us that any right-wing PM in future MUST make sure that the administration is replaced as their first act, including the BoE governor and the OBR (who are now staffed by left-wing think tank types).
You may also need to consider the future of the party as a broad church. The Conservative brand is valuable, leaving is not the answer – ejecting the Lib Dems is. With Truss in place as PM, perhaps now is the time to remove the whip from the non-Spartan types and appoint new candidates, properly vetted as Conservatives via the associations, and accept the outcome of a GE. Making it quite clear that this is the party of old. Too many Lib Dem type candidates have been parachuted in over the years by Lib Dem type CCHQ chairmen – yet more infiltration by the socialists.
As things stand, I’ll be voting Reform UK at the next election. It’s the only party that has a chance to get a truly conservative agenda into action, rather than just as a manifesto on a piece of pre-election paper.
October 15, 2022
It would seem to me that the fall in gilt-edged bonds yesterday is owing to loss of confidence in the Conservative Government. I don’t think anyone knows how long the PM will survive. No one, including the gilt traders, knows who will be next PM and whether they will follow reaganomics, Johnson big spending cakeism or Osborne austerity. The three are not consistent and are difficult to combine. Meanwhile, Cabinet ministers are disagreeing about spending in interviews. Markets hate uncertainty and are pricing in risk.
When the Conservative Government decides what it stands for, the markets will make a more considered judgement of how risky it is to buy gilts from it.
October 15, 2022
How would you make ‘higher earners’ pay more for their energy. Sounds like an administrative nightmare. What would constitute a higher earner?
Why not do something constructive and cancel HS2 – which will be the biggest white elephant in history – and spend the money on an insulation / heating program. I’ll have a log burner please. I am already pretty well insulated. But I’m not fat and do feel the cold.
October 15, 2022
I think he means don’t let’s subsidise their bills. Just badly off people’s bills. It is a hugely expensive package. Most better off people would be consuming more, and therefore qualifying for a bigger subsidy. The idea of charging different people at different rates which is increasingly suggested, I don’t ike at all. Where does it stop?
October 16, 2022
Rose, the subsidy ends at £2500 pa gross energy bill, then it goes up fully for those in bigger properties.
October 15, 2022
Why? So foreigners own more of our businesses (and send the profits abroad) and more of our property! For heaven’s sake, WHY? Oh yea, I forgot – because we import so much we have to have money coming into the country to balance the large amounts going out because of the endless balance of payments deficit.
October 16, 2022
That is my bugbear too. We are selling off far more than the family silver. The whole country is up for sale, what is left of it!
October 15, 2022
The reason why the markets continued to sell was because the government still haven’t costed their plans yet, and also haven’t had the OBR’s feedback. Until they do the markets will be unstable.
October 15, 2022
151303Z
I’ve made the point often enough here and elsewhere: the taxation of business is the height of economic illiteracy. Businesses NEVER pay tax; only consumers do so: they have no-one to whom they can pass their tax bills on. A firm that failed to incorporate all its costs — including its tax burden — in to its prices would go out of business! Who fails to understand this is stupid beyond belief.
Whether C.T. be 19 or 25 per cent. therefore is irrelevant; the very concept is absurd. Only tax lawyers and accountants — paid as they are to find loopholes — benefit from business taxation; they’d be of more use to society sweeping streets or even cleaning school lavatories!
——
As to the Income Tax Additional Rate of 45 per cent. (A.R.): the ‘scrapping’ of it by Miss Truss and Mr. Kwarteng was nothing of the sort. Their action in the mini-budget merely corrected the error — perpetrated by Labour’s Alistair Darling — of creating it in March 2010.
The reversal of their corrective measure of three weeks ago, far from restoring some wonderful status quo ante, only repeats Mr. Darling’s error.
ΠΞ
October 15, 2022
The former Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, has said the UK should make Corporation Tax a “much lesser tax”, and instead to introduce a “tax on corporate sales”
I support the idea of a ‘tax on corporate sales’
October 16, 2022
Exactly – and why was the government incapable of communicating that basic fact when some Tory MPs started fulminating about how the ‘poor’ might resent it?
There is something wrong with the existing franchise when the vote of the taxpayer-subsidised economically inactive can dictate government fiscal policy.
October 15, 2022
Is anyone apart from me thinking there is something funny happening in Westminster and the media?
They’ve removed Boris, and now they are going to remove Truss.
The Rejoin movement has gained a lot more funding and some of it comes from abroad. Is anyone checking up on this?
October 15, 2022
Truss,Boris and May are educated people,how come they haven’t a clue between them. It’s about time governments, ministers and Mp’s are made to pay first for their mistakes before they focus on the general public.
The PM ,cabinet and Mp’s should have their pay reduced by 50% after all it’s a partime Job,how else could Boris go to Colarado, maybe he just put holidays in or went on a weekend. The next step is to change their pension from gold plated to defined contribution. Only
when Mp’s understand they will be hit in the pocket they will begin to make sensible decisions, until then it will be businesses as usual and screw the tax payer. Sir John likes to say “Mp’s work to make people’s lives better”, it will be more like a spoonful of sugar will make our medicine go down. Time for the nasty party to go, just 2 more years and they’ll be gone.
October 16, 2022
but have you seen the price of sugar?
October 15, 2022
Just read your bit in the Express.
It’s a great idea to have a basic amount of KWHs
free or very cheap.
( don’t know how gas works ).
Also get them to make the service charge kick in after the cheap rate changes to dearer rate
I’m on an economy rate ie different rates for different times.
BUT
The service charges cost more monthly than my dearer rate usage.
This means you can’t really cut your bill.
Also the dearer rate is higher than “The Gov mandated Cap”
This no doubt sounds like double dutch.
Eyes glaze over
The pricing system I’m sure is wilfully confusing
And why the whole £2, 500 cap thing was not widely understood.
October 15, 2022
This government could pass a law scrapping the energy standing charge and impose a single tariff. …Simple for the consumer, you just pay for what you use like any other commodity
October 15, 2022
Yes indeed and it’s worth pointing out that is small businesses that will be hit hardest by the corporation tax increase. SMEs are the main engine of growth in the UK economy and they should not be hit. SMEs also suffer from the high energy costs. And the way that Rishi Sunak implemented furloughing favoured public sector employees the most (with many such as judges retaining full salary in spite of being idle because juries were banned), then corporations, then SMEs and finally the self employed.
October 16, 2022
@Lindsay McDougall +1, So very true. The SME’s cant escape, yet the biggest consumers of UK resources and the ones that receive the greatest income from them, the large corporates, escape the punishment dished out by Government.
The UK’s future is in its SME’s but they have to subsidies the big multi-nationals – the UK Government is enforcing decline on the UK. The SME’s are not part of the WEF so have no voice.
October 15, 2022
What most respected about Margaret Thatcher was that she did not waste time rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic, she patched the hole. Her party have had twelve years this time, and yet managed less than she did in her first term.
All we have seen under Truss is Chancellors trying to work out new ways to slice the pie, as if that can somehow give everyone a larger piece. They should be focusing on making it bigger.
October 15, 2022
Truss does not have the persona of leadership and her recent performance – post the sacking of Kwarteng , was pathetic to say the least . Market stability is essential if investment is to be encouraged ; without this the much needed growth will not happen .
October 15, 2022
“sadly our health systems are not treating people as promptly now as they were in the past, and that sadly means people with other conditions are becoming more unwell and unable to work.” A very public speach from the politically neutral Andrew Bailey to the politically neutral IMF
October 15, 2022
He added that letting corporation tax rise to 25pc, from 19pc to bring in more government revenues was an “important measure”
This surely is a tragic comedy unfolding
October 15, 2022
Completely dismayed, JR, by some of the utterances of Jeremy Hunt. The increase rather than reduction in corporation tax, and the threat to defence spending when we are in the midst of an expensive war in Europe is beyond comprehension. These are just two of a litany of proposals that are wholly inconsistent with encouraging growth and reducing debt.
October 15, 2022
Hunt did an excellent job of austeritising the NHS to a standstill as per the 2010 Osborne austerity plan. Will he now claim “there is no money left” (Liam Byrne style); and proclaim, there is now no option left but to raise some cash by selling off the NHS, to a bunch of private equity fund bandits; what we used to call “asset strippers” in the old days.
Private Equity Funds have been gifted tax loopholes by politicians who lobbied for them, such that you won’t find any UK or US politician complaining about their antics. For instance; why pay income tax when your income can be classed as “carried interest” and taxed as capital gains at much lower rates.
October 15, 2022
But spending on the NHS has risen every year acorn.
Austerity is a lefty myth.
October 17, 2022
I just hope for you that you will not need a treatment requiring a NHS hospitalisation in the coming weeks/months.
October 19, 2022
Thanks heffy
You too
I was correct in what I said.
acorn said the NHS was “austeritised to a standstill”..which is a
ridiculous hyperbole.
It needs calling out
As you are keen on facts and accuracy I’m sure you fully agree.
October 16, 2022
Hold on acorn, Boris said he NHS by 2024 will have completed its £1bn per week extra spending, it already had its £350 million per week, May saw to that. What the heck are you talking about, give us the source that the NHS is getting austerity because I don’t believe you!
October 15, 2022
Is Andrew Bailey asleep at the wheel? The whole world knew about the potential pension fund liquidity problems inherent in the complacently sold LDI products – no better than the slice-and-dice junk bonds that kicked off the 2008 banking crisis. This is what has caused the rising gilt yields.
October 15, 2022
More bad news! FGS isn’t ANYONE interested in caring for our country? I really despair at this so called government. What a bunch of absolute imbeciles! I thought the EU was bad, but this lot beat them hands down! Is it deliberate??????
I am sorry to deride your party Sir John, but even you must be full of despair at the ruination of our once great country at the hands of these traitors to our country.
October 15, 2022
It is called decadence, or too much peace and prosperity. Very sad fact.
October 15, 2022
As one of the political journalists has just tweeted the labour party is now officially in favour of more of the tax cuts that were in the mini budget than the conservative party is. Absolutely hilarious, could not make it up. And labour officially want less immigration than the government. What on earth is the conservative party thinking?
October 16, 2022
Iain, did Labour say who would pay for the tax cuts? They certainly don’t support SMEs. Their political founders want SMEs out of the way.
October 16, 2022
An utter UTTER disregard by the 80 seat majority Tories for the people who voted for them.
They weasel out of turning right as soon as they are elected. What was the first thing said ? Ah yes, “We realise that the Red Wall votes are only borrowed.”
From that first utterance I knew we were f*@#&% !
October 15, 2022
There seems to me to be no other way of interpreting this sudden sabotage of the growth strategy other than that it is to stop us prospering as an independentn sovereign nation. And there is only one way to interpret the motive, to get us to crawl back into the EU on any terms they dictate.
October 15, 2022
It seems to me that more and more people are owning up to thinking the growth statement rather a good thing, and realizing at the same time that the waffling Mrs Olney and Rachel Reeves haven’t been able to find much wrong with it; on the contrary they would probably have kept most of it intact. Why oh why couldn’t everyone have been awake at the time it was being sabotaged? It is the greatest tragedy for the country.
October 16, 2022
I think the biggest problem with it is that Truss said she would sweep away all the EU stuff by year end. Many with plans to get us back in couldn’t live with that. Is this the real reason? On the other hand she seems to have signed us up to the EU army, but no-one can actually find out if that is the case. It has been buried in all this latest nonsense.
October 15, 2022
Dear Sir John,
You are on the money as ever. But let us not forget that Jeremy Hunt recommended 15% corporation tax in his leadership campaign. Everything is changeable; everything is dynamic; everyone is persuadable. Keep up the great work you’re doing.
I cannot say I am sorry that Kwarteng has gone. I support some of his policy initiatives, but his presentation, timing, and choice of policies to make central to his mini budget was bizarre. He was not a strong member of Truss’s team and we must give Hunt a chance of being a better one.
Best,
SR
October 15, 2022
The latest joke doing the rounds. A picture of a Christmas tree with the caption Only 2 more PMS until Christmas.
Seems the Tory party is one big joke.
October 15, 2022
Has the Prime Minister now joined her newly discovered Anti-Growth Coalition? It would seem so as the two main mini-budget measures designed to promote growth, not raising Corporation Tax and abolishing the highest rate of Income Tax have both been abandoned.
No wonder most people have no trust in politicians. Too often they say or promise one thing and do the opposite – Sunak, Truss and Hunt (who emphasised in two recent leadership elections he fervently wanted for cogent reasons to cut Corporation Tax) all said they wanted lower taxes but when it came to action put taxes up. If a commercial company (say a holiday company) did that it would be sued for breach of contract and have to pay damages to customers.
After all this many Conservative M.P.s have the nerve to blame Conservative Party members for their mess and want to eliminate members’ right to vote for their Party Leader. Who threw out Boris Johnson? Who eliminated the best (or least bad) candidates in the first two rounds of their M.P.s ballot? Who put up two useless, and as is now apparent lying or incompetent candidates for the party members to choose between? Have those M.P.s got no shame?
October 16, 2022
Well that’s definitely it for me. I shall officially join the Reform party tomorrow. There is nothing to lose and everything to gain. Please John can you and some other true Conservatives jump ship and join too?
October 16, 2022
161216Z
On the subject of Corporation Tax, there is one type of firm that actually pays it: the exporter (in fact his foreign customers).
The exporting firm too must inflate its prices by the amount of its tax cost but, for that very reason, is not one on which one would want to heap such a burden. Although these funds do accrue to the British Treasury, the firm’s having to sell at higher prices makes it uncompetitive, when we really want it to have any advantage it can in the global marketplace.
So there it is: every country is reaping nothing from her business taxes whilst beggaring her exporters’ efforts to generate income for employees and stockholders in particular and the country in general.
‘Export or die’ was once Britain’s economic motto; Even Harold Wilson lost no opportunity to promote the idea.
ΠΞ
October 16, 2022
The truth is only the big boys can afford to be radical and get away with uprooting orthodoxy.
The writing was on the wall for Truss when Biden tweeted how he had had enough of trickle down economics.
If Reagan was in the White House, like Thatcher she would have got her reforms through.
Instead the orthodoxy has swotted her away like an annoying fly. Given Biden is in the White House, she should have resisted the shock and awe tactics and just quietly cut taxes over the next 2 years.
Patience, as Graham Green wrote, we never have enough Patience.
October 16, 2022
I’m all for millionaires and billionaires – good luck to them.
But what about the middle classes suffering (as well as the working classes)?
Ms Truss’ tax cuts were designed for the super rich (like the gambling and incompetent City boys who had to be bailed out and others) – and makes practically zero difference to them whether they’re paying now – 40% or 45% (or course in long-term, want to get tax down for EVERYONE).
We need to help the middle classes (and working classes) and the small to medium businesses and entrepreneurs in particular in the High Tech industry to grow the economy.
Ms Truss’ economic policy was bad both for the economy and for getting the Tories back into power in next election where Labour now have a much stronger hand to play.
October 16, 2022
161724Z
“Biden calls Truss’s economic policies ‘a mistake'” — B.B.C. headline
For my money Neville Bidelain’s calling the P.M.’s policies a mistake is as good as an endorsement of them by Jesus Himself!
ΠΞ
October 16, 2022
Good evening Sir John and all .
Well this is a fine old mess . Our prime minister and chancellor were in my opion right to focus on growth and tax cuts . However right from the off it should have been phased in tax cuts .
Corporation tax for example 2% per year reversal .from April 25 % to 23% . Speeding up cuts or slowing them down as the economy and growth dictated . Same with 45p rate, dropped in April to 44p for 12 months , then reavaluated after April 2024 .
The City would have gone for that and so would the BoE , instead it was all or nothing . This is school boy/girl error stuf . Who advses these people ?
Lord only knows what on earth you think Mr Hunt is going to do apart from get every single tory voter to abstain at the next election , as he will cause havoc .
With huge regret this is now game over .
October 16, 2022
I’m a complete thicko when it comes to economic budgets and stuff like that but even I get what you’re saying – and agree. Ms Truss and Kwasi’s approach was completely amateur stuff. He a rush to his head. And she, a rigid thinker. It’s only a question of time now when the Tories and Media go after her – hard – including Tory Media.
October 17, 2022
We are being asked to wear hair shirts.
About two-thirds of the £45bn of unfunded tax cuts in Kwarteng’s mini-Budget will be binned. NICs and stamp duty are the survivors.
Spending cuts are still being discussed. Perhaps we need to look at how the EU raise their extra fines to fill their black holes. The EU fined the UK for not paying across the correct amount of money to the EU on Chinese imports by textile and footwear manufacturers in the UK, they took us to court and gave us the information they used to fine us. Have we passed the fine on to the companies involved? Who are the companies involved? It is over £2bn. So there is a big saving.
NHS waiting times – The latest figures for August 2022 show:
a record of over 7 million people waiting for treatment
2.75 million patients waiting over 18 weeks for treatment, a further increase from last month
387,257 patients waiting over a year for treatment – which is over 375 times the 1,032 people waiting over a year pre-pandemic in July 2019
a median waiting time for treatment of 13.8 weeks – significantly higher than the pre-COVID duration.
I’d want to focus on the worst-case scenario – What operations are the 387,257 patients waiting for? Are they evenly split across all regions and hospitals? Are they urgent operations or non-urgent? If they are non-urgent, what types of operations are they? What is the age of the patients waiting? Are all the patients waiting British, with NI numbers?
Is anyone on the waiting list on a GHIC or EHIC card, is the cost of their operation re-billable back to the EU? Could the private hospitals do them and rebill the other Countries as they rebill the UK?
October 21, 2022
Anybody having access to the history of the currency markets can check, eg xe.com
Exchange £/$
22/09 18:00 1.126625
23/09 00:00 1.125512
23/09 03:00 1.125469
23/09 06:00 1.123252
23/09 09:00 1.102620
23/09 12:00 1.102620
23/09 15:00 1.090493
23/09 18:00 1.089701
23/09 21:00 1:084340
…
26/09 06:00 1.053163 the minimum before the BoE reacted.
As I don’t think you are incompetent, why were you concentrating your blah blah blah on bonds when the currency took such a beating on the day of and just after the announcement of the ‘mini-budget’? Any exporter would have been concerned about the currency exchange. I doubt they would have been about the bond market.
October 21, 2022
And anyway your repeated points about bonds are futile. Please explain why mortgage rates went up from 1.6 to 6+% and pension pots got a thrashing if KK’s mini-budget was so innocent. Why has the inflation rate in France been between 3 and 4.5% lower than in the UK month after month since the beginning of 2022? You cannot have it both ways.
As soon as people compare the content of your posts to external independent information you are shown to have a very biased way of reporting such comparisons. Whether you are dishonest and simply show the ‘normal’ behaviour of a radical right-wing CUP politician still enamoured with ideas introduced after the Chilean 9/11 is a moot point.