Edward Carter @EdCarter123

One of the things I really like about Americans is how often they'll strike up conversation with you as a stranger. It's usually about something pretty substantive as well, like their favourite thing to order at the restaurant you're queuing for or what they've been doing that day. It just makes daily life much more interesting and varied over there.

Browder: I know Putin pretty well. He's not a guy who comes with his tail between his legs. He's ready to commit the most horrific crimes to show he is a brutal, terrible adversary. Just because he's getting hammered doesn't mean he's going to give up. Not him. 1/

I'm not sure either I or the economy can cope with a third consecutive summer of 'Oh god no please don't do this mad thing they're reporting'

I hope Starmer is miserable He deserves it I can't think of a politician who I have disliked more and that includes Osborne

This is an outrageous, disgraceful smear on John Healey — and an outright lie. There are a ton of ways to finance more for defence — starting with net zero — without taking a penny from schools or hospitals. Reeves should be ashamed of herself for allowing this nonsense. Suggests she’s really desperate.

Politics UK @PolitlcsUK

a month ago

🚨 NEW: A Treasury source attacks John Healey for resigning as Defence Secretary "Let's be clear on what John is asking for: cuts to schools and hospitals" h/t @e_casalicchio

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My thoughts on social housing and building in inner London: - Almost everyone who lives in social housing is a decent human being who is trying their best in often difficult circumstances. Among them are many retirees, kids, and people with disabilities. This must be the starting point for any serious thinking about housing in London. - London's job market is much stronger than that of the rest of the country. The median London wage is 25% more than the median English wage. The easier we make it for Britons to move to London, the richer they and the country will become. - Housing in inner London is extremely scarce and building rates are very low. In 2024–25, only 4,170 homes were started in London. London's housing target is 20x that and I think it's possible that we could build 100–150x that with the right reforms. - For now, we are in a roughly zero-sum game (which is one reason tensions are so high). We need to make this positive-sum by building more and by allowing voluntary exchanges of the existing housing stock. - There are about 450,000 socially rented homes in inner London. This is about one in three homes. About half of the 450,000 are occupied by lead tenants who are not working, either because they are retired (18%), disabled (13%), caring for someone else (7%), studying (2%), or unemployed/otherwise inactive (11%). - Social housing tenancies are basically tenancies-for-life, and can often pass down from parents to their children. They are close in practice to ownership, except that they cannot be sold. Ex-council flats in inner London are often worth £500,000 or more; there are many in extremely central parts of the city like Shoreditch, Soho and Farringdon that are worth even more than that. - Kicking people out of these homes against their will is, in general, morally bad and politically impossible. The public does not resent these people and would, rightly, find it appalling to turf them out of their homes against their will. - 'Gentrification' is a problem when it drives people out against their will by raising rents or other costs. It is primarily a problem caused by housing shortages. When housing supply can respond to new demand in an area, there is much less displacement of the people who live there. - Poor people do not like dirt, graffiti, crime, or derelict buildings, and many of their supposed champions have a patronising and somewhat dehumanising idea of what is in their interests. They do not want to live in unsafe, unpleasant areas any more than anyone else does. Change that makes places safer, cleaner and prettier without displacing existing residents is a good thing for everyone. - Large supermarkets are the cheapest places to buy food in London and allowing them to be built is the best way to protect people's access to affordable retail. - There are options that are good for tenants and good for people who wish to live in these central areas that do not push people out against their will. These are options that put tenants in control and give them a large share of the value created. At best, they reduce scarcity overall. - One is to make the social housing stock much more liquid by allowing social housing tenants to sell their tenancies into private ownership, keeping the returns to spend on a new property that is more suitable for their needs and the rest as savings. - Arguments against this that focus on the fact that many of the out-of-work people are blameless completely miss the point. For retirees, parents, and some people with disabilities, a home in a London suburb or a town other than London may be preferable to an apartment in inner London – more spacious, easier to access (eg, not up flights of stairs), and in a quieter neighbourhood. Existing schemes to allow people to trade their social home for a home by the seaside or in the country are hugely oversubscribed; this would unlock the entire private market to them. - Private owners already have the freedom to sell their home to who they want. That is one of the core benefits of private ownership. This extends that right to social tenants. - Another option is 'estate regeneration', where entire housing estates are rebuilt and existing tenants are given larger, newer homes built to modern standards and thousands of private units also added. Where tenants are given a vote on this, they consistently vote in favour (29/30 ballots have passed, often with enormous majorities and turnouts.) Hundreds of thousands of homes could be added in this way. - A vast amount of regulation also needs to be reversed – the Building Safety Regulator, second staircase rules, dual aspect rules, and others – in order to make building cheaper. Otherwise, we will find ourselves in a position where even if you get permission to build a home it is prohibitively expensive to do so. - Affordable housing requirements are a tax on new housing and almost certainly reduce the overall amount of homes that get built. Manchester has built thousands of new homes without them. Richard Leese, the Labour leader of the City Council, said "If we’d tried to impose 20% affordability on it, it wouldn’t have happened. We wouldn’t have got 20% affordable housing, we would have got nothing." - Many of the most vocal foes of new building in inner London are ideological opponents of private construction and cannot be reasoned or bargained with. Defeating them will involve a combination of targeted upzoning imposed by central government and the creation of hyperlocal mechanisms that allow the people who are most directly affected by new development to decide on it (eg, estate regeneration). The anti-building ideologues only win because normal people sympathise with them. - If we do not do not work to make the existing housing stock more easily transacted and building much easier, London will become hollowed out. Existing market-rate housing will be bid up by wealthy people who can afford it, and anyone on a middle income – let alone a low income who does not have a social home – will find it very difficult to live here, except in cramped houseshares when they are young. London should not be a city for only the very poor and very rich.

I don’t really see why anyone would want to work for or invest in a startup in Britain under these tax rates. It’s already a pretty risky proposition, employees already pay income tax and NICs when equity vests, and then nearly half of any gains after that are taxed as well?

Steven Swinford @Steven_Swinford

2 months ago

Wes Streeting has this morning set out his tax plans - specifically bringing capital gains tax into line with income tax He says that the current system is unfair because it penalises work Higher or additional rate taxpayers will pay 24% on gains in the current financial year.

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The average British salary should be £65,000. It's £34,000. Fifty years of political failure. One plan to fix it. The SDP's Investment State documentary, out now:

BREAKING: Top investors warn Britain faces a Liz Truss-style bond market revolt if Labour ousts Keir Starmer Michael Pfister, FX strategist at Commerzbank: “The goal of a balanced budget is likely to falter should a less fiscally conservative candidate take over. And in recent years, we have repeatedly seen situations where the British government bond markets came under pressure and the pound followed suit. This time, the situation is unlikely to be any different.” Cathal Kennedy, senior UK economist at RBC Capital Markets: “I think this morning there is a 2022 feel toward this, with the Prime Minister carrying on as normal while all indications show he has lost his authority in the party.” Craig Inches, head of rates and cash at Royal London Asset Management Ltd: “The market is now pricing almost four rate hikes for the UK which it can’t withstand. Whoever replaces Starmer will not be able to borrow more money via gilts regardless of what they say.” Mohit Kumar, chief economist and strategist for Europe at Jefferies: “Any replacement would likely be left-leaning and be negative for the long end of the curve and the currency. We maintain our steepeners and short position in sterling.” Jordan Rochester and Evelyne Gomez at Mizuho: “We’ve been looking for 10 year UK gilts to sell off towards 5.15% by year end for quite some time, but this political drama accelerates the timeline, and we could see a move toward 5.20% until the political situation is settled and/or 5.35% in extreme stress.” Laura Cooper, global investment strategist and head of macro credit at Nuveen: “Gilts are increasingly behaving like a real-time referendum on fiscal and political credibility, aggravated by the recent move higher in oil prices.” Roger Lee, head of equity strategy at Cavendish: “Even if Starmer resigns the political uncertainty is unlikely to end as internal rivalry within the Labour Party ramps up. To stabilize the gilt market the government may have to commit to the fiscal rules and the only candidate seemingly prepared to do that is Wes Streeting.” James Athey, fund manager at Marlborough Investment Management Ltd: “The last thing that Gilts needed was weakness in the US treasury market. Now we’ve got potential for the ceasefire to collapse, the US doing some fiscal expansion all on top of the utter domestic shambles that is UK politics.”

Top tip. Rent a big flat in Chelsea now. Wait for rent controls and inflation to make your payments effectively peppercorn. Illegally sublet the flat at market rate. Retire to the country. Tried and tested all over the world. Can't lose!

The best wealth tax is a massive increase in housebuilding. -> Property is largest source of UK wealth -> Most actually doable wealth taxes boil down to taxing property anyway -> More supply = lower house prices = more people on ladder, lower cost of living, wealth democratised

Jesus Henry Christ. Do these people not realise what they’re doing to the housing market?

Joe Hill @jo3hill

2 months ago

Not satisfied with the damage to the housing market from the Building Safety Regulator and Second Staircase rule, MGCLG are consulting on a requirement for evacuation lifts for buildings above six stories. This will all but kill construction in London. gov.uk/government/con…

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Only two years ago Labour pledged to allow 1.5 million homes to be built during this Parliament. Among people I know, one of the main reasons to vote Labour was the hope that they would build some houses. Since then, only ~217k new homes have been completed in England. Housing starts have fallen to their lowest in over a decade – even lower than during Covid. Housebuilding in London is down by 75% – to 5,891 starts in 2025 compared to a target of 88,000. This failure is shared by the Conservatives, who introduced a swathe of terrible building safety regulations after Grenfell that have made it impossible to build in London (and have, incidentally, helped to ruin many leaseholders as well). But Labour hasn't touched these rules. And it has done nothing of note to make it easier to build in other ways. It has also passed a Renters' Rights Act that locks landlords into tenants indefinitely unless they sell or move back in to the property. Tenants can challenge any rent rise, and face no penalty for wrongful claims (under the old system, they faced the risk of their rent being raised, which cannot happen anymore). The law even introduces de facto rent controls by allowing new tenants to immediately challenge rents they have just agreed to. It is designed to clog up the tribunals, and tenants have every incentive to challenge rent rises under any circumstance. The natural response of landlords has been to leave the market ever since these rules were first floated (again, under the Conservatives). That has driven rents up even higher and made it harder to find places to rent. Today the trend is so obvious that the government is now floating *explicit* rent controls, on top of the de facto ones introduced in the Renters' Rights Act. The doom spiral we are in is pretty clear: - Do nothing significant to expand housing supply; - Introduce "renters' rights" that make it much riskier and costlier to be a landlord; - When landlords sell their properties, driving up rents and the scarcity of rented homes, introduce 'temporary' rent controls. ← You are here - With an election looming, extend the rent controls so they are de facto permanent. - As even more landlords sell to flee the market, introduce a ban on selling rental properties into owner-occupation. - You have now expropriated 19% of the English housing market, and destroyed the build-to-let sector altogether. If I was a landlord, I would sell to get out of the market ASAP while it's still possible. For renters, this will make it even harder to find decent places to live and move around when circumstances change (eg, you have a new job or want to start a family). Much of the British left seems intent on destroying the private rental market. But Labour has also managed to preside over the worst collapse in housebuilding in modern times, apart from the financial crisis, after campaigning on promises to expand it. An abject failure in almost every way.

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“The irony of all this is that Britain’s wholesale abandonment of hard power has, in fact, undermined our soft power and the moral force of our example on the world stage. Diplomats from other nations’ foreign ministries I am in touch with are astonished and aghast at how weak and frankly naive UK foreign policy has become. At a time when we should be investing in warships and fortifying our bases, we’re invested in anti-colonialism dialogues and giving our bases away.” ✍🏻 Me for @spikedonline spiked-online.com/2026/04/14/why…

Defence should be a first-order, top-tier priority for any serious government. By that reckoning, we have not had serious governments for a long time. But Starmer promised seriousness and nowhere has he disappointed more than on defence.

Sky News @SkyNews

3 months ago

Senior defence officials are meeting this week to find £3.5bn of cuts this year amid calls for increased funding, @SamCoatesSky exclusively reveals. Get the full story on the latest episode of #PASAA, wherever you get your podcasts 👉 podfollow.com/politics-at-sa…

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One of the hardest conversations to have in this country is about pensions and welfare spending. It’s because the moment you raise them, people assume you’re attacking pensioners or the vulnerable. So let me be clear before I go any further. This isn’t an argument against supporting people who need it. It’s a question about whether the system that provides that support can survive in its current form. Because if it can’t, the people who depend on it the most are the ones who get hurt first. That’s why this conversation matters. Now the numbers… The government raises roughly £1.2 trillion a year in total receipts. Here’s where it comes from. £329 billion from income tax. £200 billion from National Insurance. £214 billion from VAT. £105 billion from corporation tax. £50 billion from council tax. Plus fuel duty, stamp duty, alcohol and tobacco duties, inheritance tax, capital gains tax, and everything else. The welfare bill is £333 billion. Every penny raised from income tax, the single largest source of government revenue, doesn’t cover it. The welfare bill is larger than income tax receipts. Combine income tax and National Insurance and you get roughly £529 billion. Welfare takes £333 billion of that. Debt interest takes another £114 billion. That’s £447 billion gone before a single pound goes to the NHS, schools, police, defence, roads, or anything else. Those two items alone consume 85% of everything raised through income tax and NI combined. Everything else the government does has to be funded from VAT, corporation tax, council tax, and every other levy. And here’s the thing people don’t always connect. You pay those too. VAT is 20% on almost everything you buy. Employer National Insurance, just raised to 15%, gets passed on through higher prices and lower wages. Corporation tax gets passed on through the cost of goods and services. Council tax comes straight out of your household budget. Fuel duty, insurance premium tax, alcohol duty, tobacco duty. It all comes back to you. The tax burden is at its highest level since the 1940s. Income tax thresholds have been frozen since 2021, dragging millions more people into higher tax brackets without anyone voting for a tax rise. There are now 39 million income tax payers, up from 33 million just four years ago. Six million more people paying income tax. And it’s still not enough. Welfare spending rose by £18 billion this year alone. The two biggest drivers are the triple lock on pensions, which has added £21 billion since 2019, and disability and incapacity benefits, which have added £24 billion in the same period. Both rising faster than the economy that funds them. The two-child benefit cap was just lifted at a cost of £3 billion a year. Whether you think that’s the right call or not, it’s another £3 billion added to a bill that already exceeds total income tax receipts. And that’s the pattern. Every individual spending commitment has a justification. The total is unsustainable. And anyone who tries to talk about the total gets dragged into an argument about the individual line items. None of this is an argument for pulling support from people who need it. It’s an argument for being honest about whether the current system can continue to provide it. Because right now, it can’t. Everyone who’s looked at the numbers honestly knows it can’t. The OBR knows it. The IFS knows it. The Treasury knows it. The cruellest thing we can do is pretend it’s all fine and let people plan their lives around promises that won’t be kept. The woman relying on her state pension at 67. The carer who needs the system to be there. The disabled person who depends on support that’s already under political pressure. They deserve honesty more than anyone. But we can’t get to honesty because the conversation gets shut down before it starts. And the people who benefit most from that silence aren’t the vulnerable. It’s the politicians who’d rather nobody looked at the numbers too closely.

Good to see our salt story followed up here👇 The slow motion collapse (actually no longer slow motion) of Britain's chemicals industry is a BIG deal. But NB it's not just salt. Ammonia, sulphuric acid, ethanol, and a host of other foundational chemicals too. All going or gone

spiked @spikedonline

4 months ago

The factory that produces half of Britain’s salt could soon be killed by Net Zero. For the first time in history, England is set to be a net importer of the world’s most important mineral. This will be catastrophic for UK manufacturing, says Ruari McCallion

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UK electricity generation has fallen 25% from its peak in 2004. Per capita electricity consumption is a third the level of the United States. The UK has the most costly electricity in the world. Half the gas we consume comes from the Norwegian side of the North Sea basin. The residual imported LNG has 4x the carbon footprint of supplying our own. And most depressingly of all the result is a deteriorating UK Balance of Payments, a weaker pound, and a bigger hit to the cost of living. And still the useful idiots want to further constrain UK energy production through high taxes, banning new licences, and gold-plating new energy infrastructure. Their luxury beliefs are behind the awful household disposable income growth of recent years. 🤡.

The problem Tories and Reform have in actually solving the UK's problems: We NEED TO GET WELFARE DOWN--> main driver = pensions --> scrap triple lock --> voter base = 😡 We NEED BRITS TO STAY --> main driver = high housing forcing brits to leave --> build more housing --> voter base = 😡 We NEED CHEAPER POWER --> main driver = lack of grid connections + power stations --> building pylons, solar farms and nuclear --> voter base = 😡 We NEED LOWER TAXES --> main driver = low taxes on very, very high earners and really high tax-free personal allowance --> freeze personal allowance and raise rates on £250k --> voter base = 😡