Burnham

[First Aspect]

I am wondering where the idea of a flat 10% IHT with fewer loopholes went, to pay for it. Seemed to me to be the sort of level most people would grumble about but not that much, whilst bringing in more than a 40% level that people perform accounting contortions to avoid.

 

[briantrumpet]

I am wondering where the idea of a flat 10% IHT with fewer loopholes went, to pay for it. Seemed to me to be the sort of level most people would grumble about but not that much, whilst bringing in more than a 40% level that people perform accounting contortions to avoid.

I've no idea of the details, but he's already made himself a hostage to fortune, I suspect, with the general thrusts of his speech (not least electoral reform). I assume he's left himself/the government plenty of leeway from now till the 2029 election to announce specifics (some through Budgets), and then will look for a mandate for chunkier stuff at the election.

 

[First Aspect]

I've no idea of the details, but he's already made himself a hostage to fortune, I suspect, with the general thrusts of his speech (not least electoral reform). I assume he's left himself/the government plenty of leeway from now till the 2029 election to announce specifics (some through Budgets), and then will look for a mandate for chunkier stuff at the election.

The good thing about electoral reform is that most people won't care about the details, or understand them if they do care. It will also take well into the next parliament or later to put into effect, so may never happen.

He seems more serious about the social care issue, and is hanging his hat on enough people realising its needed. I hope he's right to be honest.

 

[briantrumpet]

The good thing about electoral reform is that most people won't care about the details, or understand them if they do care. It will also take well into the next parliament or later to put into effect, so may never happen.

He seems more serious about the social care issue, and is hanging his hat on enough people realising its needed. I hope he's right to be honest.

I think the three big takeaway 'promises' – electoral reform, social care, and relationship with the EU – could help get them over the line at the next election, if they don't screw up otherwise (far from a given, given world politics/economics). And I think all three are things where an electorate might actually be receptive to constructive change, rather than the negative backwards-looking destructiveness of Reform etc.

In the end, negativity just eats people up and turns them into narrow-minded bigots, and (I'd like to think, at least) that things that suggest "we could do this better" might at last have some appeal. Who knows? But I guess we'll find out.

 

[First Aspect]

Yeah relationship with the EU is a biggie. The Brexiteers only ever really had their sights set on the US relationship, which went from ambivalent to hostile in the past 6 years.

It's time to stop all the nonsense talk about red lines thst Starmer mistakenly thought was still popular.

 

[briantrumpet]

Yeah relationship with the EU is a biggie. The Brexiteers only ever really had their sights set on the US relationship, which went from ambivalent to hostile in the past 6 years.

It's time to stop all the nonsense talk about red lines thst Starmer mistakenly thought was still popular.

Yup. I think that's maybe one reason Dunt is happy, sensing that the red lines are going to disappear. I saw something about Glasman and his dogma that 'his' working class were *still* best served by Brexit red lines, despite all the evidence to the contrary, and he came over as even more of an utter crank welded to the 1970s and a fictional 'working class' Labour Party that has no space for not-working-class intellectual types.

 

[briantrumpet]

What's happening with Ed Davey? He seems to be losing a sense of direction... he's been doubling down on his suggested cut of 10p on fuel duty just while the planet is burning, there's a shortage of fuel, and carbon emissions are declining, and now he's just going for cheap shots at speech that seems to have been generally well received by the not-right (though Caroline Lucas's only post is a bit of "Why didn't he do this specific thing?" carping), and includes stuff like voting change that he's supposedly in favour of.