Thread 25 Starmer - Cheers for a falling out among thieves

[DuncinToffee]

Previous thread

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5338688-thread-24-starmer-casting-the-net-wider?

God Brexit. Such a stupid idea. No one benefit can be named.

9 years since the vote and still searching

The only benefit seems to have been the total destruction of the Conservative Party; but even then the replacement outfit may be far worse.

Polls last week (averages)

Reform 29
Labour 24
Conservative 17
Lib Dem 14

Enjoy the unelected Lord Hannan, godfather of Brexit

https://bsky.app/profile/ledbydonkeys.org/post/3lsawxu5ecs23

The only one I could think of was not paying Nigel Farage out of the public purse, but that does not apply now.

It’s so bloody stupid. Take that example of pharma and biotech.

The UK cannot seriously deregulate a lot of it’s requirements for pharma for two reasons 1) it’s spent years building its reputation as a world leader on quality and research 2) on its doorstep are very similar economies with basically the same standards.

Brexit is a joke. We can put our standards in, it becomes a further cost to business who don’t want to spend more money complying with new standards. They end up relocating elsewhere. I sometimes think it was solely voted for by people who didn’t realise Britain was so integrated - it wasn’t like it would be easy.

I really shouldn't post on the private education threads. I get very annoyed...

Hasn’t all that VAT stuff been sorted? I don’t oppose private education but the VAT policy seems fair to me.

His MEP pension as well

Surely the warm sense of "I told you so" makes up for it ?

I mean the amount of energy that went into creating their "argument" ... if they had applied 1/100th of that to their day jobs, the UK would be world beating.

I read those threads for entertainment value, like the royal family ones

My favourite one was that the policy was against the human rights act. Or it offended A1 P1. Er no

Reform's latest idea

Reform UK is proposing a "Britannia card" that would let wealthy foreigners pay a £250k fee to move to the UK, and live here exempt from all tax on their foreign assets

What they don't say: it would cost the UK £34bn

https://bsky.app/profile/danneidle.bsky.social/post/3lsb57ipdwz2p

Ah, Farage really is on the side of the ordinary person, isn't he?

Are they serious?

Well you can’t fault Reform: they are appealing to people and saying their vote is worth 600 quid. Pretty cheap. Do they get it every year?

So under Reform's proposal we lose £34 billion over 5 years.

To pay for that presumably they will have to cut public services OR raise taxes. So which is it?

Lets ignore any nonsense about cutting Net Zero to fund this a) they've spent that same money umpteen different ways already and b) more importantly, as explained in the Institute of Goverment Paying for Net Zero paper, most of the net zero infrastructure investment will actually come from the private sector so the Government savings wouldn't come from here.

A general election is a long way off. A general election campaign will mean some scrutiny of the Reform manifesto, though never enough for them or all political parties. Enough people will hopefully realise it is fantasy economics and be put off by comparisons with Liz Truss's 'fiscal event'.

Aside from the economic cost of Brexit there is the matter of the huge waste of Parliamentary time and effort which should have been better directed towards governing.

I can't help but think that if they'd spent less time directing their energies keeping Farage and the ERG etc happy and a bit more on trying to offset the increasingly evident impact of austerity on public services we would have been in a better position overall (not to mention the state we were in by the time Covid hit).

A country ruining folly which nobody can face fixing because it means admitting people were wrong and rejoining on worse terms than the ones we had.

link to the updated Tax Policy Associates assessment of the Reform non dom policy

https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/06/23/britannia-card-tax-cost-uk/

Does he not have an original idea in him?

Aside from the economic cost of Brexit there is the matter of the huge waste of Parliamentary time and effort which should have been better directed towards governing.

More predictions about Brexit negatives came true than predictions of positives.

https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/article/comment/wasting-parliamentary-time

No idea why my post was hidden - it was just the updated Tax Policy Associate paper.

Weirdly I had a complete memory failure of the rapid churn of GEs - 2015, 2017, 2019. What a bloody waste of time, energy and money they were.

National inquiry into maternity care announced by Wes Streeting - BBC News https://share.google/epio42FZjKcMbilrr