To wonder if Labour actually will be any better?

[Baabaagreysheep]

I think like most people I am keen to see the back of the current bunch, but I am not confident that anything will massively change for the better. Maybe that’s a bit pessimistic, but I feel that while some things will improve some will get worse - and some sort of at the same time, so I’m expecting my salary to go up but also my workload to go up!

Thinking back to when Labour were last in power it was another world, really. Interested in views.

Correct but there are significant downsides to putting property early into trust. Can you really trust the trustees etc? I personally wouldn't want to live in a house which didn't have my own name on the deeds. A house represents extreme security to me.

And it wasn’t Labour politicians seeking to influence the Privileges Committee either.

If you're up for wars that kill tens of thousands of people undertaken on little evidence

A war that we’d have gone into whichever party was in charge.
https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/howard-under-fire-over-iraq-7247839.html

blowing a credit bubble that basically takes down two high street banks, busts a building society and requires printing of a third of a trillion pounds to bail the system out

Responding to a global economic catastrophe in the only way possible without the country sinking without trace.

leads to a near decade of austerity to attempt to clean up the resulting mess

Austerity was an ideological choice. If Clegg had had the good sense to turn left instead of right we’d still have half decent public services.

I can’t see it either. He’s not aspirational, he’s not about strivers. His focus seems to be on placating red wall grievances whereas Blair gave the country its confidence back and grew the economy.

I have never voted Tory, always Labour, mainly because I have a great local candidate. However, I’m very disappointed in Starmer and I can’t be the only one. The Tory’s are killing this country, but Starmer is still not guaranteed to win because his devotion to Brexity red wall types and fence sitting concerns the middle class, especially since he committed to putting VAT on private school education. It just signals a symbolic attack on the middle class to play to the gallery.

He’s attending Murdoch’s summer party to reassure billionaires that he will not make any structural changes which impact them. Their kids school fees are paid through offshore vehicles and trust funds so they will not be impacted.

All tax increases will be focused on rinsing the middle classes on PAYE. The net beneficiaries and billionaires are fine, it’s net contributors like me who will be rinsed to give to people who continually and deliberately voted to make themselves poorer. I really hope for a hung parliament this time around, followed by a change in Labour leader and a complete gutting of the current iteration of Tory’s.

The Trust thing doesn’t work anyway. My dad thought it was a great idea over ten years ago and his solicitor soon disabused him. Local authorities have got much tougher since then.

Ah FFS, are they really thinking about another referendum.🤯🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/tories-new-uk-referendum-migrants-rwanda-plan-appeal-court-2447225

Noooooooooo!

Any government can grow the economy by pumping a massive amount of money into it and generating bubbles in various sectors by lax regulation.

What that leads to though is an inevitable bust at some point in the future.

The smart ones (like Blair) blow the bubbles and bail out before the inevitable bust so someone else has to deal with the fallout. Blair bailed out just at the right time.

That was actually the mistake Brown made, having the hubris to state stuff like "no more Tory boom and bust" whereas the bust in 2007 was obviously coming, it was just a matter of when.

Blair dealt Brown the ultimate hospital pass and got off pretty much free in the publics eye. His other nickname - "Teflon Tony" is well deserved.

LOL...we went to Thatcher's Cider Farm in Somerset recently and their shop was selling t shirts. My husband said that there's.no way he'd ever put that word on his chest.

I don't know what the answer is. The type of people that got into politics in the past just aren't there today. If it was up to me I'd devolve everything to the most local level possible. Give everyone a political leader that they know, that lives down the street, rather than having everything run from London.

I think it has to be realised that “tax the rich” is never going to actually be what labour do. A high welfare big state with an aging population is never going to be funded solely by the top 10% even if you bleed them white. We all have to cough up and cough up quite a lot. There may be all sorts of reasons why petiole are fine with that but labour should be honest and not pretend otherwise.

Petiole? People! I cannot speak for the petioles

kemi is the bookies favourite (and mine).

It might have worked in the past. It doesn’t any more.

Trusts do work, otherwise they wouldn’t be widely utilised by the wealthy.

They are expensive to establish, and it’s important to employ a good solicitor who is experienced in the area, but done correctly (and in a timely manner) they do work very well.

I don’t think we’re talking Duke of Westminster style trusts here. The legal fees for something watertight would probably cost more than the amount the trust was set up to protect for ordinary people.

‘Ordinary people’ can indeed utilise trust funds, and while establishing one may be expensive, it isn’t necessarily prohibitively so. If done in a timely manner and with an experienced solicitor then a trust is generally going to be advantageous.

I think both parties need to be replaced, they are unrepresentative (Labour has been taken over by upper middle class although started for the workers, Tories run by upper middle classes anyway) and so don't reflect the people's priorities. Since the 90s they have both always done the wrong thing and failed to plan (eg energy). I would never vote for either and think they're two cheeks of the same a**e but Labour will definitely be (even) worse than the tories in lots of ways - more authoritarian/bossy, denying free speech over things like gender, wasting even more money.

Labour need to learn to listen to the people instead of dictating from on high.

Why Labour? Nobody in Westminster seems to be doing much listening as far as I can see.

All they have to do right now is be better than the Tories. It’s a very, very low bar.