A 1p / 2p raise to income tax should lawfully trigger a general election

[TesChique]

There are vague promises in manifestos, and there are those which are explicit and should be binding except in exceptional circumstances (war etc)

If labour, or any party reneges on a core manifesto promise it should lawfully trigger a general election

They have lied to the public.

AIBU to think we need to see this change in law?

True

Well obviously not every wealthy person has left the country! But when you're relying on a relatively small number of people at the top to prop up the whole system, you can't lose many of them without the whole thing collapsing.

Also, I would be very curious to know what proportion of that kind of spending you're talking about is UK tax payers, and how much is tourists/visitors/non doms.

@EasternStandard how so?

Going by the general direction of these posts, maybe people can finally get past things the LibDems were backed into having to agree to while in a coalition, despite them being in their manifesto. At least they provided some sort of moderation to the Tories for the first few years.

I know some will start shouting about TW not being W. I agree, but I am never going to be fully aligned with any party, and rather fight this from the inside. And since the SC ruling, their stance has changed. We have lost several members locally as a direct result.

More tax isn’t working. It didn’t after the last budget which is why Labour need to come back for more

Very true, @EasternStandard, and it beggars belief that some think increased taxes will magically improve things by being spent on frontline services

It hasn't worked like that with any recent government because the Tories spunked it on cronies and Labour fritter it on their own preferred demographics.
Yes all politicians lie, but did ordinary working taxpayers really think they'd be prioritised by either of these horror shows?

How old are you op? That’s some perspective you have

This. Was just talking to a work colleague about kids at uni—their DS is friends with some wealthy kids and they get the full student loan because their parents aren’t on PAYE. Colleague’s DS gets the minimum loan because their family’s combined PAYE income is over £65k.

I don't mind richer people paying more in tax
People are awfully quick to point the finger at whose taxes should be raised, and it’s never themselves, funnily enough.

Ha! You're funny, OP!
They should have done a screeching 180 the minute they realised just how bad the finances were. Instead of fannying about trying to plug the gap in other ways that just pissed everybody off.
Hth.

The answer here depends on what '1% tax rise means' - if it means a 1% increase in the basic tax rate from 20 to 21% then someone who ends up paying £200 a year more tax would be on a salary of roughly £32000 (maths not my own, I asked Chat GPT). At that salary they are not a net contributor.

This will piss everyone off and they caused it with the last budget.

That bolded line sums up a large part of mn. Taxes for someone else.

Don’t you roughly have to be paying around £17k a year in tax to be a net contributor? So around £41k salary?

I had a big long answer for this. I can't be bothered if English people liked their country they wouldn't talk so much shit. They would hold the government accountable and not blame vulnerable people. It was fine before Brexit and we were part of a bigger organisation we have nothing we sold off everything. English people thought they could go alone without any issues. Boris couldn't get Brexit done. We are sheep and our silence makes us look even more stupid. I wonder how many people feel proud to be British?

It's actually quite poor in terms of a balanced discussion because it neglects the other side of the argument, that tax is only good if tax revenue is spent well, to the benefit of the country and the people in it rather than just squandered.

It's fairly universally recognised that governments in general are quite poor at getting value out of spending (which comes from taxation).

You can pretty much look at any large government project and see horrendous waste and cost overruns.

Don’t you roughly have to be paying around £17k a year in tax to be a net contributor? So around £41k salary?

I think the 17k is for a family. 41k is only about 8k tax I thought.

Come on now, it’s been 18 months in power and labour have just made things worse and worse. Can’t keep on blaming everyone else all the time. If they’re not up to the job of governing (which they really don’t seem to be) then call a general election and we will put them out of their misery.

Do you also agree that picking the first child to come out of "the magic royal fanny" is a ridiculous way of choosing a head of state ?

I actually don't like the net contributor argument as it's just a snapshot & net recipients will increase inevitably with an ageing population.

We'll have to agree to disagree on that.

Frances's GDP recovery after Covid has been stronger and steadier, inflation peaked lower than the UK, businesses haven't faced extra trade barriers and labour shortages with fewer long-term disruptions. The economy is sluggish, but – crucially – is stable. France isn't thriving, but has come out ahead overall.

So in 18 months they should have fixed everything that the Tories didn't fix in 14 years?
Ok then

We’d be better off not changing to Labour but that early 2024 growth was good, inflation down, we just needed to not interrupt with hitting SMEs

It would have been stable and continued.

People saying they support this to get improved public services are naive. There won’t be an improvement; this money will go toward debt servicing/reducing the deficit.

i understand why the government feels it has to do this but it does also need to address welfare spending.

Whoever it was who said food is cheaper in Europe - I just had a quick look at my last Lidl and Eroski bills and compared them to sainsburys' (I'm in Spain).

Sea bass is cheaper here, but most things are more expensive - it's €12 for a 12 pack of diet coke and only £6.15 in the UK. Bacon here is €6,15 for the decent back bacon and it's £3.50 in the UK. New York Bakery bagels are about £2 for 6 in the UK - €2,90 here. Asparagus is astronomical so don't get me started on that but I paid about €6 for small bunch the other day...

The only thing usually cheaper on my bill is wine!!!

"Overall GDP growth averaged 1.5% annually between 2010 and 2023. much of this was driven by population increase"

"After factoring in population growth, real GDP per person only increased by 0.9% per year between 2010 and 2023. In the most recent parliament (2019–2024), real GDP per person actually fell by 1.2%."

Yep, the Tories definitely knew what they were doing...

Early 2024 was better than now. Better to not interrupt that with anti growth taxes, now Labour are back for more.