To ask if you watched Andy Burnham’s bloody good speech?

[Househunt2026]

As in actually watched it and didn’t just doom scroll the commentary? It was bold and honest and pragmatic and actually made me hopeful that we have someone at the helm with a vision for a better tomorrow who has Britain’s best interests at heart.

The National Care Service is a masterstroke, paid for out of scrapping the triple lock and the very real savings of reducing NHS bills on A&E and hospital beds for elderly who should be in care but have nowhere to go.

Scrapping right to buy and increasing council control of housing, boosting the technical education track for young people, pushing renewables, nuclear and energy sovereignty, public control of key utilities for water to get bills down and reduce pollution, investing in people & getting them back to work, leasehold reform by Christmas and everyone’s energy bill will be reduced by fast tracking decoupling energy prices from global gas pricing and by having no VAT on energy bills by TOMORROW!

You can watch the whole thing here and be directly informed instead of getting your perspective filtered through all the bots and misinformation peddlers online m.youtube.com/watch?v=jyjTT_55Gi0

One other subject I can talk about from experience is the drop in London listings - a few reasons for this, one of which ties in to capital flight. We have an increasingly small investor base as I mentioned earlier, in part because of Labour’s changes to non-dom rules, IHT, and P/E carried interest, as well as the rhetoric under Starmer and Reeves.

These are real world consequences, not open to interpretation.

FWIW, I think the NI suggestion is a good one, and I would welcome Burnham adopting something like this.

I welcomed her comments on Englishness as well. Good to see some clear blue water between the Tories and Reform with regard to this.

Ahh but that's the flaw in behavioural economics- it's subjective.

For example I might think that a high inheritance tax rate would encourage people to spend it all before they die. Whereas someone else might think that it would encourage people to save away more so that after the inheritance tax there is still something to pass on to their children.

Unfortunately you don't know for sure until it actually happening at which point it becomes difficult to change people's behaviour back again. Plus there will be those that argue behaviour has changed for some completely different reason and nothing to do with the policy.

This is why it’s so interesting, isn’t it? And actually demonstrated really neatly by the discussion above on wealth exodus and what it does or doesn’t say about how taxes influence behaviour.

I guess my frustration is when it’s used to score party political points one way or another. Could this be another argument in favour of a less short termist, more consensus driven politics, with people who hold a plurality of opinions looking at the evidence together and debating it from all angles…?!

20% VAT is much better for the Treasury than Employers NI, PAYE, NI and VAT...

Spending it all before I die would be playing cat and mouse with running out of money. So that would not be on the cards for me. I also believe that everyone should make provision for their latter years.

Policy does affect my behaviour I have no problems admitting that.

We’re not talking about someone who’s working. We’re talking about a pensioner spending their pension. They’ll still be paying income tax. Quite a lot of it if they’re running down their pension pot to avoid IHT.

You wouldn’t have to spend it all. Keep £325k and you’re good. That’s more than most people’s pension pots to start with.

How is that relevant?

What’s other people pension pots relevance to anything?

And who are you to decide what is good for other people?

They might have expensive taste in makeup, for example?

They might have much less that me at retirement, I started out with significantly less.

Your point is?

It's not avoiding IHT, it is spending their own money.

It’s both.

Labour has changed the terms, pension owners can change their position accordingly.

Thanks, I appreciate the clarification. I agree we've both improved on where we started, and that our journeys have shaped our views. I'm not denying I benefited from what the state provided. But the state didn't fund it. Workers and taxpayers did, my parents included, and now me and my family. IMO the state is a steward and facilitator, not the source.

That's why the "how" matters so much. Beveridge's point was that the state should provide the safety net but leave room and encouragement for people to do more for themselves and their families. When it starts taxing what people create or hold onto above that minimum, including what they leave behind, it undermines the very incentive he warned against stifling. Even Pat McFadden, Labour's own Work and Pensions person, complained that it there was too much "who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others", and that people were "asking the wrong questions". He should know, so If he can see it, why can't they? That doesn't scream evidence-based decision-making. Which brings me back to one of my earlier questions: Will they change course if the evidence says otherwise?

Almost every policy / debate is about how to take more from any worker who has managed to hold on to something for themselves and their family, rather than how to grow the pot so there's more for everyone. Where's the plan for that?

We are not far apart, but on IHT, and I'd argue on welfare more broadly, the "how" is the elephant in the room. Because looking at their behaviour, it feels to me that Labour's "how" is other people's already taxed money, in whatever form it currently takes, when it should be growth.

Do you believe that only the government should be able to change their behaviour?

The government are not saying who can we tax to pay more benefit. They've been clear that they want to reduce welfare spending and address worklessness.
What they have said is that they are not going to take the approach to this favoured by Badenoch, which is to make the cuts before addressing worklessness.
She believes benefit cuts drive people into employment. There is strong evidence that they don't, and are a false economy, and that supporting people into employment is the way to reduce welfare spend; alongside other work to improve health, ensure people have better access to treatment, so illness doesn't escalate into incapacity, and the all important secure home as the foundation to build a life. Plus rebuilding industry.
So that's the first 'what' we can agree on, reduce welfare, and the first 'how' where there is disagreement.
Then there is the matter of paying for welfare while we support people into work, plus the investment we need to make to support them.
We don't know as yet how the government plans to fund it. We can probably agree that neither of us think this should be via a tax on work.
I think we should tax wealth and assets, starting with those who have more of them than they could possibly need. People who's wealth is increasing at £1m a day, and with it their power and influence so they pose a serious threat to our democracy. We hear constantly that we can't manage without them, so can't displease them with policy. They hold us hostage, and this worries me.
I'm not an economist. I don't cast my vote from a position of expertise. Few of us do. We tend to vote for the values that most closely align with our own, what feels right to us, and for policies we feel have the best chance of working.
At present I feel Burnham is saying things that make sense to me and feel right to me. If it turns out they don't work, then I would certainly hope for a change of direction.

I think we should tax wealth and assets, starting with those who have more of them than they could possibly need. People who's wealth is increasing at £1m a day, and with it their power and influence so they pose a serious threat to our democracy. We hear constantly that we can't manage without them, so can't displease them with policy.

I think there are very few people who's disagree that the likes of Musk, Bezos, Zuck etc should be taxed properly and that we could do much better without them.
The problem is that we have very few, if any, people like this in UK and they really are super mobile. This taxation can only be arranged at a global level, means it won't happen. So instead this government wants to tax people who managed to buy some property and have a bit of savings. 1m might seem to be enormous wealth to someone on NMW, but it's a very modest family home or a 3bed flat in London. It's always middle classes who remain hostages.

I'm less convinced that no one in government is asking "who can we tax". Pat McFadden's frustration about it is a matter of public record. He complained that every meeting was about "who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others," and I'm inclined to believe him, given that he was part of the inner circle at the time. The "every meeting" part was especially telling.

I share your concern about the wealthy and the influence they have, but they're very hard to touch. Their money is mobile and well defended by wealth managers and lawyers, whereas ordinary people's main assets, the family home and their pension, can't move. So I tend to agree with @nearlylovemyusername What we'll actually get is broad-brush taxes sold as targeting the rich that really fall on ordinary workers (whom Labour has subtly and not so subtly been portraying as the wealthy). It's a funny old world where having something to show for your work is seen as worthy of contempt (not directed at you).

I wish I had your faith in Burnham. I'm just not buying what he's selling.

Thanks for the discussion, it's been thought-provoking. Let's see what the Budget brings.

all important secure home as the foundation to build a life

What hypocrisy you display here!

A secure home is all important to some, but you are happy for others to have a mansion tax slapped on theirs, putting them in danger of losing it?

This is such an articulate and fair minded post.

But I do think Andy Burnham’s offer is different to what we’ve heard from Labour until this point, because he is so much more compelling about what the contributions we make are actually for.

I think almost everything he spoke about was about giving all of us, as a collective, more - and I don’t just mean social care, I mean more control over public services, more power in our regions, more investment into young people to actually get them back into work (which will ultimately also get the tax take up), GB Energy - which will bring costs down for both consumers and business and shield us from the kind of energy crisis right now, better, affordable transport (people can sneer all they like about bus fares, but more people will benefit from it than will from IHT changes).

Some of things the Prime Minister spoke about will of course take time - and investment, which I’m sure will mean tax in some form - but if we’re not careful, the problem for me is the alternative we’re being offered - more money in our individual bank accounts, but less investment in the state - will ultimately cost us all much more. We saw that under fourteen years of the last government. I do like Kemi Bandenoch as a politician, but I don’t think they’ve done enough as a party yet, to be prove they can be trusted with either the economy or our public services.

A genuinely interesting time in politics though. Bring on the battle of ideas!

I don't think people making £1m a day are in any real danger of not having a secure home.
I would not be in favour of any policy that increased homelessness, obviously. So no hypocrisy here.

Do you think that people who make a million a day live in a £1.5mil terrace?

McFadden wasnt referencing inner circle meetings with the current PM and chancellor, so I think its fair to give them a chance.
Considering it desirable to have a chunk of the population who are capable of work on benefits at the expense of working people is not a left wing value. The opposite. It's essential that all those who can contribute do so in accordance with their means. There should be no one living idly off the back of others labour, whether that's a benefit claimant shirking employment, or an exploitative employer or landlord.
So, again, I'm prepared to accept there is a commitment to increasing employment and reducing welfare, which I too am keen to see.
Thank you too. Your posts have been interesting and I have appreciated your non combative style. So refreshing to see and so helpful to gain understanding of the perspectives of others.

No.

Do you think it’s fair for people living in a mortgaged 1.5m terrace to be slapped with a mansion tax bill?