Fantasy manifesto (policy wishlist)

[GeneralPeter]

Ok, here are my policies. I'm sure I've missed loads. What are yours?

(And who's voting for me?)

Massively more housing:

• loosen planning requirements
• replace SDLT with a property value tax
• promote 'gentle density' design

Make the NHS sustainable

• Transition to European-style co-pays and insurance model
• Integrate health and social care (paying for care homes if needed)
• Telemedicine and efficient processes (AI assisted diagnostics, carefully).

Better childhoods:

• Childhood health, nutrition, SEN support
• Reform and better-fund education
• Raise teacher pay and teacher quality. Reduce unuseful paperwork

Future economy:

• Industrial strategy for AI
• Relax childcare ratios (a bit)
• Retraining
• support finance/services and other industries
• rejuvenate non-London economies

Earn public support for more open migration

• Crack down on abuse (eg deport foreign criminals, enforce migration law)
• Widen routes to legal migration
• Negotiate EU free movement

Simplify tax

• Abolish NI (combine with income tax)
• Rationalise marginal tax rates (remove cliff-edges)
• Work out how to tax capital better

Foreign affairs:

• De-link aid from trade (?restore DFID)
• Fund the BBC world service
• support NATO, Ukraine, Taiwan

Soft and Hard on Crime:

• properly-funded VAWG, alcoholism, addiction, youth diversion strategies
• long sentences/deportation for recidivists and professional criminals
• knife and gun crime interventions

Better government

• Replace FPTP with STP or similar
• Better, and better paid, politicians and civil servants (reward expertise and experience)
• mandatory voting
• try citizens assemblies

Restore classical liberal institutions

• humane and competent home office
• properly fund the justice system
• abolish GRA
• depoliticized institutions (de-woke them)

Oh, and to alienate all sides:

• big carbon taxes
• Heathrow third runway
• nuclear power building programme (I think: need to check the economics now)
• transition to EVs, proper train and busses, self-driving cars
• superfast broadband as a utility

Where’s the money coming from? No vote from me until you cost it! Wish lists are for you to dream about. Taxes based on property value are what we have now. So what can actually be afforded? Thats the difficult bit. Anyone can produce a list of wants.

Inheritance taxation

Which would also take heat out of housing market

Investment opportunities for the current wealth horders

Adding a touch is PAYG for NHS would inject a touch more also

Country money is a wierd thing - it's there when they want it

There's probably not money to do all of it.

However, the main focus is growth, to be achieved by structural reforms that don't actually cost the state anything:

• deregulate housing/planning, which will i) reduce most people's cost of living, especially in our most productive cities, ii) break the expectation that housing is an investment (reallocates future investment to economically productive things instead). A large net gain for the economy. There is a cost, but it's borne by existing property-owners (like me). Abolishing SDLT creates more housing too: no need to hold onto property that is bigger than you need, as there's no transaction tax. Replaced by a property tax raising the same amount, no net cost.
• relax childcare ratios will make returning to work more affordable for parents who want to, which is good for growth at no cost to the state.
• mandatory voting, removing the structural bias for policies that favour retired people over working people.
• nuclear power at scale will give us lots of cheap, low-carbon energy. Energy costs are a big drag on any economy (and a cause of poverty). That will take a decade+ to kick in, unfortunately, but is a better use for government debt than most things we spend on (or could be privately financed). The main reasons nuclear costs a fortune are i) lack of scale, and ii) over-regulation (both of which are government choices). To people worried about safety: nuclear is one of the safest sources of energy, and far, far, safer than fossil fuels which kill through pollution.
• NHS is one of our biggest state costs: I'd transition to co-pays and insurance, bringing in more money. (In theory I'd be happy to keep the current system, but it's clear that the public is not willing to pay the tax needed to fund this as the population ages). And more telemedecine should reduce costs too (or, slow the rate of increase).
• More (useful) immigration: increasing the worker-to-retired ratio and increase tax take. I like (good) immigration for other reasons too, but it's an economic benefit when done right, not a cost.
• Stuff like anti-VAWG, childhood health, addition, violence programmes will cost money. My hope is that they pay off economically in the long run (they should do). But even if that's only partially true, they are a good in themselves, and one I think we should be OK spending on.
• Better teacher salaries will cost money, but hopefully will increase teacher quality too (this isn't a slight on existing teachers: but increasing supply almost by definition increases quality, hopefully increases teacher status, creating a self-reinforcing cycle), improving education for all, which in the long term generates a return.
• knife and gun crime interventions, and long prison sentences for recidivists: this is the 80:20 rule. A huge proportion of crime (and thus the costs of crime) is committed by a small proportion of criminals. It's worth taking those people out of circulation. This also reduces inequality -- it's mostly poor people who bear the burden of high crime.

Any chance of your vote now?

Oh, and more carbon taxes will bring in money. From an economic perspective they aren't exactly a cost to the economy -- as they are a tax on an externality (i.e. the carbon emission is already a cost to society; taxing it just shifts the cost from society as a whole to the one doing the carbon emission).

Perhaps also impose a small digital sales tax (not sure), just to put a thumb on the scales a tiny bit in favour of bricks-and-mortar shops, as I think they create other benefits like a sense of community and place.

@midgetastic Inheritance taxes are OK in principle, but in practice are very easy to avoid legally (just spend more, give more to children, etc.).

I agree with more investment opportunities for people with wealth. Though the problem is not creating more 'products' but getting the economy growing again, which naturally creates lots of things to invest in (like growing small businesses). Killing off the idea of housing as the main investment asset should hopefully do this. I stand to lose a lot from that policy (in falling house prices) but I'd rather live in a vibrant, growing economy and a society that works for young people -- otherwise there's no future.