What will life be like under Reform?

[Easipeelerie]

I have accepted the likelihood of the next government being Reform. I don’t think the government after that will necessarily be Reform. But in the 4 Reform years, what do people think life will be like for the different groups in our country? Will we see very immediate changes?

Google tells me that the Netherlands spends €3,300 (£2900) per person for primary care and hospital visits, and an additional €1,940 (£1700) per person for long-term care for the elderly, disabled, and institutional mental health care.

The UK spends £4,200 per person - so the Netherlands only spends 10% more - but it actually includes long term care for the elderly, which I certainly won't get. So the Netherlands looks like a far better deal to me.

Of course, the Netherlands has a 40% higher GDP per person than the UK: $68,000 - $73,000 USD per person in the Netherlands compared to $49,000 - $53,000 USD per person in the UK.

Each country must live within it's means, so we need to improve our productivity if we want to spend more on healthcare, like the Netherlands do.

Care for the elderly in the Netherlands is absolutely not fully funded. I know this because my family went through this with my dad - the annual top up that family has to pay is high. So you can add to that.

In the Netherlands, if you lose your job you aren't flung straight into poverty - you get up to 75% of your last wage in benefits a month for however many months you were in the job. This means you are more likely to get another decent job. The safety net is much better, so of course productivity is higher.

Employment rights are as good as they are in the UK, though mat leave is shorter. Pensions are considerably higher.

Bottom line is that many European countries have chosen to invest in their people rather than allowing wealth inequality to increase. Those are choices the UK could also make, rather than allow a substantial subset of its population to be permanent have nots.

If you want to make people more productive, you have to give them a realistic prospect of bettering their lives. In the UK, this does not exist for most people. You can work your arse off all week in more than one job and still need a food bank to make ends meet. Until that changes, the UK is going to keep circling the drain.

I lived in France, employers pay additional taxes for employees healthcare, its around 50% of the cost.
Its the same in Germany too, only its even more admin heavy.

Sweden, Italy and Portugal are tax payer funded models, like the NHS.

Either way, as you say, significantly more funding is required, so the people calling for "European" style ins models had also better explain how this is all paid for.
1.5% on employers NI is apparently the end of the world in the UK.....

Holland is not a comparable country, try Germany France or Italy.

We spend less ppp than these countries, this has consequences, that add to our costs.
Primarily, all this under spend has been caused by the Tories, who have spent the majority of the post war period in power and have run down healthcare and their economic policies have lowered our productivity, despite spending 18years in power as NS oil boomed... they sold the industry off and gave away the tax revenue.

Go back far enough and you can also add spaffing Marshall Plan aid on desperately and futilely clinging on to the Empire instead of spending it on infrastructure, which many other recipients did. (See also: functioning public transport).

No SEN support in education which will mean lots of kids expelled and/ or regularly suspended, alongside widespread disruption of learning for others.
Decimation of Arts and cultural activity.
Health care private or emergency only.
People deported who have lived here with their families for decades.
Conscription for young men.
Benefits cut for people with disabilities.
Racism normalised and encouraged.
Mass cuts to public services and tax cuts for the rich.
Wealth inequality deepens.

All of these policies which you commend the Netherlands for are less redistributive than the UK equivalents. More universal - which the Left want to reduce and reduce and reduce.

This is exactly what I advocate for too. I think it's important for everyone to benefit from the state services their taxes fund - not only those on lowest income. It's crucial for buy-in.

So why are you suggesting that the UK increasing redistribution yet further as the Left demand - at the demonstrable cost of any support for anyone who is actually responsibly supporting themselves - would be helpful?

@Alexandra2001
Blair was able to spend more on public services because the deficit was much lower at that time than now. The current government cannot spend in the same way.
When I referred to VAT earlier, I meant that food and children's clothes would be subject to the same VAT rate as all other goods-20%. This would affect the lowest paid more as food is proportionally more of their income but I explained that they could be compensated in other ways.
I think that businesses should start paying a small amount of VAT from £30,000 so that there isn't a sudden increase in VAT at £90,000. I know someone who runs a business who is keeping their turnover below the VAT threshold of £90,000 deliberately. How many businesses are doing that and does it lead to worse productivity?

@pointythings
Thanks for the info on the Netherlands. I have done a comparison with Spain, Germany and France and I agree with you that we spend less per person on healthcare in the UK so the NHS is relatively under-funded.
@strawberrybubblegum I agree with you that we need to improve economic productivity before we can spend more.

We're talking spend per person, so why do you think the Netherlands isn't comparable? It surely should be!

But sure, France spends £5000 oer person on healthcare, sk about 20% more than us.

But so much more medical care is provided universally in France than in the UK that it's just not even funny. The NHS basically only provides critical care these days. Physio? SLT for your kids? Dentistry? Not a chance in the UK. You have to pay for that yourself... in addition to funding the NHS through your taxes. All universally available from taxation in France.

The Right had 14 years and now you want the Far Right to have a go?

We totally should have pulled out of the empire earlier. To be fair, we felt a responsibility to try to set things up so that different groups in the former colonies wouldn't kill each other as soon s we left... with mixed success.

Weirdly we still aspire to fulfil the responsibilities of a colonial power, but without any of the income that comes alongside the responsibility! We still hand out more than £15billion per year in aid every year, which surely needs to stop as our standard of living falls. We're at 22 currently, and dropping rapidly.

Croatia only hand out $50 million of foreign aid per year. Less than 0.5% of what we give away, despite Croatia being higher than the UK in the standard of living index.

I want the Left to stop fucking up the country. Every single thing they do is so completely stupid that they've managed to cause huge harm in just 18 months! That takes some doing...

There wasn’t a right wing government for 14 years. Did you know we had open borders and a massive welfare bill under the Conservatives? Look at immigration from 2010 to 2024.
The conservatives had gone quite to the left..

Agreed. Conservatives were centrist, with constant increases in Welfare and state spending. Hoping they actually move to the Right now.

We don't have left wing government either but that doesn't stop strawberrybubblegum blaming the Left.

2023 was a record year for immigration

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.

Increasing taxes on working people and businesses in order to fund ever rising welfare...

Destroying employment, the rental market, small businesses, the energy industry through excessive government intervention supposedly to benefit 'the poor'...

Constantly increasing redistribution, and making state benefits less universal - so that those people who pay for the state provision don't ever get to use it.. only the 'poor', who are by definition more deserving of all the money...

Yep, that's definitely a Left wing government.

And you say you are not a Reform voter

whilst complaining about the Tories not being right wing enough

Ducks indeed

I won't vote for Reform ergo I'm not a Reform voter.

That's what those words mean. Someone who will literally vote for a Reform party candidate in elections. It's not a shibboleth

Hate. Lots more hate. So much of their campaigning in association with right wing media is based on hate. Who can they scapegoat to generate hate and blame a crisis on therefore elicit an emotional reaction from people who are then angry enough to vote. Then algorithms will just pump out more hate. It will start with immigrants and move on to women etc when they need more votes.

They're fascists but they'd be incompetent fascists as they don't really have any people who know how to do stuff. They'd make Liz Truss look like wonderwoman.

I can't believe we'd be that stupid as a nation but then I thought that about Brexit. People are buying into this Russian-sponsored bullshit.

Quite, yes Blair didn't double the national the debt, the right managed to do that.
Even after bailing out the banks, Labour kept debt low, around 65% by 2010.

Labour also grew the economy, something the right never managed in 14 years, even their paltry growth has been down graded.

VAT threshold is likely to be reduced, not increased, to bring into line with other OECD countries.

I wouldn't support expanded VAT to food, cloths etc, it just means more spent on Welfare & another cliff edge, with some getting support, others not.

This post is actually quite funny.

You blame the left yet ALL these things were available under Blair/Brown, we had a functioning healthservice in the 2000s, but by 2015 (according to the Kings Fund) these things we took for granted, were going or gone.

Blair bought healthcare funding up to EU average, we had access to AE, GP services, Physio & even Dentistry.
I ve seen what even a small increase in funding can do but the Tory plan was to make the NHS so bad, more would switch to PHI....

The Tories did this, they ran down the NHS and wrecked Social Care too but you want more of their failed policies...

& yes they were/are right wing, no one can tell me Osbourne, IDS, Rees Mogg, Jenrick, Patel, Javid, Sunak etc etc weren't from the right of the Tory party and all in Govt.

They are even more 'rightwing now.

I dont think Reform are blaming immigrants themselves though. It’s the government they are blaming it on.
If hundreds of thousands of young men who have paid money to criminal gangs to come here by boat are allowed to stay , with little chance of being deported on arrival.
There isn’t a proper incentive to stop people doing this. I think even Farage himself said once that he’d do the same if he was an immigrant- he wasn’t blaming it on them but the system that allowed it to happen.

Labour’s trouble was they promised to end the boat crossings and smash the gangs - a promise they can’t possibly deliver on.

a promise they can’t possibly deliver on.

Yet Farage apparently can. How does that work?

There aren't 100s of 1000s of young men coming here on boats, its around 150k.
With approx 32% women and children.

Far more migrants over stay visas each year.

Labour have deported over 35,000 overstayers and asylum seekers but its a massive task, the Tories did nothing and allowed numbers to soar.

I would really like to know what incentive could be put in place to stop people coming here?

Farage blames migrants, have you not heard him and also Badenoch blaming violence against women on migrants? they are blamed by them for lack of jobs, lack of GP appointments, delays in AE, maternity services.... housing... all blamed on migrants and in particular, asylum seekers.