Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Josquius]

Have to imagine the reasons for the deprivation in inner London are quite different to the reasons for the deprivation in the north however.
Looking at them from a northern perspective it beggars belief with all that opportunity on their doorstep they still fall into poverty.
Though I imagine from their perspective they'd look our way and see the cheap housing and have similar thoughts.
Seems something where someone would have done the research.

Maybe your "northern perspective" is just wrong?

There are plenty of opportunities up north in the professions and in company HQs. Deprivation isn't about geography its about education, class and race. Leeds has the higghest salaries outside of London.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/20/leeds-tops-league-of-places-in-the-uk-with-the-best-paying-jobs-outside-london

The high average salary or professional level jobs currently being advertised in Leeds doesn't alter the situation for most even within the Leeds area (probably the worst city in Europe for transport) never mind the north at large.
Leeds' average salary is beneath the national average- and this is one of the wealthier cities of the north.

Geography is absolutely one of the biggest factors in deprivation.
You should read the link Sheilbh posted and the Moran's examination for one side of this. Also part 1 specifically covered regional disparity:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/dvc1370/

Plenty out there to say the north-south divide is very real:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jan/16/englands-north-south-divide-is-deepening-says-new-report

[Josquius]

So. That Autumn Statement then.
Genuine Tory ideological commitment to state destruction?
A desperate grasp to improve the polls?
Or pure salting of the earth to make things extra fucked up for Labour.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/22/jeremy-hunt-delivers-a-budget-designed-to-destroy-a-future-chancellor

Jeremy Hunt delivers a budget designed to destroy a future chancellor

Jezza had a last throw of the dice and money to spend. He would blow it on tax cuts and let public services die
It's a looking-glass world. Up is down. Black is white. War is peace. Just a few months ago we were told the UK economy was in a desperate state: no room for tax cuts. Just more of the same. Suck it up. But in the last few weeks we've been getting noises off. Anonymous briefings from Treasury ministers. All is well. Things have never been better. Thanks to the diligence of the Tories, we can all expect some more pocket money in the autumn statement.

If you're confused by this, then spare a thought for Jeremy Hunt. The chancellor who was never meant to be chancellor. The chancellor who knows next to nothing about macroeconomics. Just think. A man of almost limitless ambition – he twice thought he would make a good prime minister – but who never once aspired to be chancellor. Because even he knew he would be hopeless at it. A glimpse of self-awareness. The entrepreneur who knows how to create a small business. Start with a big one.

But greatness was thrust upon him. Or at least, necessity was thrust upon him. This time last year the Tories were in shit street. Kwasi Kwarteng had crashed the economy with his mini-budget and the Tory brand was on its knees. A new chancellor was needed. Someone who could be the grownup.

And that person was Jezza. Not because of any ability. But because of his plausibility. He looked like the sort of Tory chancellor to which the country had grown accustomed. And now we're rather lumbered with him. At least for another year. An eighth chancellor in 13 years would begin to look a lot worse than carelessness. More like catatonia. A death wish.

Long before Hunt stood up to give his autumn statement, his wife and children had filed into the back seats of the MPs' visitors' gallery. You got the feeling they all knew this would be his last but one big set-piece event in the Commons. Jezza certainly did. This wasn't the kind of budget you would give if you had any intention of being around for the next five years to oversee its delivery. This was a budget designed to destroy a future chancellor. So Hunt was just there to soak up the vibes. To enjoy it while he still could.

The kindest interpretation is that Jezza was just too dim to know what he was doing. That he was just the useful idiot for Rishi Sunak. You certainly can't blame his ministerial colleagues in the Treasury. They are even more half-witted than Hunt. That's why they were chosen. Not that there is anyone better lurking on the backbenches.

Hunt began by insisting he was putting the economy back on track. An odd admission. It rather acknowledged that the Tories had done untold damage over the last 13 years and were only now getting round to trying to fix the problem. Thanks for that. "We've got inflation cracked," he boasted. "Just as the prime minister promised." It was now only two and a half times the Bank of England's target – and its fall nothing to do with government intervention – so could we please have a two-minute love-in for Rish!? The Great Gratitude. Thank you, Supreme Leader.This was going to be an autumn statement for growth, he continued. Yup. Talk us through this one, Jezza. He did, slowly and with few signs of understanding what someone else had written for him. His eyes started to revolve anticlockwise in terror. As if every sentence was dynamite. Sweat formed on his brow. He could sense the danger. But he didn't know what direction it was coming from. No choice but to press ahead. The Office for Budget Responsibility had revised its forecasts. Down was up. It was fantastic news. Growth would more or less stagnate for the next five years. He was a man who was going places. Perdition.

"We are taking decisions for the long term," he announced. Long term as in sheer desperation. Every government reset had failed – now there were at least two a week – and this was more or less the last throw of the dice. Thanks to his brilliance, he had managed to create extra fiscal headroom. Largely thanks to inflation and capped departmental budgets – hooray for inflation! – he had extra money to spend. So he was going to squander almost all of it on tax cuts and let public services die. Austerity 2.0.

Here the speech rather meandered. Jezza isn't the best of readers and even the faithful Tory backbenchers could see this budget was a pig's ear. Many began to doze off. It would get a few half-hearted cheers in the Tory press for a day or so, but the electorate would soon see through it. There was nothing there to make you want to live. Though there was some gratuitous sadism. Or "compassionate" cuts to the disabled. Work, you losers. Stop scrounging. Always scrounging. Most of you have deliberately chosen to have mental health problems.

Finally, after some business tax cuts that even Hunt had to admit were well above his pay grade, we got to the 2p cut in national insurance. A cut to a tax that Rishi Sunak had raised. Go, Tories! And just in case everyone hadn't realised how screwed the government was, he was going to introduce the cut from January rather than March. Just so that everyone would feel better off before the election. Only, because of fiscal drag, the tax burden would be reaching its highest ever level in five years' time. The tax cut that wasn't a tax cut. The chancellor who isn't a chancellor. The sweat-stain of sheer panic.

Rachel Reeves could barely contain her contempt in her reply. Where to start? She was all for tax cuts – what aspiring chancellor wouldn't be? – but this was just economic vandalism. And she would be the one left to pick up the pieces. She wasn't going to say no, obviously. But really? Did they have any more giveaways for the spring budget? There was a few billion left unspent. How about something for the most well-off? Like inheritance tax?

Over on the government benches, Sunak and Jezza giggled and bounced up and down like children. A sure tell. They knew they were busted. If they had honour – a sense of grace – they might have given up there and then. But they mean to take us all down with them. They're so pretty, oh so pretty. They're vacant.

[/quote]

[Sheilbh]

Not sure a parliamentary sketch writer is who I'd go to on this Which bit's the state destruction?

I think it slightly points out the madness of the quasi-constitutional status that Labour want to give the OBR more than anything and the pointlessness of Chancellor's fiscal targets.

The full expensing tax cut for business was something Labour had already called for. I listened to the Rest is Politics and it was interesting to hear that Rory Stewart spoke to an ex-Treasury Minister who explained that the Treasury have, in the past, been very opposed to this.

Apparently the Treasury orthodoxy is that you should cut corporate tax because that applies to business equally who can then decide what to do with, while full expensing (which basically makes capital investment tax deductible) favours manufacturing over other sectors so is a bad idea. I thought this was interesting from the Guardian - it's something Labour wanted to do and, with planning reform, could be really helpful:

'Full expensing': how short-term tax break can become a long-term fix
Nils Pratley

The planning system must change along with the tax incentives if the UK is to improve its dire investment record
Wed 22 Nov 2023 18.01 GMT
Last modified on Wed 22 Nov 2023 19.54 GMT

Jeremy Hunt called it the "largest business tax cut in modern British history", a view that may not be shared by the hundreds of thousands of businesses in the service sector that don't spend large sums on capital investment every year and are still adjusting to April's general hike in corporation tax from 19% to 25%.

But so-called "full expensing" of spending on equipment, plant and machinery – or, rather, the making permanent of a tax-break that previously had a three-year life – can be welcomed by everybody else. A permanent regime looks the only one capable of improving the UK's dire record on investment. And, since the push to net zero involves a multi-year upgrade on the nation's energy infrastructure, getting rid of tax cliff-edges is a sensible piece of long-term policymaking. Labour, notably, backs the move.

How bad is the nation's investment record? Since 1993 public and private investment has represented 18% of economic activity versus 21% for the rest of the G7, and the numbers have been substantially worse since 2016, noted the Panmure Gordon economist Simon French recently.

The standard argument against permanent full expensing is that it won't accelerate investment, and may even slow it because companies no longer have a deadline to meet. And it's true that Office for Budget Responsibility's analysis predicted a short-term slowdown in investment. But that inevitable smoothing effect is hardly a killer objection.

Here's one chief executive on how decisions are made at a company spending billions on heavy infrastructure: "Making full expensing permanent is not going to make me accelerate investment, but it definitely helps me to justify investment," he says. "So, if the planning system is right, you will get more investment." Quite: companies can be needy in their craving for certainty, but it does tend to help to get things built.

In fact, the other half of the long-termism programme – planning reform – looks the trickier job. Great Britain needs around four times as much new electricity transmission network to be built in the next seven years as has been since 1990, said Nick Winser, the new electricity commissioner, in his report to government in the summer.

In its formal response on Wednesday, ministers offered a sketch of what communities could be offered to "host" new pylons and sub-stations: "up to" £1,000 off their energy bills every year for 10 years, and a one-off £320,000 a mile for overhead lines, for instance.

Are those sums enough to silence opposition as new offshore windfarms are hooked up to the electricity grid? "Further work is needed to design the detail and implementation of the overall scheme," said the document. You bet: full expensing of capital spending is easy to understand and simple to implement. Speeding up the planning system, and facing down local opposition to large schemes, requires political will.

On the National Insurance cut - it makes sense to me. I know that politically people perceive NI as different to tax but it's really not. And this looks like the latest in a few steps that might help eventually merge it into income tax. So I think they've already aligned the income tax personal allowance with NI, now brought the rate down slightly - hopefully Labour take the next step of abolishing NI and just having sensible more coherent income tax. He always shares it but this from Dan Neidle makes the point - which is largely driven in this example by, for example, child tax credits etc tapering away, then personal allowances tapering away, plus student loans.

I don't think you need to be a wild-eyed libertarian to think that there's people here on not very large incomes paying quite a high rate of tax - and basically once you're over 22k (so well below a grad starting salary) you're already on an effective marginal rate of 41%:


The headline point is that actually Rebecca Reeves and Jeremy Hunt broadly agree on quite a lot. There's a fair amount of bipartisan consensus on economics, tax and fiscal policy (for the short term). She'd already supported the Chancellor's most costly tax cut, Hunt also stole her childcare policies in the last budget - I don't think she'll be furious about the NI cut. I also think she'll be fine with the fact that now (which is why NI is a good cut) about 2/3s of pensioners pay tax while in 2010 it was only half.

Ultimately the reason all the government's scheme on this and other budgets look so desperate is because the reality is that at the end of their time in office they've increased taxes to their highest level since the war and I think will have pushed the tax take asa % of GDP to its highest level ever (from the low 30s to the high 30s). Which is not a great result if you're the low tax/tax cutting party (which is why I think Labour are right to make hay of it. And ultimately fiscal drag will help pay for a lot.

But I think it gets to a couple of the wider problems of this government. One is that they haven't really delivered much - so you see ever grander announcements to cover the paucity of actual accomplishments. Jacob Rees-Mogg is complaining that there need to be cuts to spending "the state does too much and does it badly". As I saw a Yorkshire Tory councillor note - Jacob Rees-Mogg was the Government Efficiencies Minister who was explicitly tasked with reducing spending and getting the government to do less. There's an awful lot of the Tory party (especially those, like Rees-Mogg, paid by GB News to host comment shows) that involves complaining about things - the immigration system, wokeness gone mad, tax and spending too high - that as MPs in a governing party with an 80 seat majority, they have been uniquely placed to change and haven't.

The other is the Economist's point about how this government is like Arthur C Clarke's terror at watching a useless machine turn itself on and off again. On everything - spending, tax, Europe, China, public services it's been a cycle of one Tory government doing one thing, only for another Tory government to undo it - and, occasionally, a further Tory government doing it again. Politically it might be the only way for a party to re-fresh itself in office for 10+ years, but it's not good governing and eventually that catches up.

[Gups]

Good post Sheilbh, agree with all of it. Frankly all I'm interested in now is when the election will be (best seem to be shifting to May) and what Labour are going to do to combat the numerous structural problems/challenges we have as a counry especially productvity, consistent and evidence based trade and industry policies, public sector reform (Streeting challenging the efficiency of NHS management is very encouraging) and infrastructure investment and project management.

[Tamas]

It's funny how this guy was hoarding various jobs as a BAME community representative. Not "only" in the sense of whether he is really an anti-semite or not, but rather that he thought it was ok to tweet that post.

As always with such incidents, I must assume that in his circles, such language and let's say passion on this topic is commonplace, and this is why he failed to filter it out before submitting it.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/nov/23/wasim-haq-fa-council-member-resigns-after-hitler-proud-of-netanyahu-post

FA council member resigns after 'Hitler proud of Netanyahu' post
Wasim Haq steps down from role amid FA investigation
Haq says decision is 'best course of action for the FA and myself'

Wasim Haq has resigned as a member of the Football Association council after saying "Adolf Hitler would be proud of Benjamin Netanyahu". Haq, who was suspended after a post on social media about Israel's war with Hamas led him to be accused of antisemitism this month, said that his decision to step down was "the best course of action for the FA and myself" and reiterated that his comments were not aimed at the Jewish community.

The resignation has come before the conclusion of an investigation into the post. Haq, who joined the FA as a BAME Football Communities representative in 2019, had already been sacked by the Lawn Tennis Association as an independent councillor. He is being investigated by England Golf, where he holds a role similar to that at the FA.

The controversy was sparked by Haq, who had previously left a position on the FA's Inclusion Advisory Board, posting on X: "Netanyahu has sacrificed his own people to maintain power...whilst #Palestinians are trying to maintain their sanity. Adolf Hitler would be proud of Benjamin Netanyahu."

[Sheilbh]

Separately ONS have revised last year's net immigration figures up 140,000 to about 750,000. This year (2022-23) is estimated to be at about 675,000. I'd note that this year's estimated figure is higher than last year's estimate before revision.

So long term perspective up to 2022:


And OBR forecast - not fully sure why they think the shift will be that strong (there are some reasons it might but....). There was lots of jokes about the Chief Science Advisor saying Johnson struggled to understand some of the covid graphs (although the chair of the inquiry joked she struggles with graphs too). But after covid and all the various inflation projections from the BofE, I'm not sure we, as a country, can be trusted with graphs to make forecasts


At the same time for some reason (or some combination of reasons), this is happening:


Concern is rising again, but it's not rising with Labour supporters.

Having said all that - and I am very pro-immigration - I don't think you need to be fascist adjacent to point out that net migration running at 600-700k is challenging in a country that builds fewer than 300k homes a year, hasn't built a reservoir in 30+ years and has an energy system that is running at capacity.

Yet another reason why the key for Labour is investment and as Gups says infrastructure, project management and actually delivering.

Also another reason to disdain the Lib Dem/Greens - pro-immigration and environment and building nationally, opposed to every infrastructure project or development locally

[HVC]

British companies hiring headhunters to poach their bad employees to other unsuspecting competitors to avoid severance costs. When employee continues to underperform at new company they can be fired without severance. Gotta admit it's pretty creative.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/jobs/bosses-dismissing-underperforming-staff-cheap/

[garbon]

British companies hiring headhunters to poach their bad employees to other unsuspecting competitors to avoid severance costs. When employee continues to underperform at new company they can be fired without severance. Gotta admit it's pretty creative.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/jobs/bosses-dismissing-underperforming-staff-cheap/

That isn't really what the article said. They said it is a way to avoid layoffs and avoid paying severance to your somewhat bad employees but not bad enough to sack without a settlement.

How you summarized it made it seem even more devious than it really is.

[HVC]

It's the pessimist in me

[Jacob]

Wait... but why does the other company hire them? Is the headhunter deliberately putting poor candidates forward to them?

[Josquius]

Yeah. Thats where things are curious.
With the receiving company in on it too - safely firing somebody within 2 years and receiving a fee for this - I'd get it but seems not to be the case.
On the other hand the recruiter has a reputation to keep up to get business in the future. Passing off someone crap is not going to go well for them.
Or is it maybe the recruiter knows companies that are desperate for bodies and taking mediocre people from companies downsizing works well for this?

Either way it would be curious if this story gained traction and leads to fewer people being willing to listen to head hunters for fear they are one of these mediocre people and even very good but lacking in self confidence people won't go.

[HVC]

They're not doing it to their super shit employees (many of whom probably have cause anyway) but the ones below the layoff threshold, as I read it. So not cream of the crop. to save on severance they pay someone else to unload them. If they make it or not at the new place is of little concern to them.

As for recruiters, not sure how it is over there, but here their shelf life is pretty low. Turnover of like 3-4 years on average. So reputational risk wouldn't factor, I don't think.

[Admiral Yi]

As for recruiters, not sure how it is over there, but here their shelf life is pretty low. Turnover of like 3-4 years on average. So reputational risk wouldn't factor, I don't think.

what about the firm's reputation?

I can see the hiring firm being happy if the firing firm gave them part of the severance as a sweetener.

[HVC]

I'd assume it gets lost in the shuffle. Not all candidates are good (whether they're purposeful lemons or not). From my experience in accounting is that there are a few big name recruiters who most people use (and a bunch of smaller ones that don't get a lot of traction). Sometimes you get good employees,  sometimes bad. No one blames the recruiters. They're facilitators and first filters. Mainly cuts down on resume reading*. As long as these people aren't knowingly providing people who lie on their resume, for example, I dont think there will be blowback on firms. Individual recruiters are different because they're the "face"  and might become an issue if all they recommend is lemons, but like i said they don't stick around much.

*they do offer a few other percs like background checks.

[Sheilbh]

Also I think except for the very top level, recruiters in general don't have a great reputation - but are probably necessary/helpful.

When I was in a law firm I'd say I got a call from a recruiter at least twice a week. No idea how many were being hired to secretly get rid of me v roles around and about.