Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Josquius]

I'm seeing a lot of elderly racist uncle type memes - photos of posters, crap design - raging about how we can afford to take money off people who worked their whole life for it but can put up illegals in hotels.
This is coming from people who were already pretty much lost causes. But still.
They really do seem to have set the bar for getting it too low.

[Valmy]

I mean if they think it is so great they can illegally immigrate someplace.

[Sheilbh]

The DWP assessment is that 70% of pensioners with disabilities will now no longer receive the winter fuel allowance. I assume this is because other support they receive related to their disability puts them over the threshold.

Again - all this for a rounding error in the scheme of things

Just have to hope for a mild winter or things will get very difficult.

Edit: And meanwhile talking about the NHS, while we wait for the outcome for Labour's review, the main measures announced are a junk food advertising ban, banning under 16s from buying energy drinks, giving councils enhanced powers to block fast food shops near schools, increasing fluoridation of water - as well as extending the indoor smoking ban to outdoor areas. Not great. 14 years out of office, winning a campaign literally with the slogan "Change" and then lots of tinkering round the edges....

[garbon]

I'm not sure the British people want a lot of change given how much muttering there is over this 'tinkering'.

[Sheilbh]

Oh the British people hate change, whatever you do there'll be fairly significant opposition. I don't think that matters - you've got 4-5 years to do stuff and convince them that, in the end, it worked/was worth it.

But when choosing how to spend your political capital do the big, unpopular stuff early so you've got 3-4 years for it to work and people to move on. Don't waste it on little things.

Because having forced your party to vote on cutting money for pensioners (which they hate), it's going to be a bigger ask to get them on side for, say, planning or NHS reform which many will also dislike. Especially because there's no real upside beyond saving 0.1% of the budget - for all that people aren't convinced by people objecting to this policy, what's the positive case for it? And especially if you need to u-turn because it's a cold winter.

But as I say almost the bigger risk is a Chancellor and PM who apparently didn't really appreciate that removing money from pensioners and moving it to means testing might be politically tough. A really important part of the job is know what's going to cause a political fight (and calculating if it's worth it) not having the antenna to pick up that this would be controversial is, I think a bit weird - the most benign interpretation I have is that Starmer and his team trusted Reeves so weren't on top of Treasury plans and Reeves trusted the Treasury...

[Josquius]

I have to be optimistic and hope this is all according to plan (tm).
Something about identifying potential opposition or burning out moaners or some such.
Entitled elderly people will be a primary group opposing any attempt to touch planning or to build more.

Yes, in lieu of any other evidence go for the simplest option - they just blundered forward without really thinking things through - but this does seem unlikely to me. Labour seem competent enough to understand all this stuff.

[Sheilbh]

I have to be optimistic and hope this is all according to plan (tm).
Something about identifying potential opposition or burning out moaners or some such.
Entitled elderly people will be a primary group opposing any attempt to touch planning or to build more.

Identifying the opposition to do what?

"Entitled" won't survive contact with stories about one of the 70% of disabled pensioners no longer getting the winter fuel allowance and turning off the heating because they're worried about costs.

Yes, in lieu of any other evidence go for the simplest option - they just blundered forward without really thinking things through - but this does seem unlikely to me. Labour seem competent enough to understand all this stuff.

Although there's been concern all the way through his leadership that Starmer isn't politically aware enough.

I think a lot about a Daniel Finkelstein column basically defending Starmer, who he's known for many years. His point was that in the end Starmer normally ends up in about the right place, but it's not normally where he starts out (this is I think the source for the attack line from left and right that he's dishonest). I think there's something to that. The most generous interpretation is that he's just very step-by-step/plodding, or more negatively repeatedly being mugged by reality. But it could also be that he can't do what effective leaders are good at: spotting where things are going to go and positioning themselves ahead of the curve/shaping it.

[Tamas]

I am struggling to believe the same team that maneuvered Labour back to the centre very well, had absolutely no inkling that this would trigger outrage, even if we are talking about taking 300 pounds from well-off pensioners while they received over 900 due to the triple lock.

[Sheilbh]

Fair - although I'd note the stories about divide in Number 10 (which is early), with Sue Gray consolidating power and Starmer's campaign director being sidelined.

In this example, my guess is that Rachel Reeves and her team didn't examine it too closely/relied too much on the Treasury and Starmer trusts Reeves and her judgement on the economy. Either Reeves needs her team to get a lot more political quick, like Brown and Osborne in the past, or Starmer and his team needs to be treating the Treasury like any other department and working out what's coming politically.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Detesting means-testing is not just an entitled pensioner thing though. Like many/most old folk on the left I also detest it. This goes back to tales heard in childhood of vicious means-testing during the Depression. It goes like this, to have a proper welfare state benefits need to be universal otherwise the better-off will alwys be tempted to reduce benefits. How to pay for it though? By taxing the better off, including better off pensioners who currently are grossly undertaxed.

This infantile avoidance of changing the main rates of income tax and property tax leads to all sorts of problems with taxes. It leads to cliff edges, complexity and people who unfairly gain and others who unfairly lose.

Oh well, Labour have been in for two months before I started moaning....its a record!!! 

[garbon]

Detesting means-testing is not just an entitled pensioner thing though. Like many/most old folk on the left I also detest it. This goes back to tales heard in childhood of vicious means-testing during the Depression. It goes like this, to have a proper welfare state benefits need to be universal otherwise the better-off will alwys be tempted to reduce benefits. How to pay for it though? By taxing the better off, including better off pensioners who currently are grossly undertaxed.

This infantile avoidance of changing the main rates of income tax and property tax leads to all sorts of problems with taxes. It leads to cliff edges, complexity and people who unfairly gain and others who unfairly lose.

Oh well, Labour have been in for two months before I started moaning....its a record!!! 

But the old people who are better off were already unfairly winning before this policy change.

And I believe moaning is a British national pastime.

[Tamas]

Compared to Americans maybe. Compared to Hungarians, Brits are cheery and optimistic to almost a fault.

[garbon]

Compared to Americans maybe. Compared to Hungarians, Brits are cheery and optimistic to almost a fault.

I could see the Scottish and perhaps Welsh but certainly not the English.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Compared to Americans maybe. Compared to Hungarians, Brits are cheery and optimistic to almost a fault.

Had a bit of a shock on a recent trip to Bulgaria..."my god, they are even more subdued and gloomy than in Budapest!" 

[Sheilbh]

Detesting means-testing is not just an entitled pensioner thing though. Like many/most old folk on the left I also detest it. This goes back to tales heard in childhood of vicious means-testing during the Depression. It goes like this, to have a proper welfare state benefits need to be universal otherwise the better-off will alwys be tempted to reduce benefits. How to pay for it though? By taxing the better off, including better off pensioners who currently are grossly undertaxed.

Yes. There's a reason the British left have always been anti-means testing and, indeed, more pro-universalism.

This infantile avoidance of changing the main rates of income tax and property tax leads to all sorts of problems with taxes. It leads to cliff edges, complexity and people who unfairly gain and others who unfairly lose.

Although on this and the taxing the better off I think that's part of the problem. Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies has been writing about this and how high earners on the UK are taxed at average European rates - it's the low and middle earners who pay significantly less tax than in most other European countries.

I think there's a bit of reading Britain as America in thinking that the big tax change was cutting taxes for the rich. When actually big tax policy change of the last 14 years has been basically doubling the personal allowance. Combined with the fact that high earners lose their personal allowance and the abolition of the 10p tax rate, the tax burden has shifted up quite considerably.

I think that's also a problem because in the same way as I think welfare for the poor becomes poor welfare, I think something similar happens when welfare is something paid for by someone else rather than, with a broad tax base, part of a social contract.

Edit: Incidentally the lack of political benefits for the Lib Dems biggest policy achievement in coalition (raising personal allowances to £10k) and the lack of awareness about this in polls for them or the Tories basically makes me think parties can be pretty bold on tax. I just don't think people notice if it's something covered by PAYE (unless it's a massive shift), while they absolutely hate taxes they pay by Direct Debit, like council tax. Also I'm convinced a lot of the weirdness in the tax system is because Gordon Brown introduced the autumn review so now the Chancellor has to announce things twice a year - I'm not even sure the annual budget is helpful because there is an expectation of there being something "new" in it.

Oh well, Labour have been in for two months before I started moaning....its a record!!! 

I'm less moaning than just worried

See also the various stories about people gifting Starmer football tickets (which he doesn't think is a conflict because he declares them) and Lord Alli paying for Starmers suits and glasses as well as an undeclared expenditure on Starmer's wife's wardrobe. Add in Lord Alli having a Number 10 security pass for reasons that Downing Street struggle to explain (it's because he donated £500k to the Labour party ).

I don't necessarily think any of this really matters and I don't think Starmer is buyable or corrupt. But if you run on being (as Angela Rayner put it) "Mr Propriety" and "ethics in public life" you are opening yourself up to this type of thing being an issue - which is why, as Blair argues, you should never run on a "whiter than white". It might work in the short term when you're in opposition, in government it'll be a rod for your own back regardless of whether there's really an ethics issue.

Also this morning's defence line from David Lammy that Starmer and his wife need gifts of clothes to "look their best for the British people" and that PMs always need to rely on gifts from rich donors "unless you're a billionaire like the last Prime Minister" needs to be ditched immediately

Just another little example of Starmer and his team not quite being political enough to see how something looks from the outside. It's a concern.

I could see the Scottish and perhaps Welsh but certainly not the English.

Never worked with the Welsh but many Scots and lived there. The English are by some distance significantly more optimistic and cheerful The stereotype of the dour Scot exists for a reason. Perhaps very friendly and warm, but also often very doom and gloom/miserable as sin

Compared to Americans maybe. Compared to Hungarians, Brits are cheery and optimistic to almost a fault.

So there was a lengthy thread on Twitter about this from an American working in the UK being baffled at how negative everyone here is if you show any "get up and go" or positivity - she noted that in Britain if you behave like that everyone assumes it's fake and you're hiding your real feelings. I saw a French journo living in the UK commenting that there are specifically British types of negativity but on this it's broadly a thing across Europe - if you go into a French workplace showing American style "get up and go" and positivity you'd probably get stabbed

I'd agree. I don't work in a place with European offices now but I used and worked with other European teams a lot, went to conferences with them etc. Except for the Dutch and, maybe, the Italians, I'd say the Brits were the most positive, optimistic and least cynical/moany about everything

I think the Aussies have a nice balance. More positive than us, not quite so terrifying as Americans.