Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[The Larch]

It will never cease to amaze me how incredibly dependant of foreign manpower the NHS is.

It is - and it isn't

It's absolutely dependent on foreign manpower, there's no doubt of that. But overall the foreign-born workforce in the NHS is about 15% (when known) which isn't a million miles from the latest ONS estimate that about 14% of the UK population was born overseas. So it's as dependent as the wider UK is. Though both stats are a little dodgy/estimates.

Although I'd guess it varies by country - for example I'd be willing to bet that Filipinos are disproportionately employed by the NHS (I think for that reason they were proportionally one of the worst hit by covid in the first wave).

My impression is that foreign personnel is rather more important than that for the purely medical positions, and looking for data it seems that my impression is not far from target. According to this NHS briefing (https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7783/), overall the % of non British NHS workers is 14.6%, but for doctors it's 31.4% and for nurses it's 19'6, so I'd say that for the core purpose of the NHS it is indeed heavily dependant on overseas workers.

[Sheilbh]

My impression is that foreign personnel is rather more important than that for the purely medical positions, and looking for data it seems that my impression is not far from target. According to this NHS briefing (https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7783/), overall the % of non British NHS workers is 14.6%, but for doctors it's 31.4% and for nurses it's 19'6, so I'd say that for the core purpose of the NHS it is indeed heavily dependant on overseas workers.

You're totally right - that's really interesting, especially the breakdowns. I also find it really interesting that some of these - for example doctors by region - is about the only stat I've ever seen where London isn't automatically the most diverse region. E.g. a smaller proportion hospital doctors and GPs in London having a foreign nationality v the Midlands and East of England (although it makes more sense for the Midlands - the East of England is surprising). Athough the GP stats are more difficult because they're privatised small businesses who don't report nationality to the NHS - so they're estimating based on country of qualification.

Also worth noting it's talking about self-reported nationality, while I think the estimate of people born overseas is exactly that it's all people born overseas. About 40% have subsequently acquired British citizenship (normally I'd imagine dual citizenship) - so it's probably only 10% or so who were born overseas and haven't got British citizenship which I imagine is the better comparison for people self-reporting nationality? Edit: Though maybe less good for the GP number which is country of qualification?

[Sheilbh]

Via Alex Massie - whoever is briefing against Sunak really has it out for him

Also on this issue which is not unimportant, we probably should be glad Johnson survived and Sunak didn't take over:


Not totally surprising, mind. There's been stories for the last two years that Sunak's a very strong China dove and basically thinks we're missing opportunities to make money/grow the economy on China. So not totally surprising to see something similar with Russia. He really is the heir to George Osborne

Having said that Sunak has no chance of winning the leadership now. At the minute it's between Truss, Javid and Wallace I think.

[Sheilbh]

This is him clearly trying to get ahead of the story but still...

Sajid Javid: I was a non-dom for six years but now pay my full share
Tim Shipman, Harry Yorke
Saturday April 09 2022, 10.00pm, The Sunday Times

Sajid Javid had non-dom status, and did not pay tax in the UK on his overseas income for six years, when he was a banker earning up to £3 million a year.

The health secretary admitted last night that between 2000 and 2006, before he began his political career, he had non-dom status.

Javid said he was entitled to this because his father was born in Pakistan. He issued a statement explaining he also benefited from an offshore trust while he worked for Deutsche Bank 20 years ago.

He said: "Prior to returning to the UK and entering public life, some of my financial investments were based in an offshore trust. While this was an entirely legitimate arrangement, on becoming a minister in 2012 I decided to voluntarily collapse that trust, repatriate all assets to the UK and pay 50 per cent income tax on those assets.

"This approach deliberately incurred the heaviest possible tax burden, and offset any accrued benefits from the previous trust arrangement, but I believed it was the right thing to do."

It is understood that Javid was not domiciled for tax purposes in Pakistan. But last night his aides did not clarify where he was domiciled, explaining he paid tax on the relevant asset in the relevant jurisdiction, including US taxes on his US shares. That leaves open the possibility that some of Javid's assets were located in a tax haven, or that he paid no tax at all on some of them.

Last week he said there was a "moral" duty to pay a levy to fund the NHS, and Rishi Sunak's wife, Akshata Murty, who is still non-domiciled, agreed to pay more tax in the UK.

Javid said: "I have been domiciled in the UK for tax purposes throughout my entire public life. Given heightened public interest in these issues, I want to be open about my past tax statuses. My career before politics was in international finance. For almost two decades I constantly travelled around the world for work."

After a posting in New York, where he paid US taxes between 1992 and 1996, Javid returned to the UK "and was tax-resident here".

After that, he said: "For some of those years I was non-domiciled for tax purposes, but I paid all UK taxes due on my income and have always done so.

"In 2006 I moved to Singapore with my family and was therefore no longer a UK tax resident. In 2009, upon my return to the UK, I became tax-resident in the UK again and also proactively chose to give up my non-domiciled status by making the UK my 'domicile of choice'."

Javid briefly served as chancellor between July 2019 and February 2020 and has been tipped for a return if Johnson reshuffles Sunak after the local elections.

During the 2019 election campaign, as chancellor, he boasted the Tories had introduced more than 100 measures to "tackle aggressive tax avoidance and evasion" in order to make the tax system "simpler — and, most importantly, fairer".

[Admiral Yi]

What purpose do traffic bollards serve?  The kind that raise and lower.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_Cw0QJU8ro

[Syt]

What purpose do traffic bollards serve?  The kind that raise and lower.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_Cw0QJU8ro

E.g. in Salzburg they try to keep car traffic from parts of the narrow old town, and people living in the area get a key to open the bollards. Can also be used to restrict access outside certain hours (e.g. if you want delivery trucks for shops in between 6 an 9 am).

[Sheilbh]

Suank's launched an inquiry into who has leaked his wife's tax status (as tax status is confidential and it's unlawful to leak) - they won't find anything and it'll just waste some poor civil servants time. But this shows again that actually Sunak's big issue is that he has appalling political judgement when left on his own.

No inquiry into leaks ever produces results - see Number 10's two year search for the "chatty rat". At best it's a distraction, at worst - and I think that's the case here - it looks like you're trying to punish whoever stopped you getting away with it. Whatever the result it's likely to mean there'll be a few more weeks of stories about your wife's non-dom status as the press chase updates on how the inquiry's going/who's in the frame etc. Again it doesn't feel like a smart move - from the man who tried to fight Marcus Rashford three times

[Richard Hakluyt]

Yeah, a foolish move that cements his reputation as an immensely rich out-of-touch person.

Bye then Rishi, we barely knew thee 

[Sheilbh]

Genuinely would be surprised if he's not moved to his Santa Monica house by 2025. He's MP for Richmond which is about as safe a Tory seat as you can get - but I don't think a few years on the backbenches are really in his plan.

Edit: On the other hand I think the whole incident shows Javid's canny (he may end up back in the Treasury before long anyway). Clearly journalists would be digging around the rest of the cabinet and may even have already identified Javid. So while Sunak's dealing with lots of allegations and escalating them with his response - Javid gets that statement out.

And I think it's a story that people will kind of understand - guy works for Deutsche Bank, he spends time posted in New York and Singapore and does some light tax avoidance in the pre-crash economy. When he comes back to the UK ends non-dom status and (because he earns a lot) pays highest rate of income tax. Sunak's is post-crash, it carries on while he's living not just in the UK but in Downing Street and while he's the guy in charge of the tax system.

But Javid won't have a surprise from the press as Chancellor or in his leadership run. It's a smart move.

[Sheilbh]

That route for Sunak seems even more likely now - his "friends" are telling papers he might not stand as an MP at the next election. Which is fairly extraordinary but would be a fitting end to his equally rapid rise without a trace.

[Richard Hakluyt]

This sort of thing is going to happen more and more often as the upper orders become more international and less British, French or whatever (or will that process go into reverse?).

I don't think the electorate will tolerate being governed by people whose nationality is essentially a flag of convenience. Which is fair enough in my book.

[The Larch]

This sort of thing is going to happen more and more often as the upper orders become more international and less British, French or whatever (or will that process go into reverse?).

Agreed that elites are almost always going to be more international almost by default, but maybe in the case of the UK this is exacerbated by its position in international banking, in which politicians sometimes (often?) come from very lucrative careers in that sector. It's my impression that the UK has less "career politicians" than other countries, which has its pros and cons, and this is certainly a con.

I don't think the electorate will tolerate being governed by people whose nationality is essentially a flag of convenience. Which is fair enough in my book.

Yeah, if the Green card thing was ever confirmed (was it?) it'd make Sunak's political career untenable, IMO.

[Sheilbh]

Agreed that elites are almost always going to be more international almost by default, but maybe in the case of the UK this is exacerbated by its position in international banking, in which politicians sometimes (often?) come from very lucrative careers in that sector. It's my impression that the UK has less "career politicians" than other countries, which has its pros and cons, and this is certainly a con.

At the minute in terms of background parliament's basically split into thirds. One third are from the professions (lawyers, doctors, teachers, civil servants), one third is from business and one third is "miscellaneous" which is where most of the career politicians are - that group includes journalists/writers, politicians/organisers and "white collar miscellaneous" which includes politics ajacent jobs like think tankers or trade union officials.

Business, though, includes a lot - some will have been international bankers, others will have been fireplace salesmen like Gavin Williamson, have founded a polling company (YouGov) like Nadhim Zahawi, or have founded educational companies like Jeremy Hunt (who is, I think, personally the richest cabinet minister in recent years  - I could be wrong but I think that includes Sunak if you're looking at their personal wealth).

Bankers aren't very popular in the UK for obvious reasons In fact one of the biggest surprises for me of the last 6 years after Brexit was how little attention was paid to the City who basically got nothing that they wanted in Brexit negotiations - and the May and Johnson governments didn't even seem to try to talk about services. The City and the bankers were just ignored which I did not expect.

But I think it's worth noting just how unique and weird Sunak's rise is. Well-off parents and private school followed by Oxbridge and joining Goldman Sachs. Then he takes a couple of years break to do an MBA in Stanford before returning as a partner in a hedge fund. from that he earns, reportedly, low millions which makes him very rich - but not global elite rich. It's also recognisable as a type - there's thousands of men and women with that sort of career route living in leafy bits of London. It's not a million miles away from Sajid Javid (except he has a working clalss family, state school and non-Oxbridge) who worked for Deutsche Bank for 20 years. Frankly it's not a million miles from Macron.

But at Stanford he meets and then gets married to Akshata Murthy whose dad is a co-founder of Infosys and who owns about $1 billion worth of Infosys shares. And I think that's just another world - country house in the constituency, multiple properties in posh bits of London, house in Santa Monica with a helicopter. Then in 2015 he becomes an MP, in 2018 he becomes a junior minister in Local Government Department, in 2019 he becomes Chief Secretary to the Treasury, in 2021 he becomes Chancellor - and then in 2022 he could have become Prime Minister and his career expllodes. I can't think of anyone else with a career like Sunak's - obviously I think he's a real person but that rise is almost Manchurian candidate.

So I'm not sure how many lessons there are from Sunak for other politicians in general because it's such a strange story. Even the non-dom thing which came out for Javid is I think something people will understand because Javid can say "it was before I entered politics, I worked in international finance including several years in New York and Singapore - and I wasn't sure where I'd be living in my career." It's way out of most people's experience but that makes sense in a way that Green Card and non-dom spouse don't if you're a minister and especially Chancellor.

And in the case of Sunak it contrasts with Johnson who's the only politician I'm aware of who has been caught paying too much tax - which rather goes to the personality differences between the two.

Yeah, if the Green card thing was ever confirmed (was it?) it'd make Sunak's political career untenable, IMO.

Yeah I think I agree. The Green Card is about intending to permanently settle in the US. Also I think this isn't the first time Sunak's "friends" have briefed that he might resign - and I don't think repeatedly throwing his toys out of his pram is an attractive look. But also after that seamless rise, I'm just not sure Sunak is willing to get through some turbulence or go back to the backbenches and rebuild his career over several years. I just don't have that sense of him.

Worth noting thought that there's no ban on dual citizenship for MPs - there are many who are dual citizens of Ireland, Johnson was a dual US citizen until 2017 (renounced for tax reasons), off the top of my head I think Alberto Costa could have Itallian citizenship etc. It's not information that MPs have to report.

[Sheilbh]

Incidentally despite Johnson's proposal to ban gay conversion therapy but not trans conversion therapy (his argument is wanting to avoid accidentally banning exploration of gender including the assigned gender for people who think they might be trans) - there's basically no support for a different approach among the British public or Tory voters. About 70% of the public support the ban, about 60% of Tory voters support the ban and there's basically no difference for either when you ask about whether it should be gay or trans. I think, as with bathrooms in the states, this just seems to be unfair and wrong to people to splilt it in that way.

[Josquius]

Interesting rapid fall for sunak. Johnson will be sending Putin a thank you card I think.