Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Tamas]

UK bank shares jump after 'avoiding budget tax raid'
Shares in UK banks have jumped at the start of trading, following reports that they will be spared from a tax raid in the budget.

Splendid, tax raise for me is more guaranteed by the day!

One thing perhaps Labour could take from Fidesz' playbook is the sector taxes. Orban's people would raise taxes on banks and telecom companies. It was very obvious, and came to be, that they'd need to increase prices/interest charged so at the end of the day it'd be the consumers paying the tax, but the majority of the electorate could not make that "complex" connection of the banks being told to pay more and their own personal financial situation becoming a bit worse.

[Sheilbh]

I have a slight sense of foreboding that the budget might be a bit of a disaster. I'm a little concerned that moving to the smorgasbord approach of lots of little tax rises will possibly backfire in a day or two - I could be wrong I just feel it might go the way of the pasty tax/omnishambles budget of being a bit too clever by half.

Meanwhile the OBR (who should not be this important) is apparently going to downgrade its growth forecast for every year to 2031 which will have an impact on "headroom" in future budgets (thisis all a ridiculous prospect). But also not particularly great in a government that has said it is "laser-focused on growth".

Speaking of growth the government task force on nuclear reported back yesterday with a realy highly praised report that made a lot of actionable recommendations that seemed to make a lot of sense. So inevitably I see Robert Peston today giving an update

Robert Peston
@Peston

John Fingleton's review for the government of how to reduce unnecessary barriers and costs for nuclear power development is a tour de force, a compelling road map for how to accelerate important infrastructure investment in the UK - which is the sine qua non of improving growth and living standards (read John's nutshell below).

For the last eight weeks he was assured that the prime minister and chancellor would accept and implement the recommendations in full. He even tweaked an important clause at the government's request, to give them a bit more flexibility over the means to implementation.

I understand he has now been told that at the budget tomorrow the welcome will be conditional, subject to further work and review - because the Chancellor has been nobbled by a legal and planning adviser, who claims the Fingleton recommendations somehow breach the UK's environmental, trade  and human rights obligations.

He and his colleagues believe this is nonsense. They examined the legal considerations in their assessment.  But they fear that yet again the dead hand of official caution has squashed - potentially for months and years - important growth-enhancing investment.

At some point this parliament I hope the government will discover they have a majority in a sovereign parliament and can just do things

Semi-relatedly having delayed defence spending announcements for a year while they did another Strategic Defence Review...

Starmer promised to spend big on defense but Britain's arms industry is still waiting

Six months after a major inquiry into how the U.K. would meet geopolitical threats, many in the industry complain they haven't received the certainty they need about where the British government plans to invest. 

https://www.politico.eu/article/keir-starmer-britain-arms-industry-defense-whitehall-armies-sdr-nato/

I've complained about this before but I think the commitment on defence (which took a big fight by the MoD v the Treasury) is still incredibly inadequate for the European security situation:

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer's Labour Party has made a lot of noise on defense since entering government last year, plundering the aid budget to get defense spending to reach 2.6 percent of GDP by 2027 and a promise of 3.5 percent by 2035.

Industry figures complaining of repeated deferrals, decsions not being taken, actual contracts not being awareded - which all seems like a repeated pattern with this government. They don't actually seem to like choosing and making decisions.

[Sheilbh]

So there was some initial reporting that the government was intending to follow Sir Brian Leveson's report which reduced some jury trials and was part of a wider package.

It sounds like the government are going vastly further than that. Basically the only jury trials will be murder, rape or manslaughter (by default) with some other jury trials if that is deemed to be in the "public interest". The line from the MoJ to the rest of government is that there is "no right" to jury trial.

I'm very opposed to this - I thought Leveson's recommendations (from what I'd read) seemed very sensible but this is massive overreach. In particular a lot will depend on how broad "public interest" is and my suspicion is that it'll be narrow and an easy route for future governments to further restrict trial by jury.

I'd note that in relation to protest and speech crimes that juries are very often a genuine shield - they are very, very reluctant to convict people. We have seen in recent years juries fairly consistently acquit people of protest and speech crimes much to the displeasure of (and despite the influence of) the judge - judges are basically willing to throw the book on those offences - and despite the political and press interest in those cases.

I rather prefer David Lammy's ideas from 2020 on this ("these are my principles! And if you don't like them - I have others!"):

David Lammy
@DavidLammy
Jun 20, 2020
Jury trials are a fundamental part of our democratic settlement. Criminal trials without juries are a bad idea.

The Government need to pull their finger out and acquire empty public buildings across the country to make sure these can happen in a way that is safe.

We will work with the government on sensible proposals to deal with the backlog - which started long before Covid-19 because of underfunding.

You don't fix the backlog with trials that are widely perceived as unfair.

Also something absolutely insane about recommendations reforming planning rules on whether it was really necessary to spend £700 million on fish preservation technology around a nuclear power plant, only for this to be stymied because of concerns about international and human rights law while the governments attitude to denuding the right to a jury trial appears to be "YOLO"

[Richard Hakluyt]

The right to a jury trial is a fundamental bulwark against tyranny, not that this bunch of incompetent control freaks cares about that.

[Josquius]

Most of Europe, including many far freer places than the UK, abolished trial by jury some time ago.
The system the Govenrment are going for seems to be pretty akin to the French one where they keep juries for serious crimes cos tradition but otherwise follow the rationalist European approach.

This really does seem to be a typical British/anglo thing of letting tradition and things being for positive reasons historically, really hold us back.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Most of Europe is wrong then 

I completely disagree with you on this. Take, for example, the government's current efforts to curtail free speech and protests. With the "rationalist European approach" people falling foul of these laws will simply be punished. In the UK, with trial by jury, if the government is engaged in unpopular overreach, then the plaintiffs can be found not guilty.

I would say thet curbing free speech, which the government is trying to do, is unpopular in a non-partisan way. Why make things easy for these wannabe masters?

[Tamas]

Yeah I'd rather keep trial by jury around.

[Josquius]

That's a problem with the law. Not with the way the law is enforced.
If I were to be accused of a crime I didn't commit then I'd absolutely trust a group of trained experts to decide on the truth of things than a bunch of randomers pulled off the street.
There's other problems that become more pertinent taking the European approach- the need for more diverse judges for instance- but I do think we are in a very different situation today to pre-industrial times when there was a genuine need to put chicken theft in front of a jury rather than a group of guys who deal with this every day and are firmly neutral.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I'm arguing for the right to call for a trial by jury, not mandatory trial by jury. For most offences it will just be trial by magistrate, as it is now. But if someone is in a politically sensitive trial (such as those silly buggers with the orange powder at stonehenge or the "we support Palestine Action" crowd, I think it is only right that they can call for a trial by jury.

[Sheilbh]

Yaeh I'm with RH on this particularly on the example of protest and speech trials - and we can see how judges treat those same cases because they throw the book generally.

What the government are proposing is nothing like France. France has investigating judges who direct criminal investigations and decide whether there is then sufficient evidence to send the case to court. The judge's role is inquisitorial - it is to determine the truth. That is an entirely different role and purpose philosophically for the judge than ours. It'd be a far more radical reform (and you'd need a lot more judges).

Similarly I think in Italy you have the more common mixed jury of judge and lay people. However the jury is responsible not just for determining guilt, but for also setting out reasons and determining sentence. In England and Wales the jury simply rules on the facts, the sentencing and legal analysis based on that finding of fact is for the judge. I think Italy also has investigating judges but I'm not sure.

I don't think it is necessarily right or wrong or that juries are always necessary. I think there's a case for removing jury trial for certain types of offence and raising the bar to get a jury bar more generally. But juries are a kind of essential part of how our system has developed. This isn't just a formal point of we have juries and some of Europe. We have very different systems. As you see with Italy and France - both incidentally have (and need) far more judges. Which I think is also the problem. If the government wants to reform and move us to a more inquisitorial or judge led system that's a defensible position - but it is a radical reform so they'd need to make the case, build the argument and probably spend quite a lot of money re-training existing judges and recruiting new ones. But the driver here isn't that philosophical or structural shift - it's just that they need to save a bit of money and there's a backlog of cases (due to underinvestment).

It's a bit like the welfare cuts. There's absolutely a case for welfare reform that would, in the medium/long term, reduce the costs of disability and long-term sickness benefits (which are increasing rapidly). But that's not what the government tried to do. The Treasury told DWP they needed to cut an extra £5 billion to make the numbers add up and that's what they came up with. It's the same here.

[Sheilbh]

Totally separately but the OBR published its update before the budget by mistake. Apparently due to a "technical error".

I still think we should abolish the OBR in general.

But on this - people need to resign/be fired. We've got the City making moves on it but also the Guardian live blogging what the Chancellor is going to announce as they work through the OBR report before they've even stood up in the Commons. It's clown-ish.

[Tamas]

I like the tax on gambling. I guess some losers' money finding its way to organised crime is not great but the industry seems awash in money advertising absolutely everywhere, which is kind of gross.

Tax on 2m+ properties at least has symbolic value so good.

Not thrilled about the 3p charge on EV miles driven, that's going to almost triple our current 1.6p per mile cost, but we are going to survive.

[PJL]

The salary sacrifice cap for exempting NI payments for pensions seems too low at £2,000 per year, especially since it won't come into force until 2029. Can see a lot of pension front loading going on until then. £5,000 would have been better, and why not do this from 2026? Doesn't make sense to me to leave it so long.