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Local By-Election results as a Barometer of Things to Come

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Making long term predictions about political outcomes is a risky process – in some ways it’s comparable to weather forecasting – the earth’s atmosphere is a chaotic system and trying to predict it behaviour locally more than 2 or 3 days ahead accurately still presents us with many uncertainties, despite all our advances in predictive technology. We’ve all seen recently how long a week is in politics nowadays, let alone a month, or indeed 3 years! Although 2029 is thus a long way ahead, and Labour's leadership and cabinet will be focused on more immediate policy decisions, their advance planners will already be thinking hard, and indeed with some trepidation, about their electoral prospects…and not solely for the next general election. After the hammering both major parties took in the May 2025 local elections, largely at the hands of Farage’s Reform, they will both be acutely aware that their next real ‘day of reckoning’ will be next May. The reason why Labour in particular ...
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UK Income Tax and the 2025 Budget: Will She Or Won’t She ?

  Rachel Reeves has a thorny problem on her hands.  She needs to decide within the next 3 weeks (i.e. before the budget on Nov 26 th ) whether to break the key manifesto promise Labour made in order to get themselves elected in 2024, i.e. not to raise Income Tax, VAT or National Insurance. She knows that breaking this promise will be a highly unpopular move, not least with her back-bench colleagues, and doing so, however justifiably in her eyes, could spell electoral suicide for the party. If the opinion polls are anything to go by, the process of Labour's decline started as soon as she announced the near abolition of  WFP last July; it could really start to snowball in May of next year, in the aftermath of the predicted whitewash of Labour seats in the next round of local elections. The chancellor is also facing the increasingly gloomy financial outlook for the UK prophesied by the OBR, and is desperate to give herself as much financial ‘headroom’ as possible wit...
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No Standing Charge Electricity Tariffs: OFGEM says they’re coming, but will they save us money ?

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A Warning to low Electricity and Gas users:   If you are anything other than a high user of both fuels, don't be tempted by offers from your supplier to fix your tariffs now.... These offers have been coming in thick and fast since last month on the back of the latest price cap rise, with OFGEM actually 'co-conspiring' with suppliers to try to get you to fix.  The rationale being peddled is to "...protect yourself against future price cap rises...". If you do succumb to the temptation, however, you'll lock yourself into a contract lasting at least a year with exit penalties, and won't be able to take advantage of any No-SC or reduced-SC tariffs that appear this winter....companies want to avoid subscribers switching to these tariffs, since they know they could lose money as a result, and are using fixing as a deterrent, so beware. One item of note to surface very recently is that EDF are now offering a fixed rate product with a reduced SC in a desperate ef...
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