vivweb01blog

  Although 2029 is a long way ahead, and the leadership and cabinet will be focused on immediate policy decisions, their advance planners should already be thinking about their electoral prospects…and not just for the next general election. The reason why they should be concerned at this early stage is that the local elections are only a little over 6 months away, so the first ‘day of reckoning’ at the ballot box is, relatively speaking,   nigh. Does this really matter, though ? The answer is that it does…the brunt of any early disapproval by the electorate (and there’s plenty of that around just now!) will fall on local Labour councillors, many of whom come up for re-election next year and will be worried about retaining their seats on May 1 st . In one sense, this is a pity, since Local politics is by its nature less overtly political than the national variety, and involves a lot more cross-party collaboration – it simply has to, in order to get things done at a local level.

Editor's note: For update post-budget,and its implications, see end of text.  ---------------------------------------- The Chancellor is up against it trying to find the extra cash she has decided is needed to fill the 'Black Hole'. This is because she has decided to upgrade its value from the original £22Bn to £40Bn in order to fund enhancements to public services, and the additional public sector union pay demands expected in 2025. Both IHT and Capital Gains taxes look like primary targets for extra revenue, and there were strong hints yesterday from government sources that Starmer had plans for ‘multiple changes’ to IHT.  In a previous blog I predicted that IHT would be a likely target, given the block on IT, VAT and NI rate changes. I made some speculative guesses about what Reeves might do to increase revenue from IHT, which is a much-hated* tax levied on their assets when someone dies. Sadly, at least some of these predictions are now quite likely to see the light of

  Those of us who were suspicious of Labour’s motives before the election will not have been surprised at Rachel Reeve’s first salvo in Labour’s ‘war on pensioners’ in August. The only thing that was a little unexpected was the belligerence of her delivery…and the readiness with which she was prepared to ‘let the cat out of the bag’ this early in her tenure. The pronounced ‘gasp’ from all sides of the Commons when she announced the move suggested that even her own colleagues were a tad surprised. Subsequent analysis has shown very little evidence of contrition on her part, although Starmer's 'happy band' of new MPs are getting it in the neck via their mailboxes. It was a virtual certainty that benefits would come under attack following the Tories election defeat. Labour, having successfully hemmed themselves in by their manifesto promise of no increases in NI, VAT or income tax rates, have already agreed several inflation-busting increases in public sector pay. With man

    Now that the dust is starting to settle after Reeves’ so-called ‘Halloween Nightmare’ budget, let’s take a look at what actually happened to pensioner benefits…and what we might expect to happen in future. We all know about the loss of the Winter Fuel Payment for the majority of pensioners – you would have had to have been living on Mars for the last 3 months not to. Starmer is not yet out of the woods on that one, although it’s unlikely he will give way without an adverse judgement in the courts, and he will doubtless fight to defeat any attempt to force an about-turn, since the loss of face involved would be too great for him to bear, both politically and personally. The overwhelming adverse reaction to the move, and in particular to the way it was announced and justified, will have been noted, however, and I think this has probably been responsible for restraint on any further cuts – so far.…. It remains to be seen whether we will ever get universal WF payments back – if t

  We've been hearing rather a lot about ‘Black Holes’ over the last 3 months or so….some would argue a bit too much. Sadly, there has been little attempt being made to explain their true origin or properties, and the focus instead has been on explaining how terrible things are likely to get for us all because of them. In an attempt to dispel some of the current UK.Gov-induced pre- (and now post- !) budget gloom and despondency, I’ll take a light-hearted look at these not-so-celestial phenomena and attempt to explain them for the interested reader. Firstly, do they resemble the cosmological feature of the same name ? In some ways, they would certainly appear to.... Physical black holes are frequently found at the centres of galaxies, and have such huge masses that their gravitational attraction sucks in everything in their vicinity, including light. They thus have a habit of getting progressively bigger…and darker, and present a distinct ‘event horizon’ beyond which nothing