Burnham’s exchange with ITV News’ political correspondent Harry Horton in Ukraine:
There’s always Spring. Remember when Burnham said he would serve his full term as Manchester mayor about fifteen times?
More than quarter of a million homes are up for inspection by HMRC officers as part of Labour’s ‘Mansion Tax’ plans. The war on aspiration continues…
The tax will implement four thresholds for property valuations – a sliding scale with homes valued between £2 million and £2.5 million paying £2,500 per year, and those valued at more than £5 million owing £7,500.
The tax is already causing significant “bunching” on house offers and purchases. 83% of offers on homes priced within 10% of £2 million came in below that threshold versus only 64% for the previous year. Bunching is occurring at higher rates too…
HMRC will be keen to avoid missing out on revenue by valuing properties above thresholds where owners have tried to keep them just below. That may mean a large number of “internal inspections” on the way. The Valuation Office has already hired half a thousand new valuation officers for “data enhancement” on Council Tax. Boots on the ground…
This means a large number of properties are up for in-person inspection. A conservative estimate of homes valued between £1.5 and £2 million is 150,000. The OBR predicts that 71,000 are worth between £2 and £2.5 million and there are 94,000 homes above that. These will have to be valued every five years according to Labour’s new Council Tax grab measures…
That’s 315,000 homes at least set to receive a knock at the door every five years. There is a reason that valuations are so difficult to do…
What’s going on with Burnham and the EU talks? The PM said he would be ‘bolder‘ in a readout this morning:
“The UK had to be bolder in terms of getting closer to the bloc, the Prime Minister said. That included building on the close defence and security ties already forged between the UK and European Allies to drive greater cooperation across all areas of the relationship, he added.
The UK-EU summit set to be held later this year, would offer a platform to continue that work, the leaders agreed. Both looked forward to seeing one and another at the Coalition of the Willing later today.”
Questioned on the ‘bolder’ point, sources from the government insisted that in his final months Starmer also said Britain should be ‘bolder’ with the EU ‘reset’ and Burnham was simply ‘reiterating that ambition’ instead of changing the position of the last government. So according to this version – no change…
Contrast that to the end of last month when Hamish Falconer, the minister tasked with picking up Nick Thomas Symonds’ negotiations with the EU, said:
“Well, look, Nick and the previous Prime Minister did really important work to help reset relations and I want to consolidate some of that work. But we also need to see how we can go further. Even since when we started those talks, the world has changed quite dramatically. The threats have changed quite dramatically.
Both, we were talking about some of the threats in Eastern Europe, but clearly there are economic security threats, disinformation threats too. And I’ll be wanting to look at those issues in the round with my European counterparts.”
Burnham himself wants to rejoin eventually. Labour’s EU policy is to repeatedly smack itself in the face but from different and unpredictable angles…
At Reform’s press conference today Richard Tice and Lee Anderson were asked of Zia Yusuf: “Do you think he should be spending less time on social media?” After some combative X posts from the Reform Shadow Home Secretary…
Tice said: “We’re all passionate. Zia is passionate. And we all frankly are furious at how the previous Conservative government, they let us all down because they said they were going to reduce immigration numbers. They didn’t. They opened the doors… as I tweeted out a couple of days ago I think the summer heat may have got to a few journalists.” Reform figures have been raging at reports of internal tensions for about a week now…
Anderson, the chief whip of Reform, said: “A little bit of advice to anybody, if you don’t like what Zia says, then just scroll by. It’s really simple.” One way to do it…
UPDATE: Zia Yusuf said on X:
“It is possible to lie by omission, and that’s what Guido Fawkes has done today.
The Tory Labour establishment is terrified of my social media platform.
My accounts do over 200 million organic views a month.
Which is why establishment media is hell bent on trying to censor me.
Lee was asked by one ‘journalist’ if I ‘post too much’.
Lee responded:
“Zia is one of our best communicators in Reform UK, very popular with the membership. A little advice for anybody: if you don’t like what Zia says just scroll by”.
Guido reported it with the headline:
‘Lee Anderson advises people to scroll past Zia’s posts’.
I will let you draw your own conclusions.
Remember, the things the establishment media write about Reform are not only lies, they are the *opposite* of the truth.”
Tice is in Westminster to announce Reform’s new policy. Summarised:
Tice has compared himself to Nye Bevan…
HMRC has hired an army of almost 500 new valuation agents to snoop on homes. At your door…
The Valuation Office Agency’s annual report up to the end of March showed that staff costs had risen by £31.5 million and the total Full Time Equivalent staff number has risen by 493, a ten-times increase in the hiring rate on the year before. The agency is being merged with HMRC. It said:
“The rise in staff costs is primarily due to our pay award, and an increase in agency staff costs of approximately £12 million to support performance recovery and data enhancement work to improve our Council Tax data quality.”
The agents will be able to demand entry to homes for “internal inspections” to determine whether they are worth over £2 million and will therefore have to pay Reeves’ so-called Mansion Tax. If you don’t let them in you will get a £200 fine or worse. It’s soon to be a bungalow tax thanks to fiscal drag…
Back in February the VOA told Guido’s FOI Unit that it was “not recruiting an additional 1,000 valuation officials to support the High Value Council Tax Surcharge. It is not yet possible to confirm the precise number of VOA staff that will be allocated to HVCTS activity, however it will be a minority of the 1,000 additional headcount due to be recruited to HMRC as a whole.” Seeing as more valuation officers will have been recruited since March, Guido highly doubts that the above quote is the truth…
Under current legislation HMRC can ask the occupier to agree a time for an inspection but if the they refuse to agree, the taxman has to apply to the First-tier Tribunal for approval. This could get messy…
The Tories are campaigning against the snooping. Shadow housing minister David Simmonds said:
“Labour are recruiting an army of council tax police to enter your home and drag you into paying their new family homes tax. This is a sinister attack on civil liberties and another example of worrying overreach from this Labour Government.”
It’s the hated Hearth Tax all over again…
Lord Khan in the Telegraph: “I hope, and I say this in a non-pompous way, that the public service I do will bring rewards in this world and the hereafter,” he says. “I’m hoping the work I do is earning me Brownie points.”