Guido has seen a copy of the Tories’ local election guidance for this year. Titled: “Winning your local election in a multiparty world: Persuasion, persuasion, persuasion”…
Written in February, the document sets out the Tories philosophy on voter communications in the new political era. It reads:
“The main focus of campaigning is no longer just about identifying strong supporters and getting them to the polls.
It’s about identifying soft voters – and persuading them, persuading them, and persuading them again. The parties that adapt to this new environment will win. The parties that rely on old assumptions will lose.”
CCHQ describes its crucial ‘swing voter audience’ as follows:
“This audience is canvassed at 42% Conservative, with large numbers of Ms and Ts. In other words, this is an audience highly open to persuasion.
They are relatively well-off and highly likely to vote. They are slightly more likely to have voted Remain in the referendum, but they are also likely to have voted Conservative in the past. Many in this group started to leave us in 2015, favouring Green, Liberal Democrats, Labour and Plaid.
They are only likely to vote for us now if we start having persuasive conversations with them about the local Conservative team, about plans for the local economy, and about the good work we’ve done so far. As a group, they require a higher level of engagement and proof that their local Conservative team are delivering locally.”
Ms are LibDem/Tory waverers and Ts are Labour/Tory waverers. Badenoch has a reshuffle coming up as part of which her target voters will be at the top of CCHQ minds…
Co-conspirators should watch for which mid-ranking Tory backbenchers get promotions in the Badenoch reshuffle. Jack Rankin and Katie Lam are two on the right of the party who could be up for promotion – Aphra Brandreth and Harriet Cross less so. There is some talk of the Tories picking up a strategy of the ‘anti-Reform tactical vote’ in order to consolidate mostly in the South…
There is internal debate over whether to continue chasing Reform votes in the main. Are the constituent parties of the right about to pick up their own audiences instead of shredding each others’?
The Americans are fighting back against the tin pot police at Ofcom. Republican congressman Michael Rulli has today filed a bill which would bar American courts from enforcing foreign fines handed out over speech. Following months of Ofcom’s attempts to impose ludicrous fines on 4chan over Online Safety Act violations…
The bill, known as the Granite Act (Guaranteeing Rights Against Novel International Tyranny and Extortion), is said to have the backing of senior figures within the White House. Rulli told the Times:
“Foreign bureaucrats do not get to decide what Americans can say. My bill makes clear that if a foreign government tries to punish an American for speech protected by the First Amendment, that judgment is dead on arrival in our courts. The constitution protects our right to speak freely. It does not bend to Brussels or London.”
4chan lawyer Preston Byrne has been beating the drum on this for months. Watch Guido’s interview with him here…
New DWP data published today (released on the same day the number of NEETs dipped slightly below 1 million) asked 1,004 teachers whether young people are getting more or less ready for work. The results are a shambles for the government. A whopping 66% said they feel less prepared, with just 4% say more…
74% said there’s ‘too much focus on passing exams’, with 73% also saying there is not enough focus on preparing pupils for work. Nearly four in ten mark down their own school on work experience, including 9% who say theirs doesn’t offer any at all…
New figures from HMRC show that higher Capital Gains Tax revenues have come from investors selling their assets prior to an increase in rates by Rachel Reeves. Who would’ve thought?
In an explanatory document HMRC said “speculation” around CGT prior to the 2024 budget drove disposals. Funnily enough a cut in the CGT rate drove property transactions higher and thus increased revenue: “In the 2024 to 2025 tax year, the higher rate of CGT on residential property was reduced from 28% to 24%. This rate cut resulted in less tax being collected per transaction and per gain reported; however, earlier and additional transactions are expected to have been stimulated by the rate cut, which in turn resulted in additional reported gains and tax for this year.” Residential property transactions since fell in 2025/26…
High-tax enthusiasts at the IPPR think tank are claiming that higher receipts justify increasing CGT even more by bringing it in line with Income Tax rates: “Capital gains tax is an increasingly important source of revenue for the government, particularly following the unprecedented boom in asset values over the past two decades. Income from wealth is likely to become steadily more significant as technology adoption and automation accelerate in the coming years.” Unfortunately for the leftists they may find themselves disappointed by the results…
HMRC is being as explicit as it is able:
“At Autumn Budget 2024, the Chancellor announced that the tax rate at which gains qualifying for BADR are charged would increase from 10% to 14% from April 2025 and again to 18% from April 2026. Both increases were announced prior to implementation giving taxpayers an opportunity to bring forward disposals to benefit from the lower 10% rate. This contributed to a 45% increase in the number of taxpayers making BADR-eligible disposals in the 2024 to 2025 tax year from 42,000 to 61,000.”
“speculation around the possible implementation of tax increases at Autumn Budget 2024 on 30 October may have resulted in taxpayers bringing forward disposals. This can be seen by the increase in disposals and gains realised in September and October 2024 in Table 8c.2, followed by decreases in the subsequent months.”
A spokesman for the low tax campaign Cut My Tax said:
“The latest data reinforces the fact that CGT is a voluntary tax, paid only when people choose to dispose of assets. In 2024 they did so because they correctly feared that Labour would hike the rate in the autumn budget. We may now expect much lower CGT revenue for the rest of the Parliament as people will hold on to assets until Labour is turfed out”.
It’s a waiting game…
Government plans to send inspectors to value homes as part of Labour’s ‘Mansion Tax’ grab and consequent revaluation project are set to put a huge strain on the already-struggling tribunal system. And it’s two different tribunals set to blow…
The OBR expects one in five property owners to appeal the revaluation imposed upon them by HMRC. The taxman is set to revalue more than 315,000 homes every five years. So that’s 63,000 appeals every half-decade…
The Valuation Tribunal for England got just over 8,000 appeals in the whole of 2024-25, carrying 4,700 forward from April 2024. New appeals bring an almost tenfold increase in caseload for the tribunal – good luck…
Under council tax rules and following the introduction of safeguards in 2015, if the occupier of a property refuses entry to an HMRC inspection official, the taxman has to secure permission from the First-tier Tribunal, specifically the Property Chamber, which handles applications from valuation officers to enter premises. This “can be lengthy and costly.”
Even before the Labour Renters’ Rights Act took effect, only 21% of rent appeals at the Property Chamber were decided within 10 weeks, with 80% taking longer. Because the RRA abolished ‘no-fault’ evictions and gives every tenant the right to challenge a rent increase at the tribunal for free, that tribunal will be busy enough too…
The practical result of inspections, revaluations and their inevitable appeals is that there will be massive delays in the court system which will likely force more property owner-occupiers to appeal the amount of tax they have been forced to pay. The domino effect – instead the new tax grab should be scrapped and HMRC should keep out of people’s homes…
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Lee Anderson, speaking to The Sun’s Tom Scotson, reveals the wokest thing he’s ever done: “I once had a vegetarian thought, about becoming a vegetarian. That was quickly dismissed when I had a bacon sandwich…”