More gold from the Oval Office…
Labour has proposed charging business pass attendees to its Party Conference a whopping £2,500. For the pleasure of seeing a junior minister’s face over breakfast of stale croissants…
The party is launching all pass applications on the 11th of this month. Its conference services team currently asking previous business attendees a series of questions about their hopes and expectations and says “your input will play a key role in ensuring we get this right for you.“ Labour is even offering respondents a £100 Amazon or John Lewis gift card as a reward for their views…
The questionnaire asks:
“If the Annual Conference week pass was priced at £2,500, how likely would you be to purchase a ticket?”
Those business passes usually start at £900 before rising at the last minute stage. So Labour is proposing a price hike of almost 300%. Party finance desperation combined with hatred of growth-generators…
For the first time ever, Guido Fawkes is partnering with the Institute of Economic Affairs for an exclusive panel debate in the heart of Westminster on 1st June. Is Britain Broken?
Britain’s economic record over the past decade and a half makes for uncomfortable reading. Productivity growth has flatlined. Real wages have barely recovered from the 2008 crash. The tax burden is at its highest since the post-war era. The welfare and pensions bills keep climbing. Meanwhile debates over free speech, crime, and immigration continue to divide the political and policy debate.
But is Britain really broken? Are we witnessing temporary policy failures while the overarching story is more positive, or is something deeper going wrong? And crucially: what, if anything, can be done about it?
Speakers:
- Fraser Nelson, The Times
- Zia Yusuf, Reform UK
- Lord Frost, IEA
- Adam Cherry, Guido Fawkes (chair)
Fawkes Friends and Premium Plotters are invited to attend, and will receive an email today with information on how register. Date and venue details are included in the invitation. Become a Fawkes Friend or Premium Plotter today to secure your invitation…
Reeves’ Mansion Tax is set to lose the Treasury at least £400 million before it comes into effect in April 2028. Experts are casting doubt on those optimistic figures…
The tax means that homeowners will be forced to pay a flat surcharge in addition to council tax if their property is valued at £2 million or more. The charge is set in four increasing bands…
Guido’s FOI Unit has obtained the internal breakdown HMRC used to cost the High Value Council Tax Surcharge’s impact on other tax receipts. The figures show HMRC expects the surcharge to reduce SDLT receipts by just £45 million in 2026-27, rising to £90 million by 2028-29, with CGT losses of £15-£50 million over the same period. And negligible IHT impact initially…
That adds up to £335 million in lost tax receipts plus £120 million in implementation costs. Homes sold for £2 million or more generate approximately 22% of all residential SDLT receipts. The Treasury expects only 90 fewer £2 million-plus sales per year, a 1.5% reduction in a market of roughly 6,000 annual transactions…
Hamptons research shows listings between £1.8 million and £2 million rose 6% year-on-year in the two months after the Budget, while listings between £2 million and £2.2 million fell by 7%. The bunching effect already in place two years before the surcharge kicks in…
Tom Bill, head of UK residential research at Knight Frank, casts doubt on the government’s projections and tells Guido:
“The main problem with an estimate like this is the assumption that transactions would have continued unimpeded without a mansion tax. Prices will distort and demand will soften around the price thresholds that some feared would be set higher, but the overall tax burden is the bigger problem. The lack of a viable replacement tax status for non doms and escalating levels of stamp duty will have a more profound impact on tax receipts in future years.”
Bill adds that rival policies and the expectation of the tax’s repeal in the next government will also freeze the market:
“The political direction of travel is also important as speculation itself has been one of the biggest disincentives for buyers and sellers in recent years. The prospect of lowering or scrapping stamp duty could have a greater impact, which politicians would need to address so the market doesn’t freeze.”
Lucian Cook, Head of UK Research at Savills, tells Guido that valuation and administration will be a huge cost:
“The biggest challenges for government will be the contentious process of valuation and the wider administration of the tax – that is likely to be relatively expensive in relation to the sums it raises.”
All of this is to raise £930 million in 2031 by the government’s optimistic figures. This will not go well…
The third in Guido’s horror series. Read the previous entries by clicking here…
Today it’s Rayner’s turn. This one is particularly easy to pull together, given Rayner herself sent a wish list of tax hikes to Rachel Reeves last year. Which very quickly appeared in the media…
- Reinstate the pensions lifetime allowance.
- Raise corporation tax on banks.
- Freeze the higher-rate income tax threshold.
- Raise dividend tax for higher earners and scrap the £500 dividend allowance.
- Close commercial property stamp duty ‘loopholes’.
- End the inheritance tax exemption on AIM-listed shares.
- Renationalise water, energy and rail.
- Reverse the government’s Indefinite Leave to Remain tightening.
- Extend ‘Fair Pay Agreements’ beyond adult social care.
- Abolish all private schools.
- Further compulsory purchase reform on land valuations for affordable housing.
- Outlaw offshore sales of shares in companies owning commercial property to avoid stamp duty.
- Increase the annual tax on enveloped dwellings.
- Raise the bank surcharge to 5%.
If this looks disastrous, don’t worry. There’s always Miliband…
Speaking to Adam Boulton on Times Radio about kicking the Golders Green suspect, Heidi Alexander said:
“I thought that if I was in the shoes of that police officer, then if I’m honest, given the situation, and the fact that he had a backpack on his back, and they were worried about whether that might go off, I could, if I was a police officer, frankly, I could see myself having taken similar action.”
