Rachel Reeves has been talking about ‘reforming’ cash ISAs for a while to “encourage investment” in the dying London Stock Exchange. She’s now set to slash the allowance from £20,000 down to as low as £5,000 in her Mansion House speech on 15 July. Savers squirming…
Now the UK’s largest mortgage lenders – Yorkshire, Coventry and Skipton building societies – have said cutting the allowance will send mortgage costs soaring costs. Cash ISAs make up 39% of building societies’ retail savings balances, a major source of mortgage funding…
Yorkshire Building Society’s Chris Irwin said: “Reducing Isa deposits could make mortgages more expensive and less available.” Meanwhile, Money Saving Expert founder Martin Lewis said cutting ISA allowances would be a huge “mistake” and that it won’t “nudge people to invest not save”. Guido’s analysis shows that if the value of cash ISAs had been herded into the stock market during Trump’s tariff-fuelled market frenzy, savers would have ended up £31 billion worse off. A crying shame for savers…
Tom Baldwin, author of Starmer’s hagiography, spoke to Times Radio:
Tom Baldwin: “I think he’d like to do something. He’s very dutiful and driven by service. That’s why he came into politics. I think that’s characterised his time as prime minister. He hasn’t always sought popularity or been good at being popular. But I think he has some of the necessary qualities that we actually do want in a prime minister. That resilience, that relentlessness, that ability to carry the weight and the job really does weigh very heavily on people and he carries that weight very, very well.”
Jo Coburn: “NATO Secretary-General?”
Tom Baldwin: “I think that’s something that he would be interested in. I think it probably requires Andy Burnham’s government to support him in that and these are some of the questions which Andy Burnham has to resolve quite quickly.”