The Mirror has printed an idiotic “exclusive” in which a little-known backbench Labour MP accused Nigel Farage “of peddling National Front-style discrimination” with the Reform Party slogan “British jobs for British workers.” Encompassing all manner of reforms including scrapping pointless extra ‘protections’ which generate tribunals…
Imran Hussain MP said of the policy:
“Saying employers should be allowed to pick and choose based on who is ‘British-born’ sounds like a political slogan from the National Front in the 1970s. This kind of thinking has no place in modern Britain, and we should call it out for exactly what it is.”
Gordon Brown will be shocked to discover he’s been a member of the ‘fash for 15 years. A self-own there…
More personnel changes to the dysfunctional Cabinet Office as a Blair/Brown era veteran is brought in to manage trade and bolster Michael Ellam’s operation. Ellam, formerly Brown’s director of communications, was brought in at the start of the year as Second Permanent Secretary, European Union and International Economic Affairs…
Now Steve Field, former director of communications at the Treasury during the Brown ministry, has moved over to the Cabinet Office to serve as a Director General in the European & Global Issues Secretariat supporting Ellam. Field is moving across from the Treasury – he was at the IMF prior to that…
The secretariat manages trade and European relations across government and has a line to the PM and top Downing Street officials.
Insider sources tell Guido that Field, who served briefly as Cameron’s spokesman, is leading on “all US trade issues and G20” along with “EU Implementation” and water regulation. Ellam is meanwhile focussing on trade with China – a priority for Labour…
Government sources tell Guido that Justin Forsyth – longtime Blair/Brown SpAd from the New Labour days – has been seen flitting to and from Jonathan Powell’s rooms in the Cabinet Office. In case of emergency pull the “bring back all the Blair/Brown people” lever…
The Office for Statistics Regulation – the regulatory arm of the UK Statistics Authority – has spent the last few months tackling flagrant misuse of statistics by Gordon Brown and a kabal of leftist think tanks in their campaign to destroy the gambling industry. As always a sisyphean task…
Brown and his allies have spent the run up to the budget campaigning for a hike in gambling taxation. Namely more than doubling remote gaming duty, hiking the general betting duty on bookmakers from 15% to 25%, and doubling machine gaming duty. That’s your nan’s online bingo gone…
Brown’s justification for this is an Office for Health Improvement and Disparities report from January 2023 which he and others have misquoted by saying gambling’s “most addictive practices are responsible for social harm that costs the NHS and other public services more than £1 billion a year.” A sobering stat, if it were actually true…
OHID counted costs ‘associated’ with ‘problem gambling’ rather than attributed to it. The OSR says “this distinction does not appear to have been clearly understood by some users of the data.” It singles out subsequent reports by the leftist think tanks the IPPR and the Social Market Foundation for misusing the data in the same way…
According to correspondence released under FOI the statistics regulator said in light of the repeated misuse of figures “we have asked OHID to consider how this differentiation could be made more explicit in their publication to help guard against further misinterpretation or misuse.” In a letter to the original report authors at OHID the regulator wrote:
“We appreciate that your report does state that the links between problem gambling behaviours and fiscal costs are associative and do not demonstrate causality. However, given that we continue to receive concerns about the use of these figures, we would strongly encourage you to consider actions that you could take to support the appropriate use of these figures. For example, one option might be to include a prominent disclaimer or banner on the publication itself to clarify this point and help prevent misinterpretation.”
A big old banner for the Gordons out there…
‘Independent expert’ and tax lawyer Dan Neidle is raising the alarm over Gordon Brown’s call for a slew of gambling tax hikes. Neidle published a blog this morning in which he warned that whacking enormous taxes on the industry inevitably hits the gambler, not the gambling companies, and that the Institute for Public Policy Research’s (IPPR) proposal is flawed. If even Neidle is saying it…
“We need to be careful about trying to raise additional revenue from “sin” taxes. The revenue may be less than we expect, and what revenue we do receive may (in economic terms) come from customers rather than the businesses making the sale.
Personally I see compelling arguments for reducing the harms caused by gambling; but I’m unconvinced tax is a good tool for doing that. Regulation may be a better approach.
A tax increase may still be worth doing as a revenue-raiser. But any argument for an increase needs a more robust revenue estimate than the IPPR’s use of a static calculation and illustrative tables. And it needs to acknowledge who is actually paying the price.”
Rachel Reeves is nonetheless laying the groundwork to introduce such a sin tax at the budget anyway. Maybe Dan will be putting in a few calls to dissuade her…
Gordon Brown’s call for a raft of gambling tax hikes today is a rerun of his long-running attempt to kill the industry. This latest wheeze from the ex-PM is no different…
The tax hike calls come this time from Labour’s house think tank the IPPR which proposes hiking duties:
The proposals strangely enough echo those proposed by Brown and his wonks at the Social Market Foundation. Its head ex-Brown spinner Theo Bertram is running defence of the IPPR report on X today…
There is no groundswell of support for gambling taxation – it is a co-ordinated campaign from Brown and his cronies. Aveek Bhattachayra, formerly the SMF’s economist, transferred to the Treasury in March this year as Head of Excise. Coincidentally the Treasury has now run and finished a “consultation” on remote gambling which signals the government’s aims to raise a raft of gambling duties. Goodbye racing and online bingo…
Multimillionaire Derek Webb has given Labour £1.3 million since the start of 2023 and he’s given £160,000 to the Social Market Foundation (SMF) – which describes itself as “independent”. Theo Bertram, an ex-spinner SpAd for Gordon Brown, now heads the SMF and advocates excise duty on gambling be doubled to 42%. Gordon Brown – yes, Gordon’s alive – wants to establish a new “poverty fund”. Which he hopes will take in another £9 billion from taxing us, banks, and gamblers even more…
Gordon’s policy paper was unsurprisingly backed enthusiastically by the Social Market Foundation. Do not be deceived into thinking that there is a genuine groundswell of approval for taxing punters, this is an anti-gambling campaign…
The SMF are leading the charge on taxing gambling, in fact they embrace nanny statism openly, advocating for taxes on any small joy which they see as a vice. Unfortunately as Rachel Reeves starts to run out of other people’s money to spend, she will be eagerly looking for new taxes…
Aveek Bhattachayra, formerly the SMF’s economist, transferred to the Treasury in March as Head of Excise. Coincidentally the Treasury has now begun a “consultation” on remote gambling. Labour is coming for your racing and online bingo…
Former Treasury minister and adviser to Burnham in the Makerfield campaign Lord Jim O’Neill, who has turned down a role in his government, said Burnham’s first statement Commons was:
“The last thing investors wanted to hear… gilt yields have risen by a 0.25% in one day, which is a lot. We’ve not had that since Liz Truss days… If your country is under the focus of ‘can they come up with a sensible fiscal strategy’ on a day when the markets think ‘well no, you’re not showing any sign of it’ you’re going to have a tough day…if it stays like this your mortgage rate is going up.”