Shabana Mahmood is up shortly at the left-wing IPPR think tank to announce her reforms to the migration system aimed at legal and illegal migration. Watch live here shortly…
A Labour rebellion is gathering steam against the efforts, which include making refugee status temporary and harsh crackdowns on countries deemed to be ‘exploiting’ the asylum system. Backbench Labour MP Tony Vaughan fired off a letter signed by 100 MPs and says: “We can change our immigration system for the better without forgetting who we are as a Labour Party. You don’t win back public confidence in the asylum system by threatening to forcibly remove refugees who have lived here lawfully for 15 or 20 years. That just breeds insecurity and fractured communities.” Typical language…
The rest:
Previous attempts to organise against Mahmood haven’t worked as effectively as the PLP’s rebellions against No10. A battle is coming…
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…
Another U-turn from Labour this morning as Wes Streeting drops plans to ban alcohol advertising between 5.30 p.m. and 9 p.m. every day. If Guido had a penny for every U-turn…
There is no evidence for alcohol advertising bans working – the change was opposed by a huge industry backlash. Figures from the left-wing think tank IPPR are claiming credit for the imposition of the 10-year health plan now pursued by Streeting. The health secretary’s civil service-side team is packed with senior personnel from the radical outfit…
Large parts of the health plan are boasted to have been lifted from IPPR’s long 2024 report by the “Commission on Health and Prosperity.” Guido leafed through it. It also advocates:
This is the direction of travel pursued by Streeting’s senior staff. Not everything will be U-turned on…
Wes Streeting is to hire a Labour activist as an impartial civil servant to the Department for Health’s “10 Year Health Plan” team. Tom Kibasi, former director of hard-left think tank IPPR, is the newest crony appointment…
Kibasi, who ran IPPR from 2016 to 2019, helped direct Starmer’s leadership bid – hosting meetings, directing the key advert, and writing lines. He was passed over for a job once the race was over in 2021 and subsequently turned on Starmer’s ‘hard on Corbyn’ approach…
The left-wing wonk has long publicly backed Labour with a history of support for gargantuan tax hikes by taxing capital gains and dividends at income tax rates. Now he’s helping to direct health policy as a supposedly non-partisan civil servant. He can join some of Streeting’s other crony appointments…
After announcing huge new funding for the NHS without committing to major reforms apart from recycled league tables, the government has now hired its Lead Strategy Adviser to the Department of Health. Chris Tomas of the left-wing IPPR has been hired to the Civil Service on an 18-month secondment to a new strategy unit whose purpose he says is to help “sort out the historic mess our health system is in” and put the IPPR’s “ideas into practice.” Co-conspirators can hazard a guess as to whether he thinks that will involve more tax and spend or less…
Thomas has spent the last three years heading up the IPPR’s “Commission on Health and Prosperity,” which published its definitive final report two months ago. Guido has taken the liberty of summarising the majority of its recommendations for UK health policy. Fans of harmless fun look away now…
Thomas’ plans are likely to get an enthusiastic hearing. His close colleagues and fellow tax-fans at the IPPR – their former executive and associate directors – are embedded in the Downing Street policy unit. You’ve heard of tax and spend, now it’s time for tax and ban…
Left-wing think tank the IPPR is today pushing for tax hikes on wealth to address “regional wealth inequality.” Because capital gains are realised in London and the South East apparently that means opportunity” is “not accessible across the UK”…
The chief recommendation of the IPPR to “regionally rebalance the UK” is a gargantuan tax hike:
“Taxing all income equally: In the long-term we propose a unified tax schedule for all income types, including capital gains and dividends, to align with income from work by the end of this parliament. In the short-term, we propose the equalisation of capital gains tax with income tax implemented at the first fiscal event of this parliament.”
The IPPR is dressing up old ideas to roll the pitch for Reeves’ October budget. This exact policy was proposed in a 2018 report from the think tank which was co-written by one Carys Roberts. Roberts, former IPPR executive director, is now ensconced in Downing Street’s policy unit, working alongside fellow ex-director Rachel Statham. The capitalism-sceptic think tank is said to be “doing the most serious and influential policy work around the Labour party.” That work can accelerate now its personnel are at the heart of policy making in government…
The same 2018 report called for the replacement of inheritance tax with a whole-life gift tax, which is effectively a gargantuan enlargement of confiscation of family inheritance. As Guido revealed plugged-in tax lawyers are in active preparation for its imposition….
Reeves yesterday stoutly refused to rule out changes to capital gains or inheritance tax. This “Iron Chancellor” hogwash ain’t gonna last…
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.”