[kreuzberger]

An insulting missive, directly from Stockholm case notes.

Seventeen years after the red-braces-brigade crashed the global economy and for which the cash printing presses were fired up, rather than the opening of the greatest opportunity ever for the gallows industry, working-class people are still being presented with forever-bills.

This is an epic con which was and is still being perpetrated on an epic scale, and one which very few thought would be so easy.

Seventeen years later, and we (not the bastard offspring of Patty Hearst, obvs) are still politely asking the blisteringly wealthy to chip a couple of quid.

"It is a world of common good with mutual investment; a vision of socialism without get-out clauses."

[The Weeping Angel]

Whatever, but if you want functioning public services then you're going to have to pay your bit. I mean, there's an irony that ifReeves raises income tax since Denis Healey and the response of a lot of left-wingers has been to say tax is theft and can't somebody else pay for it. Talking of Healey.

Contrary to what people think, the wealthy don't have all the wealth hidden in a vault like Scrooge McDuck.

[Abernathy]

Good piece in the FT :

Starmer and Reeves appear to have taken the view that things are so bad already — Labour support in the polls has dipped below 20 per cent and only one in 10 people thinks the chancellor is doing a good job — that they might as well do really unpopular stuff now.

“If you’re asking what comes first, the national interest or political expediency, it’s the national interest every single time for me and it’s the same for Keir Starmer too,” Reeves said this week.

But they also have few alternatives. Anthony Wells, director of political polling at YouGov, argues that Reeves faces a choice between “two incredibly bad scenarios”: breaking the income tax promise or trying to simply patch up the public finances, leaving the country constantly on the fiscal edge with deteriorating public services.

But he argues that breaking a manifesto promise per se is not Reeves’ biggest problem. “It’s the action that people care about, not the promise. The problem is that people don’t like tax rises.”

https://www.ft.com/content/9e5655f7-85f ... 9c238efa77

[Youngian]

Voters like the sound of tough measures in order to produce jam tomorrow as long its someone else's welfare perks cut and taxes going up. Voters are full of shit.

[The Weeping Angel]

I've heard they're going to take 2p off NI as well.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The rules are that Labour are not allowed to raise taxes, nor make any cuts. Everything is either unpopular with the electorate or unpopular with Labour's core voters. And some think tank/ lobbying group for mostly bad ideas will be on hand to claim that they've found £50bn of "subsidies" or "loopholes". And anyway "just rejoin FFS".

[The Weeping Angel]

I've heard they're going to take 2p off NI as well.

More on that here.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Oh yeah, everything has to be approved by Martin Lewis too.

[The Weeping Angel]

Of course, if you're an FT journalist, you can kick them two ways for having the pledge and then breaking it.

[Youngian]

Maybe Lucy Powell's criticisms are co-ordinated. Setting the path for a sunnier candidate who can do popular things thanks to boring unpopular Rachel and Keir haven taken the unpopular decisions. Like Italy sticks up a sober technocrat to make reforms.