Mailwatch(ed) Forum

Parents are getting their winter fuel allowance this year, apparently 35k is the income limit.

If rumours are true and one of the big taxes such as income tax goes up without a resettling around NI I will again be out of pocket and won’t see any benefit from cuts on energy as I rent.

Think that will be the Labour Party done for me.

That promise before the election is certainly coming back to bite them in the arse but it has to be done though, doesn't it? Nobody wants cuts to triple-lock pension increases or PIP, and nobody wants austerity 2.0, so the only effective option is to increase taxes.

Unfortunately most people think somebody else should be paying the extra tax.

I do wish that there was a more honest attitude towards the payment of taxes in order to raise money for decent public services . The whole concept of the tax “burden” is an indicator of how corrosive the notion is. Would that it was referred to instead as people’s tax contribution. Much more positive. James O’Brien is one of those people to whom affordably paying a bit more in tax than someone who can afford to do so less is a matter of some patriotic pride. If only more people thought that way.

The manifesto “pledge” not to increase the rates of Income Tax, National Insurance, or VAT was clearly unrealistic in hindsight,and was probably unrealistic at the time, too. Lord knows Sunak and his chums did their level best to paint it as a lie, telling their own lie that Labour would raise everybody’s tax by £8,000, but I don’t think the “pledge” (we shouldn’t have called it a pledge, either) was strictly necessary. As should be recognised, manifesto pledges -anybody’s manifesto pledges - aren’t really “pledges” at all, but intentions, aspirations if you like, that may have to change in the white heat of actual government.

Politically, I do not think that Labour will necessarily pay a heavy price for increasing taxes in the prevailing economic climate. Even Reform UK has had to recognise reality and abandon their idiotic pledges to cut council tax because the reality is that there is no scope to do so - the Tories have already cut funding and services to the bone over 14 years. If it helps kickstart proper economic growth, people should be okay with it.