Burnham being PM is already pretty well priced in. When he walked back comments a few weeks ago they corrected and my sense is that the market understands that unless there until actual laws or budgets are promulgated, what is said by Burnham isn't really market moving.
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What is he going to do without the bond markets - the UK is in so much debt we basically need to jump however high they tell us to, unless he plans to default which would destroy the global financial system and destroy the UK for decades. The only way I can see out of this is to absolutely frack the crap out of the UK and push for more North Sea oil drilling. But we definitely won't do that so maybe we'll try a bit of fascism instead? I'm very unconvinced taxing rich people is possible (unless it is a global agreement) - most of their money can be moved into tax havens and other jurisdictions where HMRC will struggle to tax them.
The irony is the top three tax havens are overseas territories of the UK and subject to legislation which should curtail their tax-haven status but which the UK is unwilling to enforce
https://taxjustice.uk/blog/worlds-top-tax-havens-are-british...
And London is the money laundering capital of the world. It's some ridiculous percentage of their GDP.
I just feel like no matter what any government does the ultra rich will find a way to get around it. Look at the US gulf south: they are in a race to the bottom when it comes to tax breaks and just giving everything away to businesses/high income earners, yet they are poorer than ever. Texas and Florida are the exceptions here to a certain degree but they are also massive states with lots already going for them. Their neighbors collect a fraction of the taxes they should and get nothing out of it except aggressive resource extraction and cancer.
Then look at the other end: are wealthy people and businesses really fleeing New York and California in droves like conservative media is portraying? Do we really see a meaningful wealth exodus occurring because of their corporate and personal tax laws? A cursory search says no. High housing costs, remote work, and just general pandemic shifts explain basically any changes there (and the number of people/businesses leaving isn’t particularly abnormal)
All of this is to say I don’t really know what the solution is for the UK. I just don’t think businesses and the super wealthy respond 1:1 to these policies in the way that politicians claim they do. They are so rich they are ultimately going to live where they want and do what they want. They aren’t going to relocate themselves due to tax policy. They will just “be rich” their way through the problem.
The ultrarich just don't matter. There are so few of them. And they might avoid personal tax, but they generate insane amounts of other taxes that they are still huge contributors. The people who net don't contribute are going to be state/federal employees, benefits recipients, state pension recipients, that sort of thing.
The UK is in a very average amount of debt for a Western country, worse than some, better than others.
You don't need to be perfect, you just need to not be the worst and get picked on.
Are things good? Definitely not, but everyone else is in more or less the same boat
Most western economies are bankrupt and the UK is in a worse position than all its peers apart from maybe Japan?
Better than France and Italy as well. But yes it's not much of a beauty contest
Both have the Euro so they have lower interest rates and can consequently borrow more than us. Which would you rather borrow, 137% of GDP (in the case of Italy) at 3% or 100% of GDP at 5%?
I think ...or hope...he ends more right than left and manages to do what Starmer failed to do a year ago which is to make major reforms to the Welfare system. Its just not sustainable.
There really isn't a lot of slack in the welfare system unless you're prepared to be very short sighted and go back to "tent city" levels of homelessness. Which is partly why all previous attempts to cut it have failed. Maybe declaring certain areas of high rent off-limits for housing benefit, but then you have to raise the salaries of NHS staff and teachers living in London so they can afford to work there.
Maybe if the Miliband reforms pay off and certain critical things get built and gas prices return to normal, Labour will be able to take credit for lower electricity prices? Unless it's all spent on datacenters, which would be even worse political doom.
Personally I'd go with the "mansion tax" but that requires ignoring the well-connected screaming. They did manage that with VAT on private school fees.
Yeah but the VAT on school fees meant a load of those children had to go to state schools so we ended up paying for it anyway.
Wasn't it something like a 3-4% reduction in private school pupil numbers? And some of those would have ended up homeschooled rather than state.
A rough calculation: £8,580 funding per child at state school, ~90,000 less in private schools and in state schools so about £770 million more required for state school funding and this measure is supposed to bring in about £1.7 billion a year...
So it looks like it would pay for itself?
Edit: We don't charge VAT on private healthcare - so charging it on private education looks a bit inconsistent to me.
As someone who has lived in a 'mixed block' in zone 1, I think it's delusional to characterise social housing tenants as 'teachers and nurses'. I suspect most teachers and nurses are already in private sector housing in London.
I think it could be OK to sell all social hosing in Zone 1/2 and use that money to pay higher wages for teachers and nurses plus state built replacement social housing in zone 4-6. There's probably some other space in the welfare system, look at the motability scandal or the increase in PIP claims.
Dame Shirley is that you? I thought you died last month.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/may/05/dame-shirley...
ETA: there are possibly five hundred schools in Zone 2 alone. That is maybe 35,000 school staff you're saying should not be socially housed in about 35 square miles. They all have to commute in because, why?
Seriously social housing is not teachers and nurses, you'd know this if you'd lived in or amongst it.
Let's assume for a moment it is teachers and nurses. You think that they shouldn't be allowed a sallery that enables them to live in private accommodation? To choose from the whole market, get a mortgage with their partner wherever they chose? I think that's such a problematic view and builds a horrible society. I'd like teaching to be a well paid profession, why's that such a bad thing?
You're putting a whole lot of words into my mouth that I didn't say. Offensively so, frankly. So I am not otherwise going to reply to this.
A lot of social housing in the UK (about 45%) isn't owned by councils so can't really be sold off by the state?
That's fine that should stay as social housing then. It's probably even better this way as it's still possible to place people who for example absolutely have to be in kensington or islington there.
Social housing is the council budget - I was referring to Housing Benefit.
Isn't it part of the problem that these are two sides of the same coin, yet owned by different people.
What would happen to the people who live in the houses?
I assume you would build the new social hosing, move folks over then you'll be able to sell the zone 1 houses they came out of and so on and so forth.
Massive handouts via welfare programs is the only thing that keeps left leaning parties in power anywhere in the west. They've failed at bringing prosperity so they just court retirees, the unemployed and hire more government workers. And unfortunately those who rely on welfare outnumber those who work and pay taxes in a lot of western countries, because of the lack of prosperity... Need to hit rock bottom à la Argentina for people to wake up.
At least in the UK we’ve recently had 14 years of right leaning party and they might have different rhetoric around it but clearly no one has the stomach to do anything meaningful. Most right leaning voters are old people who love drinking up that welfare.
> old people who love drinking up that welfare
while complaining about welfare
How do they know what he will do to the economy before even he does? That's impressive
I wasn't referring to his becoming PM but what he does during the premiership, you know, the more important part
How much a politician will make wealthy people wealthier probably correlates pretty well with their left-right axis position multiplied by their amount of power.