I’m So Bored With the USA: Is This the Most Inept Government Ever?

 

 

“So you’re living by numbers And numbers you answer to”

 

 

 

We start with some raw data:

 

• Baby boomers (“BB’s”) defined as people born from 1946 to 1964.
• The UK had C.13.57 million BB’s in 2023
• 2024 election; UK had 48,208,507 registered voters
• C.28% of the electorate is composed of BB’s
• 2024 general election; Labour totalled 9,708,816 / 33.7% of the vote.

 

The point of this data, is that BB’s are an electoral force, one that shouldn’t be messed with lightly. Whilst many BB’s can be considered wealthy very few might be described as the uber rich. The majority of wealthy BB’s are asset rich, primarily their principal residence, and will have paid taxes all their lives.

Unlike the uber rich, the wealthy BB’s cannot be transient, and don’t have the resources to use tax avoidance schemes, such has hiding their properties behind opaque trusts.

Research by Transparency International shows that at least 236,500 properties across England and Wales, worth more than £64bn, are hidden behind these such structures.

For the rest of us BB’s we are now fair game for a chancellor scrambling around to find sources of revenue.

Chancellor Reeves, somewhat misguidedly, appears to believe that we are a way of raising extra revenue without breaking Labour’s pledge to not raise levies on working people and as policies that would be likely to appeal to many of the party’s MPs and members.

It might appeal to her MPs but just try telling them that when 28% of the electorate deserts them!

 

‘For the rest of the BBs, we are now fair game for a chancellor scrambling around to find sources of revenue

 

One proposal is for a tax to be paid by owner-occupiers on houses worth more than £500,000 when they sell their home.

Other suggestions include replacing council tax with a local proportional property tax levied on house values up to £500,000 with a minimum annual bill of £800 paid by the property owner, and a potential capital gains tax (CGT) on primary residences valued at more than £1.5m.

In addition, the £500,000 threshold impacts many ordinary property owners in London and the SE, and could lead to rent increases, making London even more unaffordable to live in, which, in-turn, will negatively impact the country’s economic growth prospects, especially in the short term.

CGT on primary homes worth more than £1.5m, in principle, targets unearned wealth gains, but it could create a huge disincentive for people to sell. It would trap older homeowners in houses too large for them, stifling the property market for families below.

There is a simple truth in all of this; Reeves thinks she has identified yet another soft target. Both her and the PM like to pick on those than can’t hit back such as pensioners and the disabled.

They haven’t the courage to go after the harder targets such as the uber rich, E.G., those with £100m+ because they can hit back by leaving the country, tax avoidance schemes, or by simply using the influence that money buys.

For the majority of BB’s their wealth is primarily in their property which isn’t the case for the richest. A 2020 study by the Resolution Foundation, using data from 2016 to 2018, found that on average in households with assets of £5m or more, property accounted for less than 20% of their total wealth. Instead, the wealth of the top 1% is dominated by stocks, shares, bonds and other financial investments. Financial wealth is significantly more prevalent in the wealthiest households and is a major driver of their rising net worth and inequality.

 

‘Both her and the PM like to pick on those than can’t hit back such as pensioners and the disabled’

 

Inheritance tax (“IHT”) is, in theory, a catch-all assets tax, but comes up against a significant political barriers. For the majority, their homes represent the majority of their estate, and something to pass onto their children. For many struggling with the housing affordability crisis this enables them to get on the property ladder.

The real prize is large estates, “dynastic wealth”. This would require the chancellor to take on the establishment, reforming the sorts of trusts that allowed the previous Duke of Westminster to pass on £9bn to his son without paying IHT. This is high reward but difficult, therefore it easier for week a government to target the soft touch, the more modest wealth of ordinary families.

Aside from chancellor’s clueless tampering, the country is fast descending into a seething mass of indignant indiscipline over immigration, as more people join the demonstrations against asylum seeker being housed in hotels, or anywhere else for that matter.

After Epping council won an injunction to stop a hotel housing asylum seekers, dozens of other local authorities are considering similar challenges, leaving the government’s asylum project into disarray and the Home Office “reeling”.

There has been anti-migrant protests in more than 40 locations, with politicians of all parties using and nationalistic and anti-refugee rhetoric, which is being amplified by sections of the media. There is little truly spontaneous about the protest, which, behind the scenes bear the fingerprints of well-known far-right organisers.

 

‘the country is fast descending into a seething mass of indignant indiscipline over immigration’

 

 

The insidious threat of violence is always there. Shipley’s Labour MP, Anna Dixon, said she had received death threats after the Conservative MP for Keighley and Ilkley, Robbie Moore, shared “misleading” information about her stance on grooming gangs.

Whilst Tonia Antoniazzi, Labour’s MP for Gower, said: “The lambasting we are all getting on social media and in the inbox is grim, from both sides. It’s like we can’t do right for doing wrong and everything has become frighteningly polarised.”

“We are in a dangerous moment,” says Lewis Nielsen, an anti-fascist officer at Stand Up to Racism. In the context of increased far-right protests and encouraging political rhetoric, he says, “the ‘Operation Raise the Colours’ was never about flags, it’s about giving confidence to racists and fascists to target refugees and migrants”.

The flag campaign is receiving support from all the usual suspects, with the ever reliable Reform MP, Lee Anderson, saying that any elected official who supports removing British or English flags “should be removed from office for betraying the very country they serve.”

 

‘The PM, appears like a startled rabbit in the headlights’

 

 

On the campaign’s Facebook page, they are enthusing about September’s “free speech” rally fronted by the far-right agitator Tommy Robinson.

What have been racist undercurrents are now becoming more public. The Refugee Council’s chief executive, Enver Solomon, said some food banks that previously served anyone were now turning away perceived “foreigners”. He also described meeting an African man in his 60s in the NE who had been attacked by a group of men whose arm was broken. He is now terrified of leaving his accommodation.

The PM, appears like a startled rabbit in the headlights. Whilst he might now “deeply regret” his “island of strangers” remark, he isn’t condemning the protests. Instead, his spokesperson offered an apparent endorsement of the flag-raising campaign, describing the PM as a “patriot” who believed people should “absolutely” fly flags.

The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, further fuelled the fires, saying women are afraid to walk in parks for fear of being harassed by refugee men “lurking in bushes”. The shadow minister Robert Jenrick, seen as a potential successor as party leader, has been pictured at anti-migrant rallies attended by known members of the far right, and attaching a flag to a lamp-post in defiance of “Britain-hating” councils who have asked for them not to be attached to street infrastructure.

This is the same Robert Jenrick who, as migration minister in 2022, said: “Suella Braverman [the former home secretary] and her predecessor, Priti Patel, were procuring more hotels. What I have done in my short tenure is ramp that up and procure even more. Because November, historically, has been one of the highest months of the year for migrants illegally crossing the Channel.”

He continued: “I would never demonise people coming to this country in pursuit of a better life. And I understand and appreciate our obligation to refugees.”

This total U-turn hasn’t been missed by some of his colleagues, with one saying: “It is hard to take him seriously. The reservation is that he’s not Nigel Farage, and he will never be Nigel Farage.”

Another said: “The challenge for leadership hopefuls like Jenrick is that he presided over an immigration policy that increased the use of hotels, which is why Reform are now focusing their attacks on him.”

Rob Ford, professor of political science at Manchester University, said: “Going big on the issue makes sense on the surface in that salience of it is high and Labour’s poll figures are bad too.

“But it is and always has been Farage’s core issue. So their recent behaviour is very much ‘Nigel is right, don’t vote for him.’

 

‘it’s creating an opportunity for the far right to grow’

 

Nigel Farage, who has been at the centre of encouraging protests outside hotels housing new arrivals, today said that a Reform government would detain all illegal migrants “immediately”, housing them in disused or surplus RAF bases. When asked which specific bases, he could not name any despite this being a major part of his deportation proposal.

Paul Jackson, a professor of history at the University of Northampton whose work includes a focus on far-right extremism, says: “What I find quite concerning is that it’s creating an opportunity for the far right to grow. We’ve seen Labour politicians be supportive in principle of concern around protests at migration hotels, leaning into the populist right. We’ve seen Reform politicians very strongly legitimise these concerns.

“There’s a lot of concern about the emboldenment of the far right, and also the limited voices within the political mainstream calling for a different narrative around issues of migration. It would be good to see a little more moral leadership rather than pandering.”

Sunder Katwala, the director of the thinktank British Future, which researches public attitudes on immigration and national identity, points to the lack of government voices pushing back against the protests.

“The Labour government is very quiet about racism this year compared to last, because it doesn’t want to accidentally sound as if it’s criticising people with legitimate concerns and so on,” he says. “The mainstream right and the mainstream centre-left have stopped doing the boundary-calling, and I think Reform, the Conservatives and sometimes the government are now crossing the line, because they’re unwilling to criticise anybody, whatever they’re saying.”

Katwala, also took issue with the dysfunctional asylum system, saying: “I think the government really does have to get a grip on the visible lack of control in the Channel itself and in hotels in the towns where people live. If we don’t do that, there are political risks to them, but also there are risks to the principle of refugee protection.”

 

‘The government is unquestionably failing to govern, and is under-attack from all sides’

 

Assessing the real impact of the hard-rights actions is quite difficult, despite the toxic undercurrent we have not seen the mass uprisings or social breakdown that some predicted. What is of more concern, is the lack of push-back from the government. They appear to be confused by events, unable to respond, and in agreement with the narrative trumpeted by the right-wing media and Farage, accepting their attitude to migrants, and resorting to discrediting his views on the NHS. Even the trade unions have been silenced.

The government is unquestionably failing to govern, and is under-attack from all sides.

Anti-immigration voters, especially those in the fable red wall will likely turn to Reform.

The BB’s, who are the likely victims of their latest budget proposals, has a hardcore that will always vote Tory. Of those that turned to Labour in 2024, many are unlikely to do so again.

Younger voters have become disenfranchised by Labour stance on Gaza, and the lack of discussion within the party. As we have seen, Starmer rules with a rod of iron, expelling MPs who rebel against his proposals, as a result hundreds of thousands of voters have already register their support for Jeremey Corbyn’s new party.

The old adage that “Elections are won from the centre”, seems to be out-of-date. Or, perhaps the centre has moved sharply to the right?

Whatever the reason, voters are being “lost to parties on the right and extreme right who have already mastered the gamification of politics, and the ability to summon fever dreams of threats that must be dealt with and prosperity that is just around the corner. goes the old adage, but increasingly the centre itself has changed as the world becomes not a place of wide-tent compromise, but of irreconcilable differences”.

The world of politics has changed with the advent of social media, allowing radical views to be aired without any counter-balancing arguments. The right has organised and reacted to this, whilst mainstream parties,

Labour especially, seem stuck in the past, out-of-date, out-of-ideas, and out-of-time.

 

 

“You’re out of touch, my baby My poor discarded baby”

 

 

 

@coldwarsteve

 

 

Philip Gilbert is a city-based corporate financier, and former investment banker.

Philip is a great believer in meritocracy, and in the belief that if you want something enough you can make it happen. These beliefs were formed in his formative years, of the late 1970s and 80s

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