Just digging into recent @yougov polling and found a fascinating reproof to Boris's conference speech - even Tory voters want more housing built! (second column)
It's true that the numbers fall when you change the question to 'in my local area', but it is still a majority - and much, much tighter among Tory voters than you would expect from the rampant Nimbyism on stage.
(Anecdotal side note: it is worth flagging that the true blue activist crowd at our @CPSThinkTank fringe meeting with @jacob_rees_mogg went near-unanimously for more housebuilding when he asked for a voice vote.)
Another interesting finding that should be better-known - voters really want house prices to fall! Finding true across all social groups. People are completely aware of the damage they are doing.
In fact, telling people it will cause house prices to fall is one of the best ways to get them to support more housebuilding...
Of course, in fairness to Boris, people really do oppose building on greenfield. But that's partly because they read it as 'green field' rather than 'often quite scrubby land'
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Last week, the price of natural gas dipped below 72p/therm. It was a significant moment. Why? Because according to Ed Miliband's maths, it's impossible. (1/?)
Ed has said, again and again, that swapping gas for wind is not just greener but cheaper. It's at the heart of his promise to lower bills. But as I argue in @thetimes today, it's built on a lie.
When Ed came to power, he commissioned NESO to show that his plans would save money. He claimed the resulting report proved it. It didn't.
A friend points out a £1bn problem with the Budget measures on employee ownership trusts. It's a bad idea anyway - employee share ownership is good! - but it's made worse by a very basic error in the way they've structured it. (1/?)
Under an EOT, a founder sells all or some of their shares to a trust, which passes them on to the workers. They pay no tax on the sale. But they don't get the money straight off - the new trust pays for the shares *from the profits in future years*.
Under the new plan, the govt will restrict the tax relief to half of the shares handed over, meaning the rest will be liable to CGT - so working out to 12% of the value. But it will charge that CGT *straight away*.
On Wednesday, Rachel Reeves is going to stand up and lie to the public. She's not unique. Every Chancellor does. That's because, as a new @CPSThinkTank report shows, our Budget system is fundamentally broken. (1/?)
Every Chancellor claims they'll balance the books by the end of 'the forecast period' or 'the economic cycle'. Every Chancellor, at every Budget, meets their fiscal rules. And yet the debt grows and grows. What's happening?
As I pointed out in my column yesterday, there are all sorts of problems with our five-year forecasts - in the words of Simon Case to @ShippersUnbound, you're trying to land a jumbo jet on a postage stamp. Here for example are OBR predictions vs eventual reality.
As the country prepares for Budget-geddon, there is one precedent that the govt is desperately clinging on to: 2002, when a Labour government raised income taxes - and shot up in the polls. How did they do it? (1/?)
In 2002, Gordon Brown raised NI by 1p to fund a historic expansion in NHS spending - in pursuit of Tony Blair's (impromptu) commitment to match European health spending. It was, as the then health secretary said, 'overwhelmingly popular'.
Today, things are v different. But polling by @SteveAkehurst suggests that voters in general - and Labour 2024 voters in particular - might be happier about the govt getting waiting lists down than they would be angry about taxes going up, esp if those taxes are on 'the rich'.
‘If you want to raise serious money, it is a childish fantasy to pretend that you can do so solely from the few rather than the many.’ Me in @thetimes today on why Labour MPs and activists calling for a wealth tax need to grow up fast. Thread fellows (1/?)
The same Labour voices who blocked welfare reforms, forcing Reeves to raise taxes, are now calling for all manner of other goodies - while pretending that the necessary tax rises can be simple and painless. But they absolutely can’t.
As I point out in my column (link below), we already tax the rich! Let’s look at the income tax stats.
The problem isn’t that the Chancellor is going to raise taxes. It’s that unless something drastic changes, she and her successors are going to have to do it again, and again, and again. Me for @thetimes - thread follows (1/?)
My column today is on Reeves’s tax rises. But my core argument is that what we’re seeing is the earlier-than-expected arrival of what’s always been coming - an irreconcilable clash between how much we want to spend, and how much we can afford to. thetimes.com/comment/column…
Obviously, Labour’s tax rises, and the summer of uncertainty that preceded them, were horrendous for growth - and as @ArmitageJim says in this great analysis piece, we’re in for exactly the same summer thetimes.com/uk/politics/ar…