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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Starmer says Whitehall is filled with 'a cottage industry of checkers and blockers'. It’s too hard 'for the most enterprising people in country to just get on with the job'. So he's going to cut compliance costs for firms by 25%. Great! Just a few minor problems... (1/?)
In his speech, Starmer cited Alison, a brewer and publican, who has to spend hours filling in forms. But Alison is about to be hammered by NIC rises and minimum wage hikes!
Then there's the Employment Rights Bill, voted through the Commons on literally the same day as Starmer's speech, which will... raise compliance costs for business, by between £0.9bn & £4.5bn (though we'll come back to that).
Welfare reform is not just a fiscal necessity, but a moral one - because as I argue in @thetimes today we're not just paying people off, but writing them off. (1/?)
The govt is set to announce a rumoured £5bn in benefit cuts. It's already hugely controversial. Yet as I point out in my column today, it would cover just 1/16th of the predicted increase in the welfare bill. thetimes.com/comment/column…
Of course, a lot of that is pensions (hi, triple lock!). But the other big driver is ill health. Today, 9.3 million people of working age are economically inactive, and 6m on out of work benefits. Of those, 2.8 million are inactive due to illness - up from 2m before the pandemic.
Have written column today on the NHS - and the fact that @wesstreeting appears to be attempting the biggest shake-up since Lansley, even though no one's actually noticed. (1/?)
Ever since Lansley, the NHS has had two hands on the wheel - the Health Department and NHS England, the latter of which actually *runs* the NHS day-to-day. This... hasn't worked well.
The departure of Amanda Pritchard was reported as Streeting reasserting DHSC control. In fact, it's part of an attempt to make health more like schools - local control, local responsibility, with the centre driving accountability and transparency, not controlling with iron fist.
On Wednesday, the Climate Change Committee will publish a document far more important than any Budget or industrial strategy - because it will set the terms of trade for the British economy for years. (1/?)
The Seventh Carbon Budget gives the govt its official blueprint for how much carbon we can emit in 2038-42 - and where emissions need to be before then, and (crucially) what kind of things might need to be done to reach those targets.
These targets, once adopted, are legally binding. The govt can be, and has been, sued for not having an adequate plan. The problem is, they also require us to do some pretty dramatic things - which get more dramatic the further we are from hitting the targets.
The triple lock is a wasteful, unfair and outdated policy. So why the hysteria when politicians even gesture towards questioning it? Thread, with charts and data and stuff. (1/?)
As I say in my column today, the purpose of the triple lock - which sees the state pension rise by the highest of earnings, inflation or 2.5% - was to restore the value of the state pension, and tackle pensioner poverty. It’s succeeded.
Today, according to official statistics, pensioners are substantially less likely than those of working age to be in poverty after housing costs are taken into account.
Why did the Tories lose the election? Can they recover? If so, how? Today, @CPSThinkTank publishes a major piece of work by James Frayne, based on pre-election polling of 4,000 people plus immersive work and focus groups in key electoral battlegrounds. So what did we find? 🧵
The first and most obvious point: the Tories lost the election because people thought they were crap at running the country. In particular, they failed to deliver on the most important issues people cared about: cost of living, small boats, NHS waiting lists, GP appointments.
There was also a very strong sense – esp among working-class voters – that the party only cared about the rich (one reinforced by the mini-Budget). For middle-class voters, the core issue was competence rather than values, although their views were equally apocalyptic.