Comment by cbeach
2 months ago
Out of curiosity, which of Reform's policies are "lunacy"?
Removing the 2 child benefit cap? Increasing NHS spending? Returning to New Labour levels of net immigration, being a country with borders?
> That said I will find it very very funny if the Conservative party ends up last from that list.
At least we agree on that. The Tories deserve to be confined to the dustbin of history.
The numbers don't add up. I think "Removing the 2 child benefit cap" and "Increasing NHS spending" are good things, but they're not free, and the supposed cost-saving measures they're talking about mostly serve to demonstrate they don't know what the government is paying for anyway.
Immigration is always a funny one for the UK especially, given how people tend to look at gross numbers instead of which sectors the immigrants work in, and the discourse about why locals demonstrably do not fill those roles is mostly just insisting that locals can no matter what current unemployment levels actually are. Before I left the UK, the stereotype was all the Poles moving to the UK and building houses: UK should have invited over more builders, then there wouldn't be a shortage of houses.
Immigration is a shared bit of populist lunacy Reform have in common with the Conservatives and Labour: promises to be tough on immigration, then they get power and look at what the consequences would be of doing that, and put all the blame on asylum seekers* that are banned from working and therefore safe to kick out no matter how at risk they are in their countries of origin.
* https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-whilst-an...
The below are conservative estimates of the money raised by Reform policies:
* £10bn+ per year - Adjusting how the Bank of England (BoE) treats reserves — e.g. stopping interest payments to commercial banks that receive money under quantitative easing (QE)
* £11bn+ per year - Rolling back expensive "net zero" policies
* £9bn+ per year - Alter eligibility for welfare
* £25bn - Scrap HS2
* multiple billions - Reducing foreign aid budget and cost of housing illegal migrants.
It's likely that pro-growth Reform policies such as lowering corporation tax to make the UK more competitive will significantly increase the corporation tax take - as was shown when the Tories entered power in 2010, lowered the corp tax rate and corp tax revenue increased significantly. In general, Reform's tax cuts are aimed at increasing the tax base.
> * £11bn+ per year - Rolling back expensive "net zero" policies
These in particular are fictional. That's an obsolete (due to tech improvements) estimate of the private sector costs.
At this point, with the tech now available, almost everyone gets rich by doing net zero, almost nobody saves money by abandoning it.
> * £9bn+ per year - Alter eligibility for welfare
"Welfare" includes e.g. the child benefit cap. You can save a lot by spending less. Do you want to spend less? OK, fine. But that's the cost: a majority have to agree who gets to be the next scapegoat, and the child benefit cap was itself introduced back when parents with too many kids were the scapegoat.
> * £25bn - Scrap HS2
Scrapping a one off payment to save money in the short term, at the cost of worsening long-term economic benefits by failing to improve national logistics.
> housing illegal migrants.
Do you mean asylum seekers? Reason I ask is that people who are actually in the UK illegally (which is different), don't cost "billions". Asylum seekers are housed because they're banned from working, theory is that if they work they might stay, IMO this is BS and everyone would benefit if they were allowed to get jobs and look after themselves.
Even without that there absolutely are savings to be made on the cost of asylum seekers (who are not "illegal migrants"). They're looked after at a total cost of about £100/person/day, and obviously (even without changing the "banned by law from working" thing) they could be looked after at about half that (or less) given what UK incomes are. But that's a whole one billion per year you might save from not letting UK hotels rip you off, or two if you let these people work and support themselves.
> It's likely that pro-growth Reform policies such as lowering corporation tax to make the UK more competitive will significantly increase the corporation tax take - as was shown when the Tories entered power in 2010, lowered the corp tax rate and corp tax revenue increased significantly. In general, Reform's tax cuts are aimed at increasing the tax base.
Even with the best will in the world, this kind of thing is unlikely to make a dent in comparison to the core Reform policy of hating their nearest and biggest market. Brexit (and consider who owns Reform) has cost the economy an estimated 6-8% GDP by this point, per year, in lost growth opportunities — around £200bn/year.
The biggest thing any government could do to increase the tax base is to get a bigger workforce to tax. Which means more immigrants, which is why Lab and Con don't ever do anything about immigrant workers despite saying so. This was also one of the benefits of the UK being in the EU, in that all of labour, capital, and goods could move around more freely to meet business opportunities, help with growth.
2 replies →
Removing ILR for example?
Also the small possibility of being a Russian asset of course.
> Removing ILR for example?
You mean replacing it with renewable five year visas that have reasonable salary thresholds and English language criteria, and which still allow the holder to apply for citizenship?
Why is that lunacy?
ILR is the immigration equivalent of "squatters' rights" - completely immoral IMO.
> the small possibility of being a Russian asset of course
The Left tried that with Trump too. It didn't work out for them, and I doubt this tactic will damage Farage either. It smacks of desperation IMO, just like all the silly childhood racism heresay.