The public are more intelligent when it comes to public spending than may politicians give them credit for, and they know the difference between organisations that waste money and those that don’t.
Councils across England are now struggling to providing more than the statutory minimum. Below this, there is nothing left to cut without the disintegration of core public services and local state capacity.
It’s clearly time for a course-correction. Taxpayers are told repeatedly that you can have low taxes or high-quality public services. But at the moment, we have neither.
Our nation was hailed by the Economist as the “top-performing economy of 2023” for the second year in a row. That isn’t a turnaround, that’s a miracle – a miracle delivered by common sense.
The government in Cardiff is the living proof of what Labour in power looks like. Don’t just take my word for it – it was Starmer who said that.
We are fed up with being controlled by its incorrect forecasts, and subject to wild policy swings by the Bank of England which did much to give us inflation in the first place.
The current system adds friction to the labour market, encourages inefficient use of housing stock, and all but exempts a huge share of this country’s wealth from the taxman.
Many Irish policymakers make the reasonable point, if it’s a simple matter of tax rates, then why haven’t more countries simply adopted this approach? It has been in place for decades, there’s been plenty of time.
Devolving more tax-raising powers offers a genuine opportunity to ignite healthy competition between the different parties involved in running councils.
The difficulty is that if Party unity is made the great imperative above everything else then the Government loses any sense of direction. The status quo is continued by default.
We all like lower taxes and backing British business – but that is no excuse for not delivering on getting inflation down and delivering on economic growth.
We need to be keeping the conversation going about how to fund London Councils so they can tackle homelessness more easily and provide better adult social care and health outcomes.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury accuses Labour of “fiscal irresponsibility on steroids” for pledging £28 billion of extra borrowing.
Each party has savaged the other’s efforts to tackle the problem with the same lazy attacks. Now the only common ground seems to be to kick the problem into more long grass.