Bruges Group 🇬🇧

The Bruges Group spearheads the intellectual battle against the notion of ever–closer Union in Europe. RTs/likes not necessarily an endorsement of our views.

[Looking for Growth @lfg_uk]

It has been 23 YEARS since the Government said they wanted a third runway.

NOTHING has been done. NOTHING has been built.

It should NOT take 23 years to lay some tarmac on the ground.

The FIRST runway took 20 MONTHS to build.

PASS AN ACT. BUILD IT NOW.

Why are they so slow?

[Andrew Griffith MP @griffitha]

Time and again we see this government lashing out at others for their own mistakes.

Retailing is brutally competitive and prices are going up because of Labour's tax hikes, employment red tape and energy costs.

[James Heale @JAHeale]

“Supermarkets! I knew it was them! Even when it was 20 years of a stagnant economy I knew it was them.”

[Madeline Grant @Madz_Grant]

It really depends who you're talking about IMO. The UK tax system is alarmingly over-reliant on higher earners, while low-paid workers in the UK are paying less than anywhere else in the developed world. Compare the tax paid by someone earning £30k (£4,880) vs. tax paid by someone earning £120k (£43,846). Salary is about 4x higher but the tax contributions are nearly 10x higher. Much of the Left refuses to believe this is in fact the case and calls for this 'broad shoulders' pattern to continue indefinitely. There are limits to how long governments can hope to increase revenue by doing this, as we have seen in Scotland, and with the recent exodus of high-earners from Britain

[Gully Foyle #UKTrade @TerraOrBust]

We would like to take a moment to congratulate the Labour government and the Gibraltan government, on handing over control of their borders to Spain.

Slow clap there. Well done.

https://t.co/CMfD4Fzde2

[Daniel Hannan @DanielJHannan]

That decision to remove Gibraltar’s border and join Schengen suddenly looks rather silly.

[Cut My Tax @CutMyTaxUK]

The latest leak is that Burnham is planning a new levy on income, charged at 1.8% of earnings above £6,240 and paid by workers over the age of 34, in order to finance a new so-called national care service.

This is an increase in income tax in all but name and clearly would breach Labour's manifesto commitments.

It's truly amazing that Burnham has concluded that despite excessive levels of tax and spending, what the country needs is yet more tax and spending.

[Andrew Griffith MP @griffitha]

In the US, data centre tax revenues are so big that local government are cutting taxes and paying bonuses to teachers.

In Britain, Burnham wants fewer data centres and more taxes.

We have a choice: go forward to a rich future or get stuck in the past.

[Brussels Signal @brusselssignal]

COMMENT: The slide towards authoritarianism in Hungary is happening right now, writes @rodballester

https://t.co/2LdD8QWkUK

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

The SNP runs into the Laffer Curve: its 48% top rate of income tax (NICs on top) results in £22m LESS in tax revenues.
Don’t they teach economics in the land of Adam Smith any more?
Or does left-wing virtue signalling — I’m ‘taxing the rich’ more than you — trump everything?

[Maxwell Marlow 🇺🇦 @maxwell_marlow]

This is perfectly fine - if we’re a G7 nation we need to start acting like it.

It’s normal for G7 countries to transport their leaders by jet, it’s not normal for them to travel by train.

[Miriam Cates @miriam_cates]

This 'joke' is not offensive because it was never intended to reach the ears of those it could offend. We all say things in private that we would never dream of saying in public. It's called being a normal human being. What is NOT normal is to pretend this is somehow outrageous.

[Calgie @christiancalgie]

This is exactly why we end up with politicians completely void of personality

[Balázs Orbán @BalazsOrban_HU]

Today, prosecutors arrived without prior notice at the data center hosting Fidesz’s servers, intending to seize the party’s entire communications system and databases. Nothing like this has happened in Hungary since the end of communism in 1990.

It is becoming increasingly clear that Hungary’s Brussels-backed liberal authoritarian Prime Minister intends to eliminate his democratic political opponents, crush all resistance to his arbitrary actions, and use the country’s law enforcement authorities as instruments to achieve that goal.

The question is simple: Will there still be free elections in Hungary, or will anyone who dares to run against the Tisza Party simply end up in prison?

Aren’t the enlightened Western politicians and opinion leaders who support this even remotely ashamed?

[James Hohmann @jameshohmann]

New U.K. prime minister promises a fresh start with failed policies https://t.co/vGU22wpDt4

[Harry Cole @MrHarryCole]

"I have a plan."

"Cool, can we see it?"

"This needs to be done in the right way, I'll show you when I take over."

SOME MOMENTS LATER

"Congratulations PM, can we see the plan now?"

"It will be unveiled later in the year."

Chinny beard.

[Daniel Hannan @DanielJHannan]

Reminder that Britain went from being the slowest-growing European economy in the 1970s to the fastest-growing in the 1980s.

[Balázs Orbán @BalazsOrban_HU]

Today, the President of Hungary released a dramatic video message announcing that the democratic rule of law in Hungary has come to an end because he was unlawfully removed from office. Nothing like this has happened in modern European history.

A puppet will now be installed in his place, but that person’s mandate will be illegitimate from the very beginning. At the same time, the governing parties have barred their political opponents from standing in future elections.

These are the very people who spent decades calling Viktor Orbán a dictator. Yet the moment they won a democratic election, they turned against both him and democracy itself. They did not act on their own. They did it with the support and at the direction of Brussels.

The European Union is increasingly behaving like a liberal authoritarian empire, determined to tell people what they may say, what they must do, and even whom they are allowed to vote for.

No person who truly values freedom can accept this.

[Adam Smith Institute @ASI]

Since you mentioned the 1980s, @andyburnham, here’s a reminder of what was achieved:

• Top rate of income tax: 83% → 40%
• Savings income taxed at up to 98% in 1979 — surcharge abolished
• Basic rate: 33% → 25%
• Inflation: 21.9% peak (1980) → 2.4% (1986)
• Days lost to strikes: 29.5 million (1979) → 1.9 million (1990)
• Real take-home pay for the average earner: up by a third

• Right to Buy: over a million council tenants became homeowners
• Home ownership: 55% → 67%
• Individual shareholders: 3 million → 11 million — one in four adults

• Foreign holidays: roughly doubled
• Homes with a telephone: two-thirds → nearly nine in ten
• Pensioners’ average incomes: up around 30% in real terms
• Infant mortality: down almost 40%

• Real GDP: up by almost a third
• GDP per head outgrew France, Germany and Italy in the 1980s
• Manufacturing productivity: slowest growth in the G7 in the 1970s → fastest in the 1980s
• Self-employed: 1.9 million → 3.5 million
• Nissan to Sunderland, Toyota to Derby, Honda to Swindon
• Britain became a net oil exporter
• London restored as the world’s financial capital in 1986

• Budget surpluses three years running — Britain repaid debt, 1987–90
• National debt: 47% of GDP → 28%
• State spending: ~45% of GDP → ~39%
• The civil service: 732,000 → 565,000

• Corporation tax: 52% → 35%; the small firms’ rate: 42% → 25%
• Personal tax allowances: up more than 25% in real terms
• Higher rates of income tax: nine → one
• Death duties: fourteen rates → one
• Exchange controls scrapped after 40 years

• 40+ nationalised businesses privatised — 600,000 employees moved to the private sector
• The 33 big state industries: took ~£500m from taxpayers in 1980 → paid £8.4bn to the Exchequer by 1987
• British Steel: world-record loss-maker (1980/81) → £733m profit (1989/90)
• BT, 1984: the largest share offer the world had ever seen
• “Tell Sid” broke the record again in 1986
• British Airways: nationalised loss-maker → profitable, private, “the world’s favourite airline”
• The Channel Tunnel launched and entirely privately financed

Over to you.

[Bruges Group 🇬🇧 @BrugesGroup]

A significant defection!

[David C Bannerman @DCBMEP]

Big news!!! I am joining @reformparty_uk . I believe the country needs a Revolution not just tinkering with. I am sorry to leave the Conservatives and retain great friends there; but feel I must assist in this Revolution and ensure @Nigel_Farage becomes that reforming Prime Minister - backed by a top team. More explanation tomorrow but this story today: https://t.co/MXGmz3IQRq