David Vessey

University of Sheffield lecturer @unishefhistory Historian of modern Britain and the history of the media. Sheffield Wednesday fan for my sins.

[David Vessey @DavidCVessey]

Delighted to announce that my new article is out via Journalism Studies, and it's open access, so that's your Thursday evening sorted! First-hand Accounts? Walter Duranty, William Henry Chamberlin and Eugene Lyons as Moscow Correspondents in the 1930s https://t.co/vIPPUwn6SC

[David Vessey @DavidCVessey]

@tomhfh The sign on the front is triggering. It’s not ‘Funded by the UK Government’; it’s funded by UK taxpayers.

[David Vessey @DavidCVessey]

@PaulEmbery Foot’s contribution to the Commons debate is one of the GREAT parliamentary speeches.

[David Vessey @DavidCVessey]

Out of nowhere Tottenham have the two best right-backs in the world.

[Josh Hunt @iAmJoshHunt]

When it comes to tax in the UK, a lot of people are deluding themselves, thinking the government will just go after the wealthy to pay for the ballooning commitments they’ve made.

The truth is, the real target is the middle class. And the reason is simple. The middle class is the only viable option for the kind of revenue the government wants.

Start with who’s off the table. A third of British adults pay no income tax at all. The bottom half of earners take home about a quarter of the income in this country and pay roughly a tenth of the tax. There’s no pot of gold buried down there, and every party has spent years promising to protect “working people.” Squeezing them is politically radioactive and would raise next to nothing anyway.

The rich are off the table too, whatever the Channel 4 documentaries say. The top 1% already pay 28% of all income tax. Their money is capital, dividends and gains, so they’re mobile, and they’ve already started leaving. One widely quoted forecast has Britain losing half a million millionaires by 2028. Push the rate on these people much higher and you collect less, not more. Threatening them polls brilliantly, but relying on them for a tax bonanza is pure fantasy.

Which leaves the middle class, and the middle class can’t run. Most are on PAYE, taxed at source before the money touches their account. They can’t turn a salary into a capital gain. They can’t declare residency in Monaco, because the job, the kids’ school and the mortgage are all here. Their wealth is a house they can’t hide under the mattress and a pension they can’t reach. Numerous, visible and immobile. The perfect target, and in some ways the only one.

And here’s how it’s already being done. They won’t raise your headline rate of income tax, because they promised not to. But the threshold freeze, the one that sounds like a non-event on Budget day, is quietly hammering you, and it’s now been extended to 2031.

Took out a student loan since 2012? You’ve been paying the graduate tax in all but name. Hold investments outside an ISA? You’ve watched CGT climb to 24%, and it’s likely to be equalised with income tax next. Sent your kids to private school? That’s the VAT charge. Saving into a cash ISA? That shelter just shrank from £20,000 to £12,000. And from 2027, your pension gets pulled into inheritance tax, so the pot you spent a career building can be taxed again on the way out.

There’s more coming. Mansion taxes, higher CGT, property levies, dividends. Most of the taxes we’re told will hit the ultra wealthy will actually land on the middle class. And in most cases they’re not sat on fortunes, they’re sat on assets they spent a working life building.

What’s worse, the burden grows with every Budget, because of the compounding commitments this government keeps making, and that nearly every other party has pledged too.

So who pays for the past, present and future spending of the UK government? The middle class. And there’s not a thing they can do about it. Debt-trapped, stuck in place, with nowhere to turn, and the government knows it.

If any of this resonated, you’re likely in the taxation crosshairs. I wish you luck.

[David Vessey @DavidCVessey]

Does Pickford pull his hand away? What’s he thinking?

[David Vessey @DavidCVessey]

@CapelLofft Does it have the anecdote about him standing in Sheffield and getting pelted by dead cats? I’m sure I read that somewhere (before his Birmingham dynasty days).

[David Vessey @DavidCVessey]

@yuanyi_z And hand the taxpayers the bill in the process. Very selfless.

[David Vessey @DavidCVessey]

Latest in a recurring series: the good people of Clacton have the chance to do the funniest thing imaginable.

[David Vessey @DavidCVessey]

The good people of Makerfield have the chance to do the funniest thing imaginable.

[David Vessey @DavidCVessey]

What an insufferable prick. Imagine going through life and being this ignorant about everything.

[Ron DeSantis @RonDeSantis]

And if it wasn’t for America the insignia on the pub would be written in German.

[David Vessey @DavidCVessey]

Amen.

[Yuan Yi Zhu @yuanyi_z]

Most academics would make terrible politicians and they shouldn't waste their time trying to turn their research into ersatz politics that I guarantee you will have no impact except on the continuing viability of academia.

[David Vessey @DavidCVessey]

@DPJHodges It’s must be the intentional last rites of Bazball. Burning it down before buggering off.

[David Vessey @DavidCVessey]

@si_rubinstein I don’t disagree - I’d like to drop our HR department into an industrial-sized mincer - but the exec just ignores us and spaffs the money on consultants.

[David Vessey @DavidCVessey]

I actually find this reassuring. The new regime already trading like a normal club rather than running down contracts and losing out on revenue #SWFC

[Alex Miller @AlexJPMiller]

🚨Svante Ingelsson to Stoke City very nearly there. As reported, been an increasing possibility for some time.

Deal potentially worth north of £1m agreed. Understand personal terms are there too.

Ingelsson returned from Sweden this week. Talks have taken place with senior Owls figures in last weeks. Seems to be a very amicable switch.

More details👇

https://t.co/yAbAxKKVyD

#SWFC🦉

[David Vessey @DavidCVessey]

A busy WEEK in Westminster? He posted this on Wednesday evening!

[Andy Burnham @andyburnham]

Heading home after a big week in Westminster… thanks for the Z-Cars edits 😂

[Yuan Yi Zhu @yuanyi_z]

Labour MPs tweeted their encomiums to Sir Keir Starmer on their way to Westminster Hall to swear fealty to Andy Burnham. You must think we are all as thick as your media outriders.

[David Vessey @DavidCVessey]

The incessant pearl-clutching in British politics is one of the many reasons why nothing ever changes. Someone doing a shit job - and maliciously so in the case of the worst class politics of envy - should be called out for doing a shit job.

[Tim Farron @timfarron]

Badenoch being needlessly graceless, personally abusive and unpleasant. The Speaker rightly calling it out.

[Dr Helen Ingram @drhingram]

Terrible news from Exeter. The axe is swinging all over the UK for the humanities and social sciences. If we lose these subjects then we will sever a vital link that passes our cultural and social heritage down to the next generation. https://t.co/1Uz4DC5Uo0

[David Vessey @DavidCVessey]

@domhowson Give it Big Sam for the rest of the parliament?

[David Vessey @DavidCVessey]

@pengabdirakyat @yuanyi_z Jeepers, the things despots choose to care about.

[David Vessey @DavidCVessey]

@pengabdirakyat @yuanyi_z Is that really the reason? Because they think people conflate the country with a pseudo-chicken?