Ben

London but hail from Leeds (secretly its bradford). Dragging myself though a career type thing.

[Ben @thebwoods]

Friends both dropped to 4 days and increased pension contribs to avoid this, the extra tax they would pay without a cliff edge would easily have covered the cost of removing it for them and no doubt countless others

[Jason @jsncwn]

But, presumably, nothing for those falling foul of the £100k cliff edge where going £1 above it loses you thousands of pounds worth of free childcare. People turn down promotions or work fewer hours because of this mad rule.

[Rupert Myers @RupertMyers]

End the triple lock, introduce modest pricing for GP appointments, make work pay and make it much harder to game the benefits system. We need a nimble economy, we are drowning in tax and spend.

[Tom Harwood @tomhfh]

Nigel Farage opened his Party Conference speech in 2024 by whipping out a pair of glasses, in the wake of the Lord Ali scandal.

"Do you like them?" He asked the crowd.

"Very expensive, but guess what I bought them myself! How about that!”

[Piers Morgan @piersmorgan]

Desperate last throw of the distraction dice that has zero bearing on the ongoing investigations into his dodgy bungs.

[Steven Swinford @Steven_Swinford]

The OBR warns that Britain's economy is on an unsustainable footing as an ageing population puts ever more pressure on the public spending. Much of it is driven by the triple lock

* Health spending is projected to rise from 8% of GDP in 2030/31 to 13% of GDP by 2075-76

* State pension spending is projected to rise from 5% of GDP to around 9% of GDP by 2075-76

* Education spending is expected to fall from 4.3% of GDP to 3.4% of GDP because there are fewer children

* The baseline scenario forecasts that spending will rise from 40% of GDP to 49% of GDP

[max tempers @maxtempers]

Worst visa of all time strikes again. Just staggering dependent ratios.

[Ben @thebwoods]

@Mullers1993 So yes 🤣

[Jim Cognito @JimCognito2016]

In all seriousness, we should all leave Nigel Farage alone.

It's perfectly reasonable that two random dudes paid him millions in the few months before he got back into politics & they just never discussed it.

They just decided to give him the cash for absolutely no reason.

[Josh Hunt @iAmJoshHunt]

It's rare for me to agree with Blair.

But this is spot on. CGT is one of the most dangerous taxes to mess with, because the upside is small and the downside is invisible.

Even if a hike raised an extra billion or two, the opportunity cost would dwarf it. You never see the business that wasn't started, the investment that went elsewhere, the founder who sold up and left. You only ever see the revenue line. The damage doesn't show up in the accounts.

HMRC's own analysis says big rate rises would likely lose money. Which is probably why the case for raising CGT is almost always ideological rather than financial.

And at the exact moment this country needs capital moving and investment ramping up, a hike would strip away the incentive to take risk, just when we need far more of it.

I hope they leave CGT well alone. Raising it would be a massive own goal. If anything they should be cutting it hard to attract the investment we need. But given the whispers, it sounds like we're heading the opposite way.

Taxing capital gains at income tax rates would hand us the highest CGT in the developed world. And at that point the question everyone will start asking…

Why bother? Why take the risk?

[James Hanson @jhansonradio]

Ultimately Nigel Farage faces a simple choice.

He can be a full-time MP, party leader and prospective Prime Minister.

Or he can be a businessman with a complex web of financial interests.

He can’t be both.

Britain is not Trump’s America, however much Reform think it is.

[Cut My Tax @CutMyTaxUK]

The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change has stated that increasing capital gains tax would be “terrible policy” which would “send entirely the wrong signal” to entrepreneurs needed to drive innovation and growth.

“Taxing our way to prosperity is both bad policy and bad politics," noted the Institute, pointing out that a 45% rate of CGT would be the highest in Europe. “While everyone else is racing to attract entrepreneurial talent, we would be punishing them and making ourselves poorer as a result.”

All this is of course blindingly obvious, except among the leadership of the Labour Party.

[Stuey Beef 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @stuey_beef]

Tony Blair’s own think tank is now effectively telling Andy Burnham: stop playing student-union socialist with the tax system before you blow up investment.

Burnham’s people are openly flirting with aligning capital gains tax with income tax – a move that independent analysis says would reduce receipts, freeze the housing market and scare off long‑term investors.

Britain is already stuck in a low‑growth, high‑tax trap; yet the man tipped for No10 thinks the answer is to squeeze risk‑takers and entrepreneurs harder while promising not to touch income tax, VAT or NI.

That isn’t “fairness”, it’s economic vandalism dressed up as virtue – taxing productive investment more heavily than luck in the labour market, then calling it a “war on wealth” as if wealth magically appears without risk, innovation or jobs.

Blair’s camp is spelling it out in black and white: “we cannot tax our way to prosperity” and “increasing capital gains tax to the level of income tax would undermine incentives and send entirely the wrong signal.”

If Burnham ignores that warning, it won’t just be “the rich” who pay the price – it will be every worker whose job depends on someone, somewhere, being willing to risk capital in Britain rather than take it elsewhere.

[Liz Webster @LizWebsterSBF]

🔥 It has taken years, but Laura Kuenssberg finally devotes nearly a full minute to the questions surrounding Nigel Farage’s funding and financial arrangements.

The BBC even uses archive footage of Farage alongside his former deputy, Nathan Gill, who has now been convicted of accepting bribes.

It’s a sign of how seriously these questions are now being treated.

#bbclaurak #TrevorPhillips #Farage

[Alicia Kearns MP @aliciakearns]

Farage claimed Harborne’s £5 million was to pay for his security….

But Cottrell was paying for his security already….oh & much more.

On Day 1 you are told to disclose all and any financial donations over £300 from the year leading up to your election….

Farage is a grifter.

[Ben @thebwoods]

@lukerobertblack Don’t you own a flat in London?

[Ben @thebwoods]

@dnrhds Indeed, impressive to find two people who lack taste so much so it’s nice they found each other

[Sam @SamCKx]

The answer is this:

I sincerely believe Nigel Farage is the most corrupt politician in the history of British politics by an order of magnitute. He has personally enriched himself to the tune of at least £7 million in the last 24 months, whilst working families still suffer the disasterous consequences of Brexit.

Reform, and everything it stands for, poses an existential threat to the British way of life, to civil liberties and the very fabric of Britain. Reform is a wolf in sheep's clothing; it could not be further from representing the best interests of ordinary working families. Farage proves that every single day.

I hope that answers your question?

[Jake Enea @TheJakeEnea]

I don’t see the point of Number 10 North. It’s another costly layer of government that solves nothing.

But if they’re going to build it, why Manchester? Why not Sheffield, Grimsby, Middlesbrough?

Putting it in the North’s most successful city is an expensive virtue exercise.

[Torsten Bell @TorstenBell]

They’ve very much revealed wrong doing. A supposed public servant personally pocketing £5m from a foreign donor is a lot worse than wrong. Doing so, failing to declare it, then advocating for policies that hugely benefit that donor is grifting plain and simple