Farage. Well he’s Top of the Pops right now! 😂

When Reform PLC crashes the UK economy and our pension funds collapse, as noted above, Mr Farage will be absolutely fine … particularly now that he’s added a tenth job to his side hustles.

He’s now selling nappies on TV; useful for when the sh** hits the fan (couldn’t resist).

SilverBrook

Indeed, LizzieDrip.

IHT as a percentage of total tax yield is relatively small - in the nine months from April 2024 to December 2024, HMRC collected 6.3 billion - so say roughly 8 billion for a whole fiscal year but it’s still a substantial amount of money. To put it into context, 8 billion would have been enough to give the WFP to all pensioner households for four years.

The Reform “contract” - now abandoned as chair Zia Yusuf said it was unworkable - said that Reform would abolish Inheritance Tax (IHT) for all Estates under £2m. They were also going to make substantial cuts to Stamp Duty.

Stamp duty raised 14 billion in the same period so say 18 billion for the whole fiscal year.

Say roughly 20 billion in just two tax cuts.

We know what unfunded tax cuts do to the markets - have people forgotten Truss already? And as the party also wants to abolish QE, what would happen if the BoE was not allowed to create new money to cope with the crisis that resulted? For one thing, your pension fund would fail.

When your pension is lost, your savings wiped out, inflation through the roof, services flatlined, where do you think Farage & Co be? In their tax havens where they have silted away millions to protect themselves from the consequences of their reckless behaviour.

When will people wake up to this populist brainwashing?

We know what unfunded tax cuts do to the markets - have people forgotten Truss already? And as the party also wants to abolish QE, what would happen if the BoE was not allowed to create new money to cope with the crisis that resulted? For one thing, your pension fund would fail.

Quite!

A full analysis would require detailed econometric modelling, but the economists we spoke to were reasonably confident there would be an overall negative effect given that most of the benefit of Reform UK’s tax cuts goes to higher-income individuals, who have a lower propensity to spend.

This is the nub of Dan Neidle's analysis (Tax Policy Associates). I'm happy to see that it confirms what I said several days ago.

Excellent, well-informed post SilverBrook👏👏👏

Indeed, LizzieDrip.

IHT as a percentage of total tax yield is relatively small - in the nine months from April 2024 to December 2024, HMRC collected 6.3 billion - so say roughly 8 billion for a whole fiscal year but it’s still a substantial amount of money. To put it into context, 8 billion would have been enough to give the WFP to all pensioner households for four years.

The Reform “contract” - now abandoned as chair Zia Yusuf said it was unworkable - said that Reform would abolish Inheritance Tax (IHT) for all Estates under £2m. They were also going to make substantial cuts to Stamp Duty.

Stamp duty raised 14 billion in the same period so say 18 billion for the whole fiscal year.

Say roughly 20 billion in just two tax cuts.

We know what unfunded tax cuts do to the markets - have people forgotten Truss already? And as the party also wants to abolish QE, what would happen if the BoE was not allowed to create new money to cope with the crisis that resulted? For one thing, your pension fund would fail.

When your pension is lost, your savings wiped out, inflation through the roof, services flatlined, where do you think Farage & Co be? In their tax havens where they have silted away millions to protect themselves from the consequences of their reckless behaviour.

When will people wake up to this populist brainwashing?

Boz

If Reform abolish IHT they will have a landslide victory!

Given that the only fiscal policy Reform have is to increase the personal allowance to £20,000, abolishing IHT too would be an absolute fiscal disaster, making Liz Truss look an amazing PM!!

nanna8

If they had another election today I have a suspicion Reform would win. The Labour Party needs to do a lot of work and a lot of thinking. They are coming for them, as Farage has said. They really need to go back to being a proper Labour Party and not a bunch of dishonest d1c3heads.

It’s almost irrelevant as there will not be an election for years.

However, I very much doubt that Reform would win, it’s a huge leap from 5 MPs, to at least 326.

taxpolicy.org.uk/2024/06/17/reform_uk_manifesto_2024/

An enlightening analysis of Reform UK PLC’s proposed tax cuts.

Certainly overshadows Liz Truss’s cuts - and that ended well for the country didn’t it!

If Reform abolish IHT they will have a landslide victory!

Clacton is one of the most deprived town in England. It has high unemployment and economic inactivity. House prices are well below the national average.

Can IHT really be one of the most important concerns of Farage's constituents?

As I queried before, ronib- is this a primary concern for his constituents ?
Or is it, as you suggest, an " incentive" for other people he does not represent?
Once more, lots of big pronouncements, no costings, and no suggestion that he should be doing the job for which he is paid £90K.

maddyone

Only thought to be best by Labour voters though FGT. That’s not a surprise.

It’s random sampling, YouGov surveys always are. The point is though, that this survey is just as likely to be correct as the one putting Farage at the top because the methodology used was the same. We can’t just cherry pick the surveys that we agree with the results of and claim they are correct, but say the ones we disagree with aren’t.

There’s a rumour that Farage will announce the abolition of inheritance tax on any estate as an incentive to vote Reform. The farmers will go for that as well as large parts of the south east. He will need some more inducements for the north and Scotland.

If they had another election today I have a suspicion Reform would win. The Labour Party needs to do a lot of work and a lot of thinking. They are coming for them, as Farage has said. They really need to go back to being a proper Labour Party and not a bunch of dishonest d1c3heads.

I find stats interesting but despite all the claims about methodologies, when the sample is so small, the results becomes almost meaningless. Nevertheless the media picks it and makes a big thing.

So 453 people, most of them Reform voters think that Farage would make the best Prime Minister. The electorate in 2024 was 48.2 million.

I am intrigued as to why we are supposed to believe surveys which put Reform in first or second place, but are supposed to disregard as irrelevant piffle those which place Reform further down.

Just wanted to add that these surveys tend to be skewed by the single-mindedness of Reform supporters e.g in a post-election survey, when asked who they would vote for if they couldn’t vote Reform, many said they wouldn’t bother to vote at all.

In another survey to gauge how the main parties would do under AV, Reform is nobody else’s second favourite party. It is everybody else’s least favourite party. Reform would do very badly under AV. Even Farage would not have won his seat outright. In fact, Ed Davey is the only party leader who won more than 50% of the votes in his constituency.

I agree, Wyllow3. I didn't participate in the surveys so don't know what, if any, underlying question were asked but, prima facie, they seem little more than Voxpops, this one based on very few participants, a very large percentatge of which were "Don't Knows". It's all pretty meaningless four and half years out from another election.

Only thought to be best by Labour voters though FGT. That’s not a surprise.

I'm intrigued as to the constant number "popularity" counting and the paucity of policy discussion on this thread.

How will he turn the boats back, FGT?

Keir Starmer No.1 ?
Crikey.

I don’t hear anyone saying he’s doing a good job.

SilverBrook

^It was Cameron's appeasement of UKIP that gave Farage his first real taste of power though...that I don't forgive him for.^

A reminder of the piece Jonathan Freedland wrote in late 2014:

Cameron could have played this differently. He could have dispensed with the macho language of threat and talked instead like a man seeking a deal. He could have taken on Ukip and made the positive, if reformist, case for Europe. Instead, he has put party management first and the future of the country second. He has chosen to fight in such a way that he’s now likely to lose a battle he could have won. And it will be Britain that pays the price.

And haven't we just?

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/24/cameron-britain-eu-bill-lost-allies-europe

A reminder in that article of the deal Farage did with Robert Iwaszkiewicz:

www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/21/nigel-farage-jews-polish-far-right-ukip-deal-robert-iwaszkiewicz

Robert Iwaszkiewicz belongs to an extremist party whose leader has a history of Holocaust denial, racist remarks and misogynistic comments. He belongs to the far-right Polish JKM [Congress of the New Right], led by Janusz Korwin-Mikke, who has reportedly called into question the right of women to have the vote.

Furthermore, we entirely reject Ukip’s justification that ‘all groups in the European parliament have very odd bedfellows [and] the rules to get speaking time and funding are set by the EP, not Ukip’. Extremists and racists should be roundly rejected, not embraced. Even France’s far-right Front National rejected the JKM as being too extreme.

For Ukip to choose such a figure as Robert Iwaszkiewicz as a bedfellow, apparently for money, is beyond belief. Nigel Farage now has some very serious questions to answer. He has placed in issue the credibility of Ukip.

All history but just a reminder of what Farage will do to acquire power and money.

I'd completely forgotten Robert Iwaszkiewicz and the deal.

Never mind current snuggling up to Musk.

Sample size of 2266 of which 44% didn't know.

One of the telling results in there is that 19% of people who actually voted Reform last year don't think Farage would make the best Prime Minister.

It’s a survey. It’s as valid as the survey that put Farage as the ‘top of the pops’. If you’d actually read the attachment eazybee, you’d know that Keir Starmer is Number one, Ed Davey is number two, and it’s a fight for number three between Farage and Badenoch. Both YouGov surveys as I understand it, so equally relevant.

Ed Davey as PM.
Oh my God, No.
He is as big a fool as Ed Miliband.

Seriously? 😂