Labour Are Not Serious People
Public anger is palpable, but the Government has chosen to retreat from the hard decisions needed to reverse our decline
Towering columns
At ConservativeHome, Chris Worrall explains why he left the Labour Party over its failure to grip the challenges facing modern Britain.
Labour’s problem isn’t caution. It’s drift. Starmer’s Labour is relapsing into the soft leftism of the Miliband years: sentimental, evasive, and unserious. It talks tough on fiscal discipline, then caves to pressure from wealthy pensioners. It claims to have a plan for growth, then waters down planning reform. It pledges no new tax rises – while quietly preparing exactly that. This isn’t grown-up politics. It’s focus-group politics, led by a man whose convictions blow with the wind, in a room full of progressive elites who sneer at borders, deride tax reform, and roll their eyes at working-class ambition…
…Take Angela Rayner’s tone-deaf response to Sir Trevor Phillips, who asked whether housing targets were realistic given immigration levels. Her reply? “There is plenty of housing already, just not enough for the people who need it.” But who exactly are those people? Ask whether British veterans or working-class families should be prioritised, and you risk being labelled a fascist. But Phillips was right to ask. Just the Afghan resettlement scheme alone will house 38,000 people—equivalent to nearly 7,000 homes on typical Afghan households of 5.5. That’s over three years’ worth of Britain’s current social housing output. And that’s before we talk about small boats or legal migration.
Labour refuses to consider the cost, economic, social, or cultural. Conservatives, by contrast, are beginning to face facts. Onward’s Full House report shows high net migration, combined with an inelastic housing supply, is driving up rents and pricing out British families. Even obtaining ethnicity data on offenders is now apparently beyond the pale for Labour. Honest, data-led policymaking is why I came to realise: this party is no longer my home.
For The Telegraph, Guy Dampier argues that the loss of control over borders, and secrecy over the consequences, has deeply damaged public trust.
The failure of this Government and the last to stop the small boats crossings is radicalising Middle England. Every week brings more young men from some of the poorest and most violent societies on earth. Some will successfully claim asylum because they claim to come from places to which they cannot be deported. They are often kept in hotels, at a cost of billions to the tax payer. Although the Government brags that hotel numbers are on the way down, asylum seekers are also being put in flats and HMOs across the country.
Increasingly there is nowhere you can go where you won’t find asylum seekers barracked nearby, with all the risks that come with that. Most recently, Eritrean Aron Hadash was convicted of assaulting a 19-year-old with learning difficulties, which make her “very childlike”. That did not matter to Hadash, who was living at taxpayer expense in a nearby Holiday Inn. Intoxicated, he pinned her down, grabbed her breasts, and touched her crotch for several minutes before she escaped. Despite showing no remorse and the judge saying that he poses a “high risk of serious harm to the public”, he was sentenced to only 14 months and has already been released after serving a year on remand.
That is why ordinary people came out onto the streets of Epping. Although there have been reports of members of the far-Right attending, the hand-made signs and mixed nature of the crowd suggests that it is largely locals. Tommy Robinson may have said he will join the protests this coming weekend, but that shows that he too was caught out. Most of the professional protestors were from counter-protestors from Stand up to Racism, who arrived from out of town with their professionally printed placards, only to be run out again by furious locals. That should actually worry the authorities more. A handful of troublemakers is one thing, a community up in arms is another.
At The New Statesman, John Elledge reflects on how economic and societal decay have become impossible for people to ignore any longer.
Things breaking and not being fixed – the sneaking suspicion that things might just keep getting worse – has been a theme of British life of late. In too many towns, boarded up shopfronts predominate; shops and restaurants that closed during Covid and never reopened, or did reopen, but as low-value and slightly suspect operations like vape shops or nail bars. A general air of scuzziness has crept in, as councils make their final metamorphosis from the once proud local corporations that built this country, to struggling and underfunded social care funding bodies with an occasional sideline in bins. Meanwhile, social media is awash with stories of police ignoring petty crimes, and immediately marking inquiries as closed, as if there’s no value in investigating and nothing to be done. (When someone is caught expressing support for Palestine, at least, Kent police are on it.)…
…For quite a while this country was blessed with a sense of, for want of a better word, progress. Many lived hard lives; for certain people in certain places, things could get worse as well as better. But if you look at the state of the nation as a whole at any point in the 19th or 20th century, you could generally rely on things having improved visibly over the previous, say, 20 years.
That no longer seems to hold true. We’re not significantly richer than we were in 2005, but the cost of living is significantly higher, and the cost of having somewhere to live higher still. Worse, a lot of basic state functions are in remission. We no longer trust that the police will come when called, or you can see a doctor when sick. And we have a prime minister who doesn’t recognise that anything has broken. Perhaps the idea of progress was an aberration. For much of history, even the bits that didn’t have Rome to look back on, the golden age was assumed to lay behind, not ahead, of the present.
Also at ConservativeHome, Katie Lam criticises the Government’s plans for a formal definition of Islamophobia and the chilling effect it will have on free speech.
Because the Government refuses to comment on the group’s work, we don’t know the exact scope of this new definition. Without proper public scrutiny, the catch-all label ‘Islamophobic’ risks being imposed on us all, and could even be used to shut down legitimate criticism of Islamic cultural practices such as cousin marriage. While the group insists this is a “non-statutory” definition, its chair, Dominic Grieve has said he wants it “embedded in university speech codes” and to be used “to curb ‘micro-aggressions’”. That sounds eerily like a gag order in all but name.
Ministers should know better, especially given the recent exposure of mass institutionalised sexual abuse that has scarred so many communities across the country. As the Casey Report made clear, it was fear of being called racist or Islamophobic that deterred so many local authorities from tackling the grooming and rape gang scandal for decades, leaving girls and women to suffer while men were able to get away with the most heinous crimes.
Under this new definition of Islamophobia, how many public servants would remain silent for fear that speaking up would result in them becoming a pariah? And, as a result, how many victims — the little girls and boys brutally raped, mostly by British-Pakistani Muslim men — would continue to be tormented? Would never see justice? Many are also rightly worried this could amount to a blasphemy law by the back door. Britain abolished blasphemy as an offence back in 2008 for good reason. But this new definition threatens to place one religion, Islam, on a pedestal.
At The Critic, Chris Bayliss looks at how market mechanisms have been overwhelmed by a complex mass of legal and bureaucratic rules.
Beyond the Equality Act, the Human Rights Act, the Climate Change Act and the raft of other quasi-constitutional laws that guide the judiciary in their role as the nation’s economic guardians, there is now a bewildering array of entitlements, cross-subsidies, and needs-based pricing which completely distort to whom things are sold, for how much, and where the bill is sent.
Commentator Max Tempers has documented the astonishing growth of the Motability scheme in the financing of new cars, to the point that it now accounts for at least a fifth of the market. This means that hundreds of thousands of brand new vehicles are paid for out of Personal Independence Payments to individuals for disabilities, the huge growth of which in recent years seemingly being down to mental health complaints, such as anxiety. In an example of knots of legally enforceable entitlements the state has bound itself up in, a council is forbidden from taking into account whether a parent has motability financed car on account of a SEND child, should they also request a council-funded taxi service to school.
In housing, strict rules ensure that builders must offer a certain percentage of any new development at sub-market “affordable” pricing in return for permission to build anything at all. In utilities and banking, a baroque structure of cross-subsidy ensures that the costs of serving the bottom quintile are passed on to the slightly better off, at the government’s behest. The exception is retail electricity, where the market has been abolished altogether by the government’s price cap — introduced to shield consumers from the price shock in Autumn 2022, and now effectively politically irremovable. Although government intervention in energy pricing had distorted anything resembling a free market in electricity, by imposing the costs of subsidising, balancing and backing up intermittent generation, long before that.
At The American Mind, Michael A. Needham makes the case for the importance of reindustrialisation in building the next American Century.
A peaceful and prosperous future will not come from factories in China, but from those here in our hemisphere. America, our friends, and our allies must refocus on our own production and our own people. This is no retreat from the world—it is the only way to preserve America’s rightful place in it. Without an aligned industrial base, the peace, prosperity, and security that America has enjoyed for generations will fade just like it has for predecessors before us.
Our ethos is simple: when America needs it, you build it—either here or jointly with our allies and reliable neighbors. And if you can’t find what you need in the ground here, you go out and get it, you bring it back home—and reap the rewards. Whether it’s in Latin America, our own backyard, which generations of Americans have dreamed of developing, or the Pacific Islands, or sub-Saharan Africa, there are many forgotten but strategic locations where American initiative and ingenuity will go a long way to securing our hold on the resources we need to reindustrialize. The full promise of reindustrialization is a recovery of both the material and the spiritual ingredients for greatness. By building and asserting ourselves once more—by insisting upon ourselves, without apology or shame—we remember who we are: a nation and a people forged in the crucible of a wild frontier.
To make a next American century, we must rekindle that flame. We need that swashbuckling American spirit that does what must be done and does not take no for an answer—it neither asks for permission nor begs for forgiveness. The new “Masters of the Universe” will not be Tom Wolfe’s bond traders. They will be pioneers for whom risk isn’t a figure on a spreadsheet or a metric to be managed, but a challenge—men who laugh at impossibility. They will be Americans in the fullest and most deserving sense of the word, worthy of the men who built our country—possessed by the same spirit as the one that drove Thomas Edison, Samuel Colt, and the Wright Brothers a century ago.
Wonky thinking
Onward published The Prosperity Package by Maxwell Marlow, making the case for attracting global investors back to the UK to boost growth and raise revenue. The report proposes that wealthy foreigners should be able to move to the UK and keep their global assets, income, and gains completely free from HMRC in return for a fixed annual fee of £300,000 and a minimum £3 million investment in a key strategic industrial sector.
The UK historically relied on the “non-domiciled” tax regime (non-dom status) and an investor visa scheme to attract wealthy foreigners. Under the non-dom system, a centuries-old framework, UK residents whose permanent domicile was abroad could opt for the remittance basis of taxation. This meant foreign income and capital gains were taxable in the UK only if remitted (brought into the country), allowing affluent non-doms to shelter offshore income from UK tax. Non-doms living in Britain would still pay UK tax on their UK-source income, and after seven years of residence many faced an annual remittance basis charge (RBC) for the privilege of keeping foreign income untaxed. By 2015, long-term non-doms paid RBCs of £30,000 to £90,000 per year depending on residency duration. In addition to this tax status, the UK from 2008 offered a Tier 1 Investor Visa (explored in more detail below), a so-called “golden visa” granting residency to those investing £2 million or more in UK assets. This visa route aimed to attract foreign millionaires and their capital into the British economy.
Non-domiciled residents became an important, if controversial, part of the UK’s taxpayer base. In the tax year ending 2023, roughly 74,000 individuals claimed non-domiciled status on UK tax returns. HMRC data indicate that non-doms (together with those who lost the status under reforms, termed “deemed domiciled”) paid at least £12.5 billion in UK income tax, capital gains tax, and national insurance for the year ending 2024. This sum represents about £8.9 billion from active non-domiciled taxpayers, the highest non-dom revenue since 2017. On average, a non-dom taxpayer contributes a six-figure sum in UK taxes annually. Indeed, prior to recent changes, the average non-dom paid roughly £120,000 a year in UK taxes, far exceeding the average taxpayer.
Under new rules, however, the non-domiciled status was abolished from April 2025, and all UK residents will generally be taxed on worldwide income. As a transitional measure, the government offers new foreign residents a limited 4-year foreign income exemption: newly arrived UK residents (who were not resident in the prior 10 years) utilise a 100% tax relief on foreign income and gains for up to four years. Under the Temporary Repatriation Facility (TRF), users can choose to remit income at a lower 12% tax rate, however, when these remitted funds are placed into the account they are non-refundable, making it less attractive amongst high uncertainty with government policy. This was designed with later non-doms in mind, as after 15 years using the regime, they are considered deemed domicile (full tax persons), but could use this scheme for another 4 years.
Likewise, inheritance tax rules are shifting to a purely residence-based scope, and special capital gains provisions (such as rebasing of assets for existing non-doms) have been introduced to smooth the transition. This means that those who are tax resident in the UK will be taxed on their global assets on their death, which was previously not the case. By reintegrating Articles 726 and 730 of the Finance Act, there would be a higher take up of the existing TRF and the Transfer of Assets Abroad scheme.
Exemptions from global inheritance tax are popular amongst the public, however, it remains to be seen how this public sentiment can translate into the changing of these rules given tight balance sheets.
The Prosperity Institute published Why and How to Leave the European Convention on Human Rights by the Rt Hon Suella Braverman MP and Guy Dampier. They set out a concrete path for UK withdrawal from the ECHR while maintaining the integrity of the Union, preserving the Good Friday Agreement, and restoring parliamentary sovereignty over issues such as asylum, policing, and the climate.
It is often suggested that we should remain a member and reform the ECHR from within. However, reform has been attempted over the last two decades, unsuccessfully. In 2004, Protocol No. 14 attempted to simplify the ECtHR’s processes, to enable them to deal with the backlog of cases, although it was only ratified in 2010. Combined with a new version of Rule 47 in the Rules of the Court, which enabled the ECtHR to rule submissions which were overlong or insufficiently supported by evidence as inadmissible, this reduced the backlog. Nonetheless, the backlog persisted.
To reform the ECtHR, a series of high-level conferences were organised. They were:
Interlaken Conference 2010
Izmir Conference 2011
Brighton Conference 2012
Oslo Conference 2014
Brussels Conference 2015
Copenhagen Conference 2018
As a result of the first conference being in Interlaken, this series has been christened “the Interlaken Process”. Discussion of the limits to the ECtHR’s powers, judicial activism, and deference led to Protocols No. 15 and 16. The former introduced reference to the “subsidiary role” of the ECtHR in an effort to deal with concerns by High Contracting Parties about the ECtHR’s increasingly expansive interpretation of the ECHR. The latter allowed the highest domestic courts in High Contracting Parties to request the ECtHR give advisory opinions on questions relating to the interpretation or application of ECHR rights, to enable High Contracting Parties to avoid future violations.
Subsidiarity means that the ECtHR and ECHR should be seen as safety nets rather than a first port of call. Another important concept for reformers was the “margin of appreciation”, which is the deference the ECtHR should show towards High Contracting Parties’ interpretation of their own legal systems. This is adjusted according to the public interest, so that in cases which involve issues like national security, the High Contracting Parties will have more latitude.
The ECHR also provides for proportionality, which allows judges to adopt an intrusive, meritbased assessment of decisions. This legal test has influenced judicial review in British courts, enabling judges to overturn more decisions by the state if they disagree with the decision, regardless of whether the correct process was used and whether the decision was within the range of reasonable decisions.
As a major critic of the ECtHR’s ever-expanding powers, the direction of the Interlaken Process was welcomed by the United Kingdom. It used its leadership of the Council of Europe to push for greater reform at the Brighton Conference in 2012, with the aim of restricting the flow of cases from the UK to the ECtHR and increasing the status of its own national courts. However, although the Brighton Declaration, which set out a limited series of reforms to the ECtHR, did go some way towards dealing with these issues, they have nonetheless persisted.
The Interlaken Process is considered complete, as of 2021, with no further efforts at reform. Yet its success should surely be measured by whether it has sufficiently reduced the ECtHR backlog and whether it has increased the status of national courts. On both counts it is a failure. According to the ECtHR’s own 2024 annual report, the backlog of cases still stands at around 60,000. An impressive reduction from the 160,000 peak in 2011 certainly, but the numbers have been stubbornly stuck between around 56-80,000 since 2014. These figures are still staggeringly high and suggest a clear “floor” to the ECtHR’s ability to reduce its caseload. Furthermore, it is hard to suggest the status of Britain’s national courts have improved relative to the ECtHR since Interlaken began in 2010. Despite a decade of effort, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Interlaken Process, a flagship ECtHR reform project, has been a failure.
Book of the week
This week we recommend Riddle of the Modern World: Of Liberty, Wealth and Equality by Professor Alan Macfarlane. The author considers how the lives and intellectual thought of Montesquieu, Adam Smith, De Tocqueville, and Ernest Gellner can tell us more about how modernity was created. This includes how economies transitioned towards models based on production rather than predation, using Smith’s reflections on English constitutional history and its unique features.
Following closely some of the arguments of Montesquieu, [Smith] tried to outline the institutional structures which now guaranteed the balance of power and the liberty and security of the people of Britain, which was the foundation, as he thought, of their growing wealth and power. There was firstly England’s parliament. By the middle of the eighteenth century,
‘So far is the king from being able to govern the kingdom without the assistance of Parliament for 15 or 16 years, as Chas. Ist did, that he could not without giving offence to the whole nation by a step which would shock every one, maintain the government for one year without them, as he has no power of levying supplies. In this manner a system of liberty has been established in England before the standing army was introduced; which as it was not the case in other countries, so it has not been ever establishd in them.’
The system was now firmly entrenched. ‘Liberty thus established has been since confirmed by many Acts of Parliament and clauses of Acts. The system of government now supposes a system of liberty as a foundation. Every one would be shocked at any attempt to alter this system, and such a change would be attended with the greatest difficulties.’ The House of Commons was powerful enough to control the royal power and the power of ministers. ‘Another article which secures the liberty of the subjects is the power which the Commons have of impeaching the kings ministers of mal-administration, and that tho it had not visibly encroached on liberty.’ Furthermore, ‘The House of Commons also has the sole judgement in all controverted elections, and is on them very nice and delicate, as their interest leads them to preserve them as free as can be had.’
Yet the Commons themselves were restrained from the corruption of power by periodic elections. ‘The frequency of the elections is also a great security for the liberty of the people, as the representative must be carefull to serve his country, at least his constituents, otherwise he will be in danger of losing his place at the next elections.’ In summary, ‘These laws and established customs render it very difficult and allmost impossible to introduce absolute power of the king without meeting with the strongest opposition imaginable.’ All this had occurred through a balance of forces. Smith rejected both Hobbes’s and Locke’s ideas of the social contract arising from a voluntary agreement. As he explained, he had ‘endeavoured to explain to you the origin and something of the progress of government. How it arose, not as some writers imagine from any consent or agreement of a number of persons themselves to submit themselves to such or such regulations, but from the natural progress which men make in society.’
The other great protection, in suggesting which Smith again partly followed Montesquieu, was the English common law tradition. One aspect was a free and independent judiciary, judges who were separate from the royal or even the parliamentary power…
…Smith’s account of the English development is intriguing and scholarly. He clearly knew the literature and wrote with authority. Yet there is something of a contradiction in it. On the one hand his account of political power suggests that England like continental Europe went through an absolutist phase. The difference was that it occurred much later, lasted for a much shorter period (c.1475– 1580) and was overturned, whereas the absolutist governments grew ever more powerful in France, Spain, Germany and elsewhere. On the other hand, on the legal side he gives a sketch of much more continuity and of the preservation of a high degree of protection against the power of the State.
Quick links
UK house prices increased by 3.9% in the year to May.
Fiscal drag has increased the number of workers in the higher income tax band by 2.6 million since 2021/22, totalling 7.1 million workers.
A High Court judge ruled that the definition of family does not need to be limited to blood or legal connections, allowing an Afghan to bring 22 people with him.
Three Islamic centres in Glasgow have links to the Iranian Government.
Asylum seekers are using taxpayer-funded payment cards for gambling.
EU interior ministers are seeking UN support for ‘return hubs’ in countries like Tunisia, Mauritania, Jordan, Egypt, and Uganda.
Regulators approved a new digital bank that provides mortgages to Africans living in the UK.
London is responsible for the largest drop in police numbers in England.
The Trump administration published its new AI Action Plan as part of its efforts to expand the American advantage in artificial intelligence.
Data revealed that no country with a marriage rate under 5.0 reaches a replacement fertility rate.
Minneapolis Democrats picked a democratic socialist in a shock mayoral primary result.
Wax seals will no longer be used on official government documents, ending centuries of tradition, in efforts to cut red tape.