by The general election has been called and the leaders of the respective parties are busy trying to define what it entails.
Should we recognize and nurture a slow recovery or change course to avoid chaos and incompetence? Or from another perspective, do we need to hit ourselves with the tree under water of net zero, or focus on the cultural attack that mass immigration provides and mockery?
But none of these false structures (which are not mutually exclusive) address the main question that the broadcast media pundits also fail to address – what Keir Starmer’s Labor will actually do if they are lucky enough to have power to get?
In the absence of clear declarations of intent from the Labor leadership (other than putting a 20pc VAT on independent school fees and hiking taxes on domestic oil and gas production) I felt compelled to write a series of articles trying to establish Labour’s economic reality. policy, because it determines the parameters for everything else it does.
I looked at the Labor think tank, the main tax advisers for Labor and they all suggest that Labor will make no promises but then introduce smart and stealthy taxes by extending the scope of existing taxes on ways that particularly hit pensioners, savers, drivers and the workforce. self employed.
But I see readers raising doubts in the comment sections (yes, I can read them) and sometimes deflecting to the Conservative record (of which I was just as critical) as if to excuse the People Lack of honesty work.
Fortunately there is a reliable new source of light that can reveal Labour’s true intentions. International banking and finance consultant Bob Lyddon has spent a lot of time poring over the Mass Lecture given by shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves in March and trying to figure out what her empty waffle and euphemisms were all about crypto.
He has written a 56-page report “Stripping away the jargon” which drills down into the details of its deliberately opaque verbiage, and then, no doubt, lest the scale of the task be too great for the masses to digest, that was distilled in. a shorter 16 page paper “Decoding Rachel Reeves”.
Lyddon, who graduated first in modern languages at Cambridge and is fluent in Norwegian, Dutch, German and French, has added “Reevespeak” to his vocabulary and is letting us know his secrets.
By translating what Rachel Reeves said on record into clear English in her own obscure language, Lyddon recognized Labour’s desire to go into a general election without democratic limits on its future spending plans. This will not only lead to painful tax increases, not only now, but also for generations to come.
Phrases such as “Investment through a partnership between strategic government and entrepreneurial business” might put us off, but in reality it means that companies and financial institutions would be pressured to invest in Labor projects on the basis of taxpayer guarantees. So tell us Rachel, are you going to spend more, tax us more, borrow more? After analyzing your Mass lecture, Bob Lyddon has come to the conclusion that there must be, yes, and yes.
Rachel Reeves talked about the supposedly halcyon days of extensive public borrowing under Gordon Brown and in particular the use of PFI (private finance initiative) “investment” which is still costing us billions to repay today. Total TCP payments from 1996/97 up to the final transaction due in 2052/53 are £278.3bn, a whopping 555pc of the £50.1bn capital sum.
Of those 669 PFI contracts, 588 were under Labor governments. Even the centre-left Public Policy Research Institute estimated £13bn of PFI-funded capital investment going back to Labor since 1998 had cost the NHS £80bn and by 2019 £55bn was still to be paid . By 2030 PFI payments will cost the NHS £2.5bn each year and some NHS trusts are spending a fifth of their budgets on PFI repayments alone.
Recognizing that government borrowing is already close to its limits, Reeves is unrepentant about finding ways to work around prudence, transparency and accountability. In her Mass speech she indicated how she will affect off-balance sheet EU lending such as the TCP called InvestEU, so that the debt is hidden rather than obvious. It is in line with Labour’s ambition for realignment with the EU and will result in the same sub-optimal levels of economic growth.
Reeves went on to explain how net zero provides all the justification needed for higher spending, which she and Labor are committed to. Pension funds will be directed to deploy their investments to back net-zero infrastructure that will further expand state control of our economy – regardless of the damage to future pension returns.
To deliver this combination of excessive state spending and centralized regulatory guidance Reeves also promises to set up new unaccountable institutions – even more Labour-nominated quangos and agencies, whose loyalty and secrecy have been bought with taxpayer salaries and pensions- Eye-catching financing.
Although taxes will have to go up – but no new data has been given that could be decoded – much of the bill will be presented not to us, but to future generations, especially our grandchildren, who cannot be asked do they accept the bill. burden. It is wrapped up and presented as “securism” but it is economic destruction at stake, there is nothing secure about it, and where it is economic it is only to avoid the truth.
So we have it. Although Labor will avoid admitting their true intentions, the direction of travel is clear and the means to achieve it are already understood. Joyful journalists have less than six weeks to ask the right questions and then, no doubt, question the ambiguous answers until we get the truth.
Labor speaks, acts and issues orders through political ciphers. Thank God Bob Lyddon cracked the Labour’s enigma code.
