Starmer v Sunak

You mean like the current pro Tories on this board and elsewhere.

 

Here we go.....

 

So the Beano has finally started publishing migration figures,,, about time!

 

I think in the initial stages he could do no other. An unconditional ceasefire while Hamas were planning to repeat the Oct 7 atrocities would have been hard to justify. He was following the government line in that, and also that of the Americans. I think it's fair to say things have moved on, given the appalling extent of the Israeli action. The Blair argument gets tiresome. The Commons twice approved the action by a 75% majority based upon what was known then. He indicated he would resign if action were not approved. Alan Johnson - an honest former senior minister in my view - indicates that faced with the same set of circumstances as he and the government were then, he'd vote the same way. I'm not sure who "people like you" are.

 

The thing about this £2k tax rise - which by all accounts is based on Tory advisors basing calculations on a non-existent manifesto - is that if a politician turned round and said "Right, we are going to increases taxes* but we'll make sure the rivers and seas are clean, the NHS waiting list falls, the roads have no potholes, etc." I'd probably vote for them.

*Taxes are likely going to have to rise irrespective of what the candidates promise - especially if they cut all vow to cut legal immigration.

 

On another point, I do think Labour ought to have committed to saying that those only in receipt of state pension will never pay income tax. If I understand correctly [Accountants, fact-check] there is no PAYE mechanism in relation to income tax, so for the sake of a few quid huge numbers of pensioners could be forced into completing a tax return. That would probably cause chaos, and might cost more to administer than the revenue it raised? That's apart from the fairness angle. We shouldn't have to wait to see how the economy looks for this to be ruled out, and it would have pulled the rug from under Rishi Smug.

 

There is a black hole in the finances I believe which both main parties are in denial about because they don't want to tell home truths during the election. I seem to remember reading it was as high as 33bn. Since both major parties have suggested, so far, that they want to get national debt down they will have to tackle that deficit somehow. This will mean in reality taxation, more austerity, printing money or a combination of all three. So, bottom line is you're probably correct.

 

This is a very good point, and one which the Tories would be fundamentally weak on, as they're starting from a base of 'we gave you the highest tax burden in decades, yet all the services have fallen to ****'.

I think the general public have shifted opinion on this to the extent that a well-explained and directed tax rise to address service issues would be acceptable, yet the narrative of the campaign in general struggles to address this because the tax burden is already so high.

 

Never knew Starmer's fatha was a toolmaker.
Not sure it was mentioned at all.

Much.

 

I think the rebuttal on this was Starmer's worst failing last night. The pension 'triple-lock plus' issue is most easily explained by the Tories having frozen the tax-free thresholds to the extent that the fiscal drag is now bringing state pensioners into the income tax regime. It's not the giveaway that Sunak is claiming, but a new rule being added to remove the increasing tax burden from state pensioners that everyone else is still having to absorb.

Articulating it correctly would highlight one of the biggest areas of stealth tax that the Tories have imposed on everyone via the income tax threshold freezes, which they've already confirmed are continuing to 2028.

 

Rishi Sunak's fatha was a toolmaker as well.

 

Because Starmer cant make his mind up about anything
x

 

cant like this enough

 

Truth hurts doesnt it
x

 

Ah, but did you know JimmyViz used to work in politics?

 

This is actually a very good summary of the whole debate, which tells you all you need to know about the format that ITV dreamed up for it.

https://x.com/i/status/1798238321648222273

 

The problem is that it took him too long to say it. He allowed Sunak to get away with the false claim too many times. Starmer should have been more forceful. He allowed himself to be bullied. The referee allowed it too. It is to be hoped that Sunak's claim will now backfire, but that can't be guaranteed. A lot of people still believed the Brexit bus extra money for Health Service claim, after it had been strongly contested.

 

Unfortunately, a problem exists in that most people will not believe that their extra taxes will be spent in the ways they would like. The only certain thing would be that they were paying more tax.

 

If state pensioners have an occupational pension as well, the state pension is effectively taxed already, as the full amount of the pension counts towards the overall tax-free allowance, resulting in only a very small tax-free allowance, of £2k or so, on the occupational pension.

 

Only the u.n strongly condemned it. I'm sure it's not tiresome to the millions of innocent people who died for a war which should never have happened.