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Spectator
23-06-2025
- Business
- Spectator
Reform can go further in its plan to woo back non-doms
We will hear plenty of familiar criticisms of the plan unveiled by Reform yesterday to bring non-doms, as wealthy foreigners who enjoy a special tax regime in the UK are known, back. It will make Britain a magnate for tax dodgers and money launderers. It will increase inequality. And the only jobs it creates will be as servants of the super-rich. In fact, however, the only problem with the Reform plan is that it doesn't go far enough. The party should be a lot more ambitious as it prepares for a potential government. It will certainly be a major change. After a decade over which all the political debate has been about how to impose higher taxes on the rich, Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform, will this week set out plans to bring them back. A new 'Britannia Card' will allow both foreigners and returning expats to pay a flat fee of £250,000, in return for which their worldwide income would be exempt from most UK taxes for 10 years. The money raised would then be distributed in the form of a 'Britannia worker's dividend' to low-paid employees, with a bonus worth an estimated £600 to £1,000 a year. Reform's plan has the potential to change the economic argument There are legitimate criticisms of the Reform plan. It may be complex to implement, and earmarking the income generated for a 'dividend', while politically clever, may prove too fiddly. The tax system needs simplification, not yet more complex allowances. And yet, it has the potential to change the economic argument. It is already clear that the Labour-Tory consensus on driving out the non-doms has been a disaster for the British economy, while the Starmer government's determination to put up taxes on the rich has led to an exodus of wealth and talent. Reform has recognised how damaging that has become, worked out that the UK needs to attract wealth, and recognised that the entrepreneurs and business owners who have left the UK need to be bought back. Indeed, extending the tax break to returning British nationals may well prove the most significant part of the package. But Reform could afford to go even further with their plan. The £250,000 flat fee may well need to come down if the UK is to compete with similar deals available in Italy and Greece or the zero taxes levied in Dubai and the Caribbean. A much lower annual threshold may well generate more revenue overall. And it should extend the offer to foreign entrepreneurs, with a far lower rate of Capital Gains Tax to start-ups who want to move from their high-tax bases in Paris, Stockholm or Madrid to a far more lightly taxed London, Cambridge or Bristol. The important point, however, is this. As the non-doms and the wealthy flee the Chancellor's Rachel Reeves's increasingly punitive tax regime, she will now have to defend her decisions against a very clear alternative. As the disaster of taxing success becomes clear, that will become harder and harder – and Reform's alternative will look a lot more attractive.
Washington Post
05-05-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Welcome home to your democracy in decline
In today's edition: Let's zip out for a quick trip to some of our fellow liberal democracies. There's Britain, where James Heale of that country's Spectator magazine reports that Nigel Farage's Reform Party 'stormed to victory' in English council elections, which could signal an upending in the near future of the decades-long Labour-Tory 'stranglehold.' Farage's campaign, Heale explains, was very, very Trumpy.
New European
02-05-2025
- Politics
- New European
Both Labour and the Tories should be terrified
Reform are, of course, the night's big winers. By the end of today, it looks likely that gains by the Liberal Democrats and Greens in their target areas will show that it is not just Reform that is benefitting from the decline in the old two-party duopoly – last year's collapse in Conservative support, compounded by this year's haemorrhage of Labour votes. Last week, previewing yesterday's Runcorn & Helsby by-election, I suggested a political version of the Micawber principle: victory by 50 votes, the result happiness; defeat by 50 votes, result misery. OK, Reform's Sarah Pochin won by just six votes. But the principle holds; and by the same token Labour can celebrate three narrow mayoral victories overnight. However, Labour's vote fell alarmingly in each of the mayoral contests; and early indications from county council contests confirm the pattern. Labour should not seek to comfort itself by claiming 'it could have been worse'. The table below summarises the main overnight results. It compares the share of votes won by each party yesterday with the results from last year's general election, applying the figures from the relevant constituencies are added together. As the figures show, Labour suffered double-digit declines everywhere. Their three victories, in North Tyneside, the West of England and Doncaster, were achieved with alarmingly low support: 30, 25 and 33 per cent respectively. These are not kinds of figures that have normally led to victories in the past. Coming from nowhere, Reform won Greater Lincolnshire as well as the Runcorn by-election, and ran Labour close in the other three mayoral contests. It is an astonishing performance, likely to be confirmed by the county council results later today. What now? In the past, third-party eruptions between general elections have subsided. In the end, for more than a century, the Labour-Conservative domination has returned whenever voters have decided who they want to govern Britain. Maybe the same will happen again. But as well as the long-term social and economic trends chipping away at the old class-based party loyalties, there is a technical reason why we may be witnessing a transformation in our politics. It's to do with the way our First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) voting system works. It rewards a) large national parties (traditionally Labour and Conservative), b) parties with specific geographical roots (notably the SNP in their good years) and c) minority parties that successfully target particular seats (as the Liberal Democrats did last year). It punishes medium-sized parties with the kind of broad support that amasses millions of votes nationally, but not enough in particular seats to have many MPs. This used to be the curse that afflicted the old Liberal party and more recently the Lib Dems. Last year it was Reform that suffered, winning half a million more votes than the Lib Dems but 67 fewer seats. When it was just the Lib Dems trying to break the Labour-Tory duopoly, a rough rule of thumb was that they, and their predecessor parties, needed at least 30 per cent to overcome the biases inherent in FPTP. In 1983, the Liberal/SDP Alliance won just 23 seats with 26 per cent of the vote. Labour was narrowly ahead in the national vote, with 28 per cent, but because its support was more concentrated in winnable areas, ended up with 209 seats. The arithmetic has changed. With the Greens, Lib Dems and Reform all seeking to undermine the old duopoly – and the nationalists in Scotland and Wales – local candidates need fewer votes to be elected. This, indeed, is the common feature of all the overnight results. What is true locally is true nationally. The tipping point for a party such Reform is no longer 30 per cent. It's probably around 25 per cent. That is where they stand in the polls. Later today the BBC will publish its estimate of the national vote share from the country council elections. I would not be surprised if Reform ends up with at least 25 per cent and possibly more. The scattering of overnight council results shows Reform winning half the seats that have declared. We have yet to hear from southern counties where Reform is weaker and the Greens and Lib Dems stronger. But, for the moment, Reform no longer suffers from an FPTP penalty. It looks as if their share of county councillors will end up broadly in line with their overall share of votes. And that transformation of the way votes translate into seats really should terrify both Labour and the Conservatives. Peter Kellner is the founder of YouGov. You can find his Substack here
