My manifesto to turn around Britain

 Although it's clear Labour haven't got a clue about how to turn around Britain's fortunes, it looks like Reform, who seem to be in the lead to be the next government, are pretty light on ideas too.

So here's my manifesto about how I'd turn around Britain.

My absolute top priority is sorting out the economy.  We will need a vibrant buzzing economy with lots of job vacancies because I will be sacking government employees on a massive scale.

Even Mervyn King recently said "The economy is not in a comfortable position and that we are in worse shape than after the 2008 financial crash". He went on to say that many developed economies are in a mess and reducing the national debt has to be  a priority .

Every government says they want growth to balance the equation yet that's more elusive so we need to cut public spending.  It's impossible to tax your way to growth.

So to turn around our economy we need to get our energy prices under control.  Although I don't think this alone will stimulate growth it will stop economic decline.

My first goal would be to make energy prices in the lower quartile of the developed world not the most expensive which seems to be current policy.

The media reports high profile things like steel works closing - it's done a much worse job of reporting the closure of high value chemical engineering plants.  I know a bit about chemical engineering - it would have been my second choice to study at university if I had any chemistry qualifications. Chemical plant economics is critical and with sky high energy prices in the UK our plants are at higher risk of closing than pretty much any developed country.

An example of this is Ineos - our home grown chemical engineering giant announced that they have switched their £3Bn investment from the UK to the USA.  It cited political reasons as the reason for this. Far more likely is that Jim Radcliff looked at the numbers for his energy hungry chemical plants and selected the  USA  as their energy prices are a fraction of the UKs.

So what would I do about it?  

Firstly scrap the environmental levy.  Wind turbine and solar power needs to compete without all the hidden subsidies. Consumers will benefit straight away with a 16% reduction in their electric bill.  I would make sure that commercial power for business was on a competitive footing.  If prices were massively different to wholesale prices I would fine the companies through a competition and markets investigation.  The energy market is broken.  Gas electricity is far cheaper than renewables - I would be looking at that as a base load rather than skimming. 

You may have noticed that all these wind turbines are rarely spinning.  They are skimming for the peaks.  I would set minimum quotas that they need to supply in order to achieve a base price so there's a disincentive to only spin when it suits them (ie when the price is high and they make the most money).

I would remove restrictions on using our own gas.  I would ensure that we dont import gas when we have our own.

Reducing energy consumption needs to be a priority.  Currently it makes no sense for landlords to spend money on improving energy efficiency of rental properties. I would introduce capital allowance tax relief for landlords so they can offset expenditure on energy improvements against tax. In fact I wouldnt stop there.  I would allow home owners to do the same - basically give home owners tax relief on energy efficiency improvements.  Currently social landlords and council houses have the worst energy performance of all properties.  They will need to do the same.

I would remove VAT on home insulation products as well. 

Finally we need a nuclear strategy - I would make sure we build nuclear power stations  quickly.   Even when we adopt standard Chinese nuclear power station designs we take decades when they take years. Obviously it will take longer than 1 parliament term in office to build nuclear but we need it to happen.

Sadly Britain doesnt make much nowadays.  Rather than trying to fix that I would aim to create an environment where they could succeed. Energy prices will help.

But first I would start with an industry which historically Britain has been good at - financial services.

The London Stock Exchange is a shadow of it's former self. It was once bigger than the New York and French stock markets combined.  Now it struggles to be bigger than the French stock market. 

One thing I would do to help is remove stamp duty on share purchases.  Hardly any countries in the world tax you to buy shares whereas Britain does for it's best companies.  We are seeing companies decide to delist from the UK and relocate elsewhere in the world.  Or they simply dont even bother listing in the UK and become foreign companies eg ARM. This doesnt help the UK economy.

Equally it is a deterrent for UK investors buying UK companies.  Instead they buy other markets like the USA.  This discourages investment in UK business.

Share stamp duty raises £3 Billion in tax.  However various estimates suggest removing it would increase the value to the economy of around £250 Billion ! 

So where would I achieve £3 Billion in tax savings?  That's pretty easy I would remove legal aid for asylum seekers.  In 2024 the UK government spend £2.4 Billion in legal aid to asylum seekers. This money enables lawyers to fight and resist deportation claims increasing the cost of illegal immigration. The paralysis the UK population is observing is pretty much funded by the government.  

With boat crossings costing £4k, clearly the illegal migrants had money so shouldnt be getting legal aid.  If charities and pro bono lawyers want to fill the gap that's up-to-them.

The size of government has simply got too big. I would start with sacking the 700,000 additional public sector workers we have acquired since COVID.  Assuming these people are on minimum wage, that's a wage package bill of £22 Billion.  The reality is their package is probably far more generous than minimum wage. What are the extra 95,000 public sector employees hired since Labour came to power doing? We don't know and I suspect Labour hasnt got a clue either.

Final salary pension for public sector workers.  I would close to new entrants all public sector final salary pension schemes.  I would make it law that public sector pension liabilities are ring fenced to stop future governments encouraging the Ponzi scheme.  Currently the UK economy has a huge unfunded black hole of £2.7 TRILLION in public sector final salary liabilities.  The problem is that firstly employees dont understand the value or cost of this benefit and secondly the government doesnt ring fence or invest pension contributions - they simply fund the liability out of the current account !  It's a MASSIVE Ponzi scheme !

I would also change the structure of how contributions are treated. For example take Doctors. With the NHS scheme, Doctors get a very generous EMPLOYER pension contribution of 23.7% compared to the majority of private sector who only get 3% EMPLOYER contribution.  I would allow NHS staff who want to, to increase their take home page by reducing their employer pension contribution in return for a reduced pension contribution. This would be flexible so they can change this as their circumstances change.  This firstly highlights to NHS staff how generous their overall package is and secondly gives them the option of more income when they need it. 

I would be looking at NHS staffing to reduce costs.  Currently NHS England alone employs 1.5 MILLION people.  This has ballooned by 200,000 since COVID yet waiting lists are getting longer. (Measurement drives behaviour. My wife is currently on a waiting list to even be on a waiting list - I guess that makes the numbers look better).  NHS England is the FIFTH biggest employer on the planet.  How come this small island has a bigger medical team than massively populated countries like China?

There are  147,300 doctors and 392,800 nursing staff so what are the other MILLION people who work for the NHS doing?  People are pretty predictable statistically.  10% of this MILLION will be doing a fantastic job.  80% will be doing an OK job and 10% will be doing a terrible job.  I would be looking to sack the worst performing 10%.  This will improve morale.  The 80% know who the poor performers are and will be demotivated by the fact that the poor performers get paid regardless of how poor a job they do.  Often these people will be getting things wrong and creating inefficiencies, rework etc. By sacking the worst 10%, it will improve performance, reduce costs and boost morale. 

By sacking these poor performing 10% it will save at least £3 BILLION in tax payers money.

Banks.  Currently Banks still have outstanding loans from the government from the financial crash. The government is ironically paying interest on this money when held on deposit.  Either banks need to repay this money or the Bank of England stops paying interest to the banks on money which they have lent the banks!

Currently government indirectly accounts for 51% of all jobs (the official number is 18%). if you factor in government funded projects like HS2 and contracted services to private companies eg refuse collection, it is 51% of all jobs.   I will be focused on reducing this number dramatically.  My end goal would be for the public sector to not exceed 25% of all jobs. This will liberate the economy.  Private sector workers will not have to carry another person with their work. Obviously this cant happen over night - I will aim for 5% reduction each year.  

When would I stop?  Well when government spending is at least 5% less than tax receipts.  Currently tax income is 35% of GDP yet government spending is 45% of GDP.  The credit card is being hit every year to fund the difference which is why we have ended up with a huge £2.6 TRILLION debt pile.  We need to start paying down this debt and to reduce the cost of borrowing.  The UK currently pays 5.7% interest on it's debts whilst France pays 3.5%.  Britain is considered a worse risk than France, Greece, Italy etc.....

There needs to be serious changes to the array of business taxes killing business.  I wrote this blog post on Why are so many pubs closing?    Business rates needs a fundamental review.  VAT needs a review. Alcohol duty needs a review. Corporation tax needs a review. Employer national insurance needs a review.

Similarly EMPLOYER national insurance needs a fundamental review.  Either it's to enable people to save for a State Pension or it's a tax.  Governments can't make up their mind so I will. 

State pension.  Firstly I would tackle yet another Government Ponzi scheme.  The state pension. When employees pay national insurance into the state pension it will be ringfenced money so the state pension ceases to be paid out of the current account.  Sure the state pension can lend these huge cash reserves to government through government gilts but it will stop the government dipping it's hand into the till when it feels a bit brassic. 

The previous government slashed EMPLOYEE national insurance contributions to 8%.  Why?  Purely a political move.  Ask yourself whether the cost of providing the state pension has fallen so they could afford to do that? Labour realised that it was a dick move but had talked themselves into a corner so increased EMPLOYER national insurance to compensate. However this wasnt a net neutral move.  The reduction by the conservatives meant take home pay packets were bigger and the labour increase meant business had to pick up the tab. Hence why we are seeing unemployment rising, inflation etc.

I'm in too minds what to do about the state pension.  The problem is previous governments have created this huge current account liability for current pensioners - there's no choice but to fund this out of current taxation. That means the workers of today have to pay for today's pensioners which means they can't do that and save for their own pension. It's a robbing Peter to pay Paul Ponzi scheme.  

I would like to scrap the state pension totally by making national insurance become contributions to a private pension so the money is out of the reach of greedy politicians. Great for today's workers but bad news for today's pensioners (since no-one will be paying for their pension).

The only solution I can see is some kind of transition scheme where over time the ratio changes.  That means today's workers contributions will be reduced so that their state pension is reduced when they come to take it but their private pension will be bigger.

There would need to be more controls on pension providers.  Most people don't understand pensions - they just expect it to work but unfortunately there are bad providers out there (the government being one of them).

In terms of how government works, I would introduce rules to introduce transparency in  lobbying and special interest groups to stop subverting politics.  I would require all meetings between government officials, civil servants and lobbyists to be video recorded with a transcript (using AI) and recordings to be made public.  All lobbying organisations & meetings will need to be on a public register and if a meeting takes place that is not recorded then the lobbyist will be personally liable for a significant fine say £1Million per breach. 

I can remember Teresa May stating that she was in discussions with the dubious charity Shelter in response to a question at PM Question time so I looked up the official register of meetings and this meeting didnt exist - in fact no meetings with Shelter existed yet it was clear lobbying is absolutely taking place. This is unacceptable and discipline needs to be established.

Wider cost cutting.  The government spends £5 Billion per year on food.  Some of this is mandatory eg feeding prisoners, school dinners, NHS but there's still some highly suspect spend.  Why is the government spending £1.5 Billion on food for Universities?  Why is the government spending £50M on central government catering? I know Starmer and his cronies like freebies but seriously £50M !!

Why is the army spending the equivalent of £18 per meal per soldier (£54/day) (I know some people in the armed forces and they tell me the food is pretty dire) so where is this money going and clearly some questions need to be asked whether  it is value for tax payers money? I don't have a problem with feeding our service personnel well and spending £18 per meal if they are getting good quality food (which they are not). I do have a problem with contractors seriously overcharging. 

Let's contrast this with the in-house prison service. They get a budget of £2.70 per day per prisoner. OK I dont expect prisoners to get lavish food however I am surprised we manage to feed prisoners on such a small budget.

The government spends £3.5 Billion on consultants. What do they do for this huge sum of money?

An even more startling number is the government spends £391 BILLION of tax payers money on Quangos. I would be looking to slash this number on a colossal scale ! Quangos apparently employ 500,000 staff !!! Seriously ????

Let's put that in context.  BP has a turnover (not profit) of £136 Billion and Shell has a turnover of £200 Billion. Both of these are global companies. So Quangos spent more than the combined turnover of 2 of the UK's largest companies.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has 41 Quangos alone !

You get the idea - I will be taking a hatchet to wasteful government spending.

I would make sure those in work are treated fairly - by that I mean those benefit claimants that get a better deal for being unemployed than they would if they worked.  I covered this in this post showing that you are better off not working than working - largely because benefits are not treated as income and therefore not taxed.  

The tax system is way too complicated.  The benefit system is also way too complicated.  When things are complicated they can be exploited.  I would be looking to simplify it  - that will take time as successive governments  have made it complicated.  The UK has the longest tax code in the world at 17,000+ pages.  

Hooray Britain is the best in the world at something !! Compare that to Hong Kong which is 276 pages!

I would be aiming to reduce this by 2,000 pages per year. Keep It Simple Stupid !