The services have certainly not got better in the last 5 years. This Government is fiscally illiterate and has hit the top of the Laffer curve and is now trying to go down the other side.
Overall the tax burden in the UK is middling for western democracies. It's actually on the low side for low earners - which is probably a problem because the distribution is such that the majority pay very little.
The other problem being cliff edges and complexities which distinctive chasing pay rises and working more for a lot of people.
Could you put the actual numbers in for that please, because to me that implies German tax rates of 120%? Is that across all forms of taxation, including local (the relevant one here!)
Median salary of a full time employee in the UK in 2023 (to match the German source): £34,963 [1]
Take home on that salary (after income tax and NI): £28,692 [2]
Effective tax rate on a median salary in the UK: ~18%
Median salary of a full time employee in Germany: €4,479 pm [3] or €53,748 per year
Take home: €34,281 [4]
Effective tax rate on a median salary in Germany: ~36%
Tax _rates_ are not that different, but the previous British governments really ramped up the tax-free allowance, which significantly reduces the effective tax rate.
[1]: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor...
[2]: https://www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/salary.php
[3]: https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Labour/Earnings/Earnings-E...
There’s time for some party to sort themselves out before the next election is due (Aug 2029).
Any party that does all of these will be guaranteed electoral wins for decades - I've seen the data back when I was a Tory. Problem is, these points are kryptonite to the very identity of either major party.
The EU customs union prevented the UK striking bilateral global free trade deals, and the legacy of EU over-regulation continues to curtail our innovation. The UK has a solid history of global trade and innovation, and it can acheive more if unshackled from the EU.
Austerity is absolutely necessary. If we keep giving the NHS above-inflation pay rises inline with what their staff demand, it would consume the entire annual excess wealth from the productive half of the economy in a matter of decades.
What we need are sensible and pragmatic policies like Reform's scaling back of net zero, for example. The cost of Ed Miliband's net zero measures are an estimated £4.5 trillion over the next 25 years, and a gross cost in excess of £7.6 trillion.
https://iea.org.uk/media/net-zero-could-cost-britain-billion...
That's more than our entire GDP. Just one example is the 20 year wind farm contracts that Miliband has set up, with a guaranteed energy cost that's nearly double the market rate for gas power (and then on top of that we need to pay for wind curtailment, grid upgrades and expensive backup power plants to cover low wind days).
https://x.com/ClaireCoutinho/status/2011335138987168173
We were promised that renewables would reduce energy bills. That was a total fiction, and the politicians are to blame.
Green energy could be a massive success story, and it could make our bills cheaper, but inept politicians from the Tories and Labour have focussed instead on vanity metrics.
On the NHS, of course, gut the only thing that's keeping the country sane. I can literally not keep count anymore of the number of skilled doctors and talent who have left the UK after years of practice because the pay was becoming untenable with current living needs. Remove the NHS and you might as well call yourself a client state of the US.
On renewables and net-zero, yes, what we need is more reliance on conventional fuels so that we can be ever more reliant on Russia and the Middle East and the US right? Meanwhile economies like China, India and even your brethren in Australia are racing to put in more renewables capacity because it is just so much more cheaper and efficient now. Those guys are forging real paths to energy independence, unlike you lot.
Renewables haven't been reducing your energy bills because you guys haven't been putting up anything of note. Wake me up when Hinckley Point C comes online.
You think the NHS is “keeping us sane”. Two of my family members have been close to death waiting for an ambulance that never arrived / waiting in a crowded emergency waiting room with internal bleeding for hours. I pay about £10K per year in tax to the NHS for a service that is inferior to the private care I receive for approx £1K a year. The whole system is a shambles and gets worse every year. It underpays and mistreats its staff. It is inefficient.
On your point about renewables, I never claimed we needed more reliance on fossil fuels. I think we should be building more nuclear plants. France is a shining example of how to generate electricity. And then, once we have affordable battery storage (in a few years) we will be able to expand wind/solar in a sensible fashion without our stupid politicians making our energy bills the highest in the developed world.
> Renewables haven't been reducing your energy bills because you guys haven't been putting up anything of note.
The UK is #1 in Europe for wind capacity and #2 globally for offshore wind (behind China). And we have the highest energy bills in the developed world
You jest.