Fast Forward UK

@trussliz Dear Ms Truss. I invited you to lead #FastForwardUK a centre right political movement which advocates a low tax, high growth economy. Can you really look at this chart and do nothing? This Labour govt is taking the UK ever closer to the iceberg. Please lead!

@PippaCrerar Trump will combust!

BREAKING: The construction of vast new Chinese embassy complex in east London has been approved, despite concerns about security and impact on political exiles in capital. The decision brings to an end - for now at least - saga that has been running since 2018 over site at Royal Mint Court near Tower Bridge. But residents of Royal Mint Court plan to mount legal challenge to decision within weeks, amid concerns they could be forced out of homes, potentially delaying project by months or years.

@SuzanneEvans1 @RobertJenrick Codswallop.

“This is Pearl Harbour for the Tories”. Two senior Conservative figures I’ve spoken to say it’s all over, that the party is finished, because of @RobertJenrick’s defection.

@AngryBritishMum @LBC You missed out the bullying of callers who mildly disagree. one of the great radio narcissists.

The manner in which James O'Brien is currently dealing with the Breaking News - Kemi Badenoch sacking Robert Jenrick... is an embarrassment to @LBC 10am-1pm really is the place in UK broadcasting to get the most unserious, childish, petty, take on politics #OBINGO

@SteveBakerFRSA @KemiBadenoch @RobertJenrick It's terrible when MPs are disloyal to their leader Steve.

💯 Absolutely right from @KemiBadenoch - this is intolerable from @RobertJenrick 🙄Robert of course broke the cardinal rule of planning political operations: don’t get caught!

@emilyhewertson You can read can't you?

@benrileysmith Convenient. Knighthood in the post.

Breaking: The departing chairman Richard Hughes will now **not** be appearing at the Treasury Committee tomorrow morning. It means no chance for him to be grilled on whether Reeves misled the public on the scale of financial pressures before the Budget.

@echetus On a salary of £135000 your take home pay is £83,336 - £6944 pm.

For a take home pay of £6,120 a month, you would need a salary of £135,000

@elonmusk 693000 people left / escaped the 'prison island' in the 12 months between June 2024/ June 25.

The current regime is turning Britain into a prison island

@MartinSLewis @RachelReevesMP @itvMLshow Surely the precedent is that State Pension is not taxable income? @DanNeidle

NEWS: The Chancellor @RachelReevesMP confirmed to me tonight in @itvMLshow that those whose only income is the State Pension will NOT PAY INCOME TAX - not just they won't do self assessment, there will be no tax to pay during this parliament. This is important as the pension triple lock means the State Pension must rise by at least 2.5% each year. So from 2027 someone whose only income is the full new state pension will earn more than the personal allowance (the amount earnable each year before you pay tax) - so tax would be due. Here is a transcript. ML: Rebecca, says ‘does my 85 year old father, who's living with dementia now have to complete a tax return as his state pension will take him over the personal allowance?’ RR: So if you just have a state pension and you don't have any other pension, we are not going to make you fill in a tax return. ML: Of any type or? RR: Yes. And so I make that commitment for that, for this Parliament. You're right. 2027 looks like the time that it will, cross over. We are working on a solution, as we speak, to ensure that we're not going after tiny amounts of money. ML: but people will have to pay the tax. They just won't have to do a return or will they not have to pay the tax? RR: in this Parliament they won't have to pay the tax. You know, further out about to make any commitments, on that. But we're looking at a simple workaround at the moment. ML: Okay. So I hadn't actually got that from budget. So that's really good to have clarity that they won't be paying the tax. This is far more than was said in the budget speech which was just about not doing an assessment. I went on to ask about edge cases "those who have £50/yr of income" and she said she couldn't make the same promise in those cases, it was only for people with no other income.

@CraigLiddell7 Pledge to get rid of marginal tax rates. They're the biggest handbrake on the UK economy.

The Conservative Party is the Party of the Economy. Only we can be trusted to get the public finances back on track and get Britain working again!! 🇬🇧🇬🇧

@krishk @BBCNews That's £65 accounted for. What about the other £35?

Ever wondered where your tax money actually goes? 💷 @BBCNews broke it down by imagining we each handed the Government £100. Here’s how that £100 was spent in 2023–24: £22 → NHS £6 → Defence £10 → Education £10 → Debt interest £11.40 → State pensions £4.15 → Working-age welfare (PIP, Universal Credit, health support) £0.50 → Asylum system £0.70 → Overseas aid What strikes me most is this: immigration dominates headlines and public debate, consistently ranking as one of the nation’s top concerns — yet the asylum system accounts for just 0.5% of public spending. A reminder that sometimes the loudest issues aren’t the largest ones. #Budget2026

@DanielJHannan pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC83… UK locked down too late, Sweden didn't lock down enough. Both countries did worse in mortality and economic terms in comparison to Denmark which went much earlier in terms of the extent Covid was already in the population and came out of lockdown earlier.

Alternative reading. We had a plan, worked out in cooler-headed times, which was junked following a hysterical media campaign led by Piers Morgan. Sweden, which stuck to Britain's original plan, emerged with a lower excess death rate - to say nothing of a healthy economy.

@DPJHodges The comparisons with Sweden are misplaced. The UK and Sweden both did badly. Look what Denmark did. That should be the real comparison.

I honestly think there should be a national public inquiry into the Covid inquiry. Utter farce from day one.

@RestoreBritain_ Which form of English should they learn please?

If you can’t speak English, you shouldn’t be living in England. Foreign nationals who refuse to learn our language should be deported.

@DPJHodges Did she have control ever?

I've rarely seen a set of Budget headlines as disastrous as this morning's newspapers. And I can't believe anyone's witnessed such a car-crash almost two weeks before the Budget has even been delivered. Rachel Reeves has completely lost control. dailymail.co.uk/debate/article…

@robprogressive I'm sick of seeing this rubbish. £100,000 - tax = £27,432, NI = £4,011. Where do you get £45K from? moneysavingexpert.com/tax-calculator/

@EdConwaySky Reeves even.

@EdConwaySky Reeve doesn't help herself but the constant, daily, hourly, updates from 'media' surely doesn't help. Why can't you all wait until the actual budget?

I've been reporting on UK Budgets for decades. So perhaps worth underlining something: this degree of market volatility ahead of a Budget is NOT normal. Underlines the extent to which UK has been in the bond vigilantes' crosshairs, since the mini Budget. This could get v bumpy

@Peston Surely the price of govt debt rose? Or have I misunderstood the meaning of +2.41% ?

The UK’s creditors have reacted super negatively to the FT’s CORRECT report that the chancellor has changed her mind and will no longer put up the basic rate of income tax by 2p or even by a penny. The pound has fallen and the price of UK government debt, gilts, has dropped, so the implicit interest rate paid by the government has risen, quite sharply - by almost nine basis points for 30-year debt and almost seven for 10-year bonds. Markets do not like chancellors who engage in u-turns and are unpredictable, even when the u-turns are conducted in private and are then leaked. What on earth is going on? Well, my sources insist that Rachel Reeves is NOT going to take greater risks with the public finances, which is what investors quite understandably fear is happening. I am being assured that whatever the eventual mix of tax rises in the budget, the Chancellor will increase “headroom” - the cushion - against future fiscal shocks from the current paltry £9bn to £15bn or more. “That will happen” said a source. What’s more I expect the chancellor or prime minister or both to make it clear later today that they will not weaken their commitment to the fiscal rules and increasing headroom - because if they don’t provide that reassurance they could well find themselves in Truss-style market meltdown territory. What a mess! How has this happened? I am told that earlier this week the Treasury received improved data on current and expected future wage growth, and that this has therefore increased forecasts of future tax revenues. This of course means that the projected margin by which the chancellor will fail to meet her fiscal targets - the hole in the budget - has fallen, and presumably to less than the previously projected £30bn hole. Which means the pressure on Reeves to raise income tax rates - and therefore breach the party’s election manifesto - is not what it was even last weekend (1p on the the basic rate raises circa £8bn, and a penny on all the rates raises circa £10bn in toto). To put this another way, with wages and personal incomes seemingly rising faster than she expected, fiscal drag from the frozen income tax thresholds would raise more than she expected. So here is the new Treasury tax masterplan: extend the freeze on income tax thresholds for another two years; and also look at reducing the threshold at which the 40p and 45p tax bands kick in, to put the increased burden on those with higher (though not very high) incomes. To be clear, Starmer and Reeves risk alienating huge numbers of Labour supporters who don’t feel rich if they reduce and freeze the thresholds in that way. But maybe that humiliation feels better for them than being the first government to put up the basic rate since 1975. Either way, there are still 11 days to the budget, which is plenty of time for this and several other tax masterplans to be put in the bin.

@HukAleksandra Tax on £100,000 = £27,432 + £4011 Nat Ins (£30,764 in Scotland / £4,011 Nat Ins) moneysavingexpert.com/tax-calculator/

Me: I earn £100k HMRC: That’s nice, we’ll take £45k Me: I bought a car HMRC: VAT applied Me: I want to gift my kid £5k HMRC: Taxed Me: I made money from crypto HMRC: You mean we made money Me: I made £50 profit on Vinted HMRC: That’s income. Tax it Me: I bought a house HMRC: Stamp duty please Me: I want to retire HMRC: Pay tax on your pension