Labour Together

A lot of good sense in this, and what a chart…

When that bloke from the Inbetweeners goes viral complaining about council tax, you know something has gone badly wrong with the contract between councils and their residents. Labour Together's NEW PAPER is about how to fix it. 1/n youtube.com/shorts/Byz9cK6…

Read the full report here: labourtogether.uk/all-reports/bi…

Not fixing this is a gift to populists. Reform blames asylum seekers and diversity schemes. Greens pretend there's a magic money tree. Neither addresses the structural problem. Only by restoring the link between what people pay and what they get can Labour show the state works.

NEW REPORT: We're calling for a 'big bang' reform of local government finance. Nationalise the funding of adult social care and replace council tax and stamp duty with a proportional property tax 🧵

The Chancellor has just delivered her annual Mais lecture. Some initial thoughts from me... 😄 I'm very pleased to see... AI adoption 🤖: most of the economic benefits from AI are likely to come from widespread adoption, rather than home-grown AI models. Reeves wants the UK to be the fastest AI adopter in the G7. New AI legislation ✂️: Adoption is impossible without regulatory flexibility. We need to empower ministers to flex regulations to allow new and old sectors to adapt to AI. Oxcam 🎓: the Government will build transport & reservoirs, expand Luton & consult on a single DevCorp (as proposed by @BritishProgress & @LabourTogether) to deliver the project Fiscal devolution 🏙️: this is long overdue, and essential for regional growth and dynamism. We should use it to fund local transport infrastructure and reform business rates / land taxes. Reforming noncompetes 🧑‍💻 so tech workers can build new companies in Britain. 👀 I am cautiously optimistic about... Closer EU relationship 🇪🇺: no one thinks we currently have the best possible Brexit deal, but closer alignment could mean ceding flexibility over new technologies and energy policy. The devil is in the detail. New AI & Economics Institute 🏦: this could be amazing if modelled on something like @AISecurityInst. Finding someone exceptional to run it will be key. 🤔 I'd have liked to have seen... Something on housing 🏘️: The Planning & Infrastructure Act is done, but the most impactful planning reform doesn't require new legislation. We need to make it easier to build in urban centres, particularly London & the southeast, by reforming building safety and National Development Plans. Lots more to do here! More radical tax reform 💼 – but I guess we need to wait until the Budget for that.

Rising energy prices need more than 'wait and see.' Chief economist @1jamesHowat sets out the case for capping prices at pre-war levels, a temporary income tax rise, and capping welfare, pension and wage uplifts at 2% to break the inflationary cycle. labourtogether.uk/blog/cap-energ…

Statements from the chair of Labour Together's board, Baroness Sally Morgan, and CEO, Alison Phillips:

Thames Water should be allowed to go down the drain. Labour Together's new paper argues this will show voters that Labour is taking on a rigged system in which 'heads', investors win, 'tails', billpayers lose. It is also crucial for suring up investor confidence. 🧵

The area between Oxford and Cambridge could be the most productive 100 mile corridor in the world. But we have effectively banned building on it: protecting feudal-era landlords over the workers & jobs of the future. I'm pleased to see that the Government is pushing forward with Cambridge expansion, using a model very similar to what @KaneEmerson, @johnrmyers & @1jamesHowat proposed in a paper for @BritishProgress & @LabourTogether!

v novel & important @dsquareddigest analysis here to speed up infra projects, planning & reg reform is necessary but not sufficient, given costs & delays caused by: 👉lack of state/regulatory capacity prevents advice & consultation, so pushes burden onto developers 👉 developers outsource to lawyers & consultancies 👉 lawyers & consultancies monetise via a) speculative amplification of risk and b) being the only orgs with capacity to pre-emptively 'solve' it

The full paper - 'Build the rail! Save the snails!' - is available to read here: labourtogether.uk/all-reports/bu…

As @dsquareddigest puts it, there's something close to a free lunch here. The same people, doing the same work, for the same money, arranged to find solutions rather than manufacture problems. We can have the railways, the reservoirs, and the snails 🐌

NEW PAPER: Why does British infrastructure cost so much and take so long? Our new paper by @dsquareddigest argues the problem isn't just the fault of regulation, NIMBYs, JR, or risk-averse civil servants – it's an adversarial planning system that manufactures objections 🧵