David Craig, on July 22nd, 2024Monday-Tuesday blog
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog in which I warned:
“There’s been much media chatter about Labour increasing inheritance tax and/or applying inheritance tax to self-invested pension savings which can currently be passed on free of tax. The experts calculate this could raise a couple of billion pounds.”
“But there is a much more inviting target for a revenue-hungry Labour government which most media commentators and other assorted experts don’t seem to have noticed. Conveniently for Labour, we have pension fund assets of around £2.2 trillion. That’s about the same as our GDP. Now just imagine if Labour could somehow persuade/coerce pension funds to supposedly ‘invest’ (they never use the word ‘spend’) some of that money on Labour’s favourite schemes. For example, some of that money could be blown on utterly useless made-in-China wind turbines and equally useless made-in-China solar farms. Labour could then claim it was generating economic growth while also cutting the country’s CO2 emissions to become Ed Miliband’s dream of being ‘a clean energy superpower’ which would be the envy (laughing stock?) of the world, just like our collapsing NHS. A mere two percent of our pension money wasted (sorry, I meant ‘invested’ of course) by Labour on some crazy Net Zero money pit would give us the illusion of two percent economic growth. Or four percent of our pension savings squandered by Labour each year on nonsense like Great British Energy and employing ever more civil-servant, shiney-arse desk jockeys to do ever less work would give Britain chimerical almost world-beating four percent economic growth. What’s not to like about that if you’re an economically-challenged Labour politician dealing with even more economically-challenged mainstream-media journalists?”
Well, you’ll be pleased/dismayed to see that what I so recently predicted is going to happen. Here are some choice pieces from the latest speech by Rachel ‘the economist’ Reeves:
“That is why I can announce today our latest set of reforms to unlock growth, boost investment and deliver for pensioners.”
“Millions of people across Britain work hard and make sacrifices to save for their retirement, and there are hundreds of billions of pounds worth of assets in UK pension funds. However, not only is the current system not delivering the retirement savings it should be, but it is not doing what it should to support some of our great British businesses.“
“Conservative governments over the past 14 years have promised action to reform the pension market, but have failed to deliver. Where they have failed, I will act.“
“That is why I have instructed Treasury officials to launch an urgent review to make recommendations in the coming months for how we can reform the pensions market so it can deliver a better return for savers and ensure successful businesses can get the funding they need to grow, invest and spread prosperity across the UK. It is what other countries are doing and it is what we should be doing.“
“First, I want to see more pension schemes invest in fast-growing British firms. Even a one percentage point shift in the £800billion worth of assets that defined contribution schemes are estimated to manage by the end of the decade could release an extra £8billion of investment.“
“The same goes for the Local Government Pension Scheme in England and Wales. It is the seventh largest pension scheme in the world, worth £360billion. Its value comes from its 6.6million members, three-quarters of whom are women. This is money that could go towards building vital infrastructure, supporting small businesses and helping to put more back into our towns and cities.“
To briefly summarise. Rachel ‘the robber’ Reeves believes that she and her useless Treasury pen-pushers are in a better position to decide where our pension savings should be invested than pension fund managers. So, rather than our pension savings going into high-performing overseas stock markets, Rachel ‘Robin Hood’ Reeves will force pension companies to throw it into unerperforming British companies. You can expect billions to be squandered on Labour’s ‘Great British Energy’ to give us some of the world’s highest energy prices wrecking what little is left of our manufacturing industry and into Labour’s National Wealth Fund to be p*ssed away on the supposed ‘industries of the future’ like carbon capture, hydrogen power, ‘clean’ aviation fuel and other such politically-correct, eco-fanatical, climate-catastrophist nonsense.
Here’s link to Reeves’s speech:
I can’t understand why none of the ‘experts’ saw this was coming. But, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.
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That was depressing reading, but I like Robber Reeves and hope it sticks. This piece confirms the view – when people want the impossible only the biggest liars can make the promises to deliver it.
Here we have the state promising to reform private pensions through better investment when they run the state pension scheme through taxation and not investment.
All the parties were talking about growth, but none defined exactly what they mean by it. As you regularly point out the high energy cost are one of the reasons it will be difficult to achieve. I read recently a view that all government expenditure should be removed from the GDP calculation. It would be interesting to see the comparison.
I wonder whether Starmer will revise his opinion of Biden’s health. What an utter mess we are in. Are our leaders and potential leaders really the best on offer?
OFF TOPIC BUT SHOULD BE A WEBSITE ON ED MILLIBANDS PLAN TO DESTROY OUR ECONOMY WITH THE MOST EXPENSIVE ENERGY IN EUROPE