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Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 20m

Water is such a mess for two main reasons:

1) No competitive incentives built into the system

2) Ofwat in the 2010s started acting like the water boards used to – holding bills down below inflation! The result: water companies became overleveraged and essential investment got delayed.

Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 24m

Exactly - we see this in so many areas.

In energy, privatisation has (broadly speaking) been a success, in that we have a market that's delivered one of the most rapid energy transitions in the OECD.

(Bills are high, but that's mostly bc govt levied policy costs on bills rather than through taxes)

Will Cooling @willcooling.bsky.social · 32m

The biggest reason for privatisation is that the temptation with state owned utilities is for the state to say "no price increases/capital expenditure this year lads" and just keep kicking the can down the road so as to spare consumer pain or pocket the profits for other purposes

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Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 1h

Common Wealth and We Own It are certainly not the most ill-intentioned groups in the Labour ecosystem, but they might just be the most annoying

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Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 1h

Whereas if you increase one or all of the major broad-based taxes, the losses are diffuse (so no one feels like they've lost more than anyone else), and the gains can be concentrated (i.e. you spend the increased revenue on the people most likely to vote for you)

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Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 1h

I mean, this is just a prime example of why fiddling with minor taxes is rarely worth the political bother! The gains are diffuse, the losses are concentrated.

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Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 1h

There are always trade-offs but I'd rather give tenants that security, than allow landlords to evict people by the back door.

Sadly it's common for landlords to whack the rent up to get the tenant out, list at that price, then gradually discount to the level at which they can attract a new tenant.

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Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 2h

Labour and Tories are in different positions here IMO.

Tories have pivoted too far from their original base, but Labour arguably hasn't pivoted far enough.

Govt is behaving as if it thinks a substantial group of pensioners are Lab voters – which *was* the case in 2005, not so much in 2024 though!

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 2h

Perfectly put from @stephenkb.bsky.social and follows on from my piece about both the Tories and Labour negging the PMC groups who were their normal base before they went all in on retirees.

benansell.substack.com/p/british-po...

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Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 2h

Yes exactly, and that's what happens in France!

The aim of indexation controls is to smooth the cycle and provide security to long-term tenants. Now that the UK government has legislated to give greater security of tenure, it's the logical next step IMO.

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Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 2h

Then you have models like NYC, where some properties are rent-controlled and others aren't. But we already have a version of that in the UK: it's called social housing!

The real question is whether you extend rent control to parts of the private sector or restrict it to council/agency provision.

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Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 2h

The other end of the spectrum is the German model, which holds down rents below market rates, and while you wait for a rent-controlled property your only option is dodgy sublets.

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Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 2h

IMO the case for indexation-style rent controls (like they have in France) is very strong, as they don't interfere with market signals, but do stop rogue landlords from handing down huge above-market annual rent increases to tenants.

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Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 2h

It's very frustrating that UK discourse treats 'rent control' as one homogeneous thing, rather than an umbrella term for a range of really quite different policies

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Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 2h

And those of us in the UK who are practising Christians are, shall we say, not generally that receptive to right-wing populism

DanTechnik @dantechnik.bsky.social · 3h

We’ve all noticed the right now trying to brand us all as Christian. It sounds weird and sticks out like a sore thumb in the UK, because we just don’t really identify like that anymore. It’ll be interesting to see the knuckle draggers all claiming to be Christian and reciting the Apostles’ Creed.

Henry Mance @henrymance.ft.com · 1d

The right-wing campaign group that helped topple Roe v Wade in the US is now working to roll back abortion laws in the UK, with the help of Nigel Farage.

Its first step? Trying to create a debate around "free speech"
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/13/w...

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Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 20h

Yes, but that is outweighed IMO by the fact that Trump has made pissing off China more dangerous for the whole of Europe

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Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 20h

Just been to see the film I Swear.

Icl I sobbed through most of it. Such a powerful film, it it doesn't get a Bafta I'll be annoyed.

Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 23h

Idk, that may have been the Trans+ Solidarity Alliance?

Labour for Trans Rights were just doing the mornings to promote our event

Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 23h

If you spoke to a blonde-haired, early 20s, 5'8 guy, that would have been me! I wasn't there all the time though

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Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 23h

Conference for me was basically leafletting at 8.30, heading in at 9.30/10, collecting a paper CAC report, reading it and annotating it, heading to our stall to spend most of my day talking to MPs, councillors and members about trans rights, then back to the hall at the end of the day to vote

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Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 23h

Similarly at Conference this year, even though I was a delegate I spent very little time on the hall, because I could achieve so much more by being elsewhere

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Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 1d

And besides, combining the two systems would be an administrative nightmare that would use up a lot of political capital for minimal benefit. I can just imagine the headlines.

Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 1d

I guess where I disagree is that while it may not be politically useful within the Tory party, I think it's a different story within Labour. I'd even say that making elements of it more hypothecated would work to Labour's advantage.

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Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 1d

Ultimately, there is a good reason why almost all developed liberal democracies have separate income tax and social insurance systems.

Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 1d

The delusions can be quite politically useful to the left though, and getting rid of it would be an administrative and political nightmare.

There's also the issue that taxing non-pension investment income at the same rate at income from work would make the UK very uncompetitive within the OECD.

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Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 1d

And in the longer term, as Stephen hints at in his column, you probably need to make people pay more into their pensions and then retire later ‐ thereby reducing the extent to which pensioners are net recipients of government revenues

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Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 1d

I think the better option would probably be just to charge NI on pension income, and use that money to relieve local authorities of their social care obligations

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