The Talking-up Scotland fund raiser primarily, finishing in 9 days, to enable the recruitment of some research assistance, in order to take pressure off me [74 in June and tiring] and hopefully to further improve the blog, has made a good start. To contribute, only if you can (!) go to: Talking-up Scotland - a Politics crowdfunding project in Ayr by Professor John Robertson

Professor John Robertson OBA

In June 2024, the IFS had a look at the Reform UK manifesto. Even this rightist think tank was less than impressed and concluded:

Even with the extremely optimistic assumptions about how much economic growth would increase, the sums in this manifesto do not add up. Whilst Reform’s manifesto gives a clear sense of priority, a government could only implement parts of this package, or would need to find other ways to help pay for it, which would mean losers not specified.

The IFS made these key points:

A reduction in tax of £90 billion a year, while sizeable, would still see tax revenues higher as a share of the economy than in 2019–20. But in reality the package of tax cuts proposed would, if and when fully implemented, cost tens of billions of pounds a year more than that. For example, Reform UK plans to cut the rate of corporation tax from 25% to 20% immediately, and then to 15% in year 3 of the parliament. The manifesto costing of £18 billion a year over the course of the next parliament for all its business tax cuts is less than half of what official estimates suggest the long-run cost of just this cut in the corporation tax rate to 15% would be.

Of the proposed spending increases, the largest is for the NHS (£17 billion per year). However, this would not be nearly enough to meet Reform’s incredibly ambitious commitment to eliminate waiting lists within two years. Eliminating the waiting list entirely is a feat that has not been achieved in the history of the NHS and seems near impossible within two years. The cost-saving measures would save less than set out. https://ifs.org.uk/articles/reform-uk-manifesto-reaction

On their energy proposals, LBC was even less charitable:

Reform’s solution to the energy crisis and rising bills is – and I’m not kidding – to: add taxes to renewable energy companies and in turn bill payers; add taxes to farmers who put up solar farms; ban battery energy storage systems which help make bills more affordable; and – just for good measure – force new grid infrastructure to be buried underground, where bill-payers will have to pay for the up to tenfold increase in cost.

If you want to make energy bills more affordable, you cannot add taxes to existing energy. All retrospective taxes on renewable energy would do is chill investment in future projects at a time when we need more domestic energy, leading to further shortages and in turn higher bills.

Energy bills are too high and must come down. But, Reform’s first stab at policy instead of just rhetoric has failed at the first hurdle. Whatever comes next, this will almost certainly cast a long shadow on their policy credibility. https://www.lbc.co.uk/opinion/views/reform-uk-finally-proposed-a-policyand-its-an-economic-disaster/

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The Oliver Brown Award for advancing the cause of Scotland’s self respect, previously awarded to Dr Philippa Whitford, Alex Salmond and Sean Connery: https://scotsindependent.scot/?page_id=116

About Oliver Brown, the first Scottish National Party candidate to save his deposit in a Parliamentary election: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Brow