This post is about UK politics.

Today, 10th September 2024 might well go down as the new Labour government’s first own goal of their time in government. They’ve been in power since 5th July and if you hadn’t been aware of the election result, you might not have noticed that the Conservatives were no longer in power.

Labour and Conservatives seem interchangeable and indistinguishable and this makes me wonder who I’ll vote for in 2029. I know it won’t be Labour or Conservative and I hope The Greens continue their quietly impressive start to the new government’s reign.

Today, MPs voted to remove the Winter Fuel Allowance from all but the poorest pensioners, with a significant number of Labour MPs abstaining. This is all part of Keir Starmer’s and Rachel Reeves’s attempts to fill the 22 billion pound blackhole left by the previous government.

This removal of the Winter Fuel allowance will save around 1.4 billion pounds, leaving another 20.6 billion pounds to be found from other cuts. Austerity anyone?

Now, the way son-of-a-toolmaker Starmer and I’ve-wanted-to-be-chancellor-since-I-was-14 Reeves talk, you’d think there were no other options. Well, there are other options, however Starmer and Reeves don’t want to upset rich people or big businesses and show they’re actually a proper Labour party that has working people’s interests at heart.

These options include: raising the rate of capital gains tax to make it the same as income tax, putting VAT on financial services, having the Bank of England offer the government an overdraft facility, offer a bond for 22 billion pounds i.e Quantitative Easing, stop the current Quantitative Tightening, drop interest rates, and introduce a tax on wealth (i.e. don’t raise income tax).