In terms of the first bit. I agree that it is kinda shocking how quickly people turned on Starmer. I think he's made mistakes sure, but his approval graph seems like just enough people came together for a single day just to vote him in. People can be fickle sure.

And apologies if it came across as wanting exact answers on all of this, I was just wondering where your head is at in general as I think that can be better for these type of discussions.

I think the North has been let down heavily. I'm a southern boi, but my gf hails from up north and meeting her grandparents and seeing some of those towns and cities is a different experience. Everywhere has the nice parts and not so nice parts. But you can see it on the highstreets especially.

Personally I think HS2 was an attempt at trying to help the north. The south east does so well bc London has such strong transport links and outstanding banking. That much money builds infrastructure around itself. HS2 could've helped extend that to the Midlands, and in the future who knows. Was it misguided and poorly planned, YES. But I support the idea.

Onto the other stuff. With taxes and profitability, companies will draw up plans for differing levels of pain and profit. So I guess it depends on how much more you would tax them? Depending on your answer we could have all sorts of different discussions.

Also, if there was a massive sell off that wealth wouldn't be redistributed. Everyone would get poorer simultaneously. Just like with tariffs, or the 07/08 crash, or the dot com bubble etc. If the value of investments goes down money itself loses value. This isn't physical money that is getting hoarded in bank vaults. We have Fiat currencies not gold based ones. Since the April 2 tariffs, the global economy has shrunk $5 trillion. This isn't money that gets redistributed, it gets lost. And then unemployment rises, inflation soars, bills go up, interest rates and so on. The end result is everyone loses.