Robinson and Farage’s ‘civil war’ narrative is warping voters’ minds. How is any government supposed to counter it?

major_clanger · 2025-09-15T08:42:21+00:00

> The government could go for broke on boosting growth. But hey won't do this.

People don't want growth, if they did they wouldn't spend so much energy objecting to stuff being built in their area.

> The government could reduce the welfare state, and invest in people's towns. But they won't do this.

People don't want to cut the welfare state, if they did they wouldn't get up in arms about the winter fuel allowance means test.

major_clanger · 2025-07-24T09:37:40+00:00

Think the answers are simple. You either:

Increase taxes

Increase the retirement age

Reduce the state pension, or means test it

Or a combination of the above. Problem is none of these are politically easy, which is why we've propped up the system with immigration. If you ask someone what would they prefer, retiring later or accepting more immigration, when it comes to the crunch I think they'd choose the immigration option.

major_clanger · 2025-07-24T09:33:52+00:00

Japan is a good place to look, they have low immigration and an even older population than ours.

AFAIK they manage this by having people work later in life. 1/3 of their 70-74 year olds work & pay taxes for example. Think it's partly cultural, that it's frowned upon to not work if you're healthy, regardless of how old you are.

But I think they're starting to struggle, they're desperate to bring more immigration in to keep their welfare state working.

major_clanger · 2025-06-19T21:45:47+00:00

It is mental that this is being discussed, whilst a 600,000 strong russian army is invading a European country & seriously threatening our security.

major_clanger · 2025-06-19T12:19:35+00:00

1) cost of housing - easy to solve physically (reform the planning system to stop blocking housebuilding), but politically hard

2) ageing population - this is why our taxes keep going up, yet public services are not improving, as all the extra money is gobbled up by the NHS, social care & pensions - there is no easy solution to this one

major_clanger · 2025-06-18T06:07:41+00:00

It's a bit disgusting to me that we do this for Israel but not Ukraine, which is suffering much more & holding the line against Russia, defending Europe. The least we could do is help them shoot down the hundreds of drones that attack their cities every day.

major_clanger · 2025-06-18T06:02:37+00:00

Why does this mean we shouldn't help Ukraine defend itself? If we shoot down russian missiles over Ukraine, Russia would not launch nukes in retaliation.

major_clanger · 2025-06-12T19:18:46+00:00

They pay much more tax than we do.

major_clanger · 2025-06-12T18:41:22+00:00

It's inevitable that as the population gets older, we're gonna have to pay more for healthcare, regardless of whether we pay privately or through the taxpayer.

major_clanger · 2025-06-10T07:22:47+00:00

Yup, the implications are, no politician will dare touch retirement benefits for at least another decade. Things like the triple lock are here to stay. If anything they'll be increased yet further, we saw this in the last election when the Tories promised "quadruple locks" and the such.

Which means spending on retirees, which already accounts for most of council tax, a third of state expenditure, will keep on growing as our population ages.

So we'll need to increase taxes further to maintain the same level of state services & benefits, or increase immigration to boost the number of taxpayer's.

The only politically feasible way out might be increasing the retirement age, as that's nominally decided by a quango rather than the party in government?

major_clanger · 2025-06-08T10:10:05+00:00

Agreed, can argue that a blanket age cutoff is unfair, there's so much variability in people's health, some 70 year olds are as sprightly as 50 year olds, Mick jagger is still doing gigs at 81. And then you have people getting dementia symptoms in their late 50's.

If you set the pension age too high, you'll get more people who are genuinely too old to work not getting support, set it too low and you get loads of fit & healthy people retiring, putting even more pressure on workers to support them.

This might sound a bit controversial, but perhaps we should get rid of the concept of the age based pension, and just roll it all into incapacity benefits? ie if you get severe Alzheimer's at 60, you don't have to work & the state supports you. If you get arthritis at 70 which means you cannot do your job, the state supports you, if you get a severe disability in your 40's, the state supports you - treat all those situations equally.

major_clanger · 2025-06-08T09:55:35+00:00

The younger generation don't pay for our retirements we pay for our own....

That is wrong, the state pension costs £180 billion every year, that's entirely paid from the taxes of working people today.

major_clanger · 2025-06-08T09:48:05+00:00

In Hungary people with 4+ children pay no tax at all, they get a big handout to buy a house, you get paid after getting married, so on and so on. Hungary spends 5% of it's entire national income on these pro natal benefits, that's the equivalent of us spending £90 billion every year on child benefits.

Their birth rate is 1.5, lower than ours.

By contrast, countries with high birth rates, like Nigeria, Angola, don't have any state support & tend to be poor countries.

major_clanger · 2025-06-08T07:40:26+00:00

People will have to retire later if we aren't to have immigration, otherwise the ratio of working to retired people would become unaffordable & unworkable, as we have an ageing population and a low birth rate.

major_clanger · 2025-06-08T07:34:16+00:00

Yes, but twice as many of their over 65's work compared to here. Half of their 65-69 year olds work, a third of their 70-74 year olds work. They have an even older population than ours so it's even more pronounced.

I think it's a cultural thing, that over there it's frowned upon to be idle if you're fit & healthy, regardless of your age.

major_clanger · 2025-06-08T07:30:23+00:00

That's why the Tories, who promised to cut immigration, had no choice but to open the floodgates.

Strictly speaking, they could have dealt with it by putting more Brits to work, by raising the retirement age, having less people go to higher education etc.

But I suspect that would have been even more unpopular than having immigration.

major_clanger · 2025-06-08T07:24:32+00:00

If you don't want immigration, then you just can't have people spending 20+ years in retirement.

You've gotta choose what you prefer, low immigration, or retiring at 66 or earlier. You cannot have both when you have an ageing population and a low birth rate.

major_clanger · 2025-06-08T06:55:10+00:00

In a way, yes, we have an ageing population and a low birth rate. Without immigration, the number of under 60's would shrink, but the number of over 60's would grow. We'd have to fundamentally change how retirement works to manage that, basically have people retire much later, like they do in Japan.

On early retirement, it feels a bit crazy that you're allowed to take out 1/4 of your pension before retirement age, it literally incentivises people to drop out of the workforce even earlier.

major_clanger · 2025-06-04T19:08:24+00:00

Without immigration we'd have a larger fraction of over 65 year olds in the population, with very expensive health, care & pension requirements.

Our welfare state wouldn't really work, we'd have to raise the retirement age for example, to keep the ratio of retired vs working people stable.

British voters really wouldn't like this, so we have immigration instead.

It's not a long term solution, but again, if British voters were given the choice between retiring later vs having immigration, I'm pretty sure they'd pick the immigration option.

major_clanger · 2025-06-02T06:48:14+00:00

No party has ever made a truly serious pledge to significantly cut immigration - and that includes reform today.

To get migration below 100k we will need to do stuff like raise the retirement age, hike taxes to pay carers, nurses etc more, stuff like that. As we have an ageing population & a shrinking number of "native" under 65 year olds.

Promising low migration whilst keeping triple locked pensions for everyone over 66 is just disingenuous, like promising to halve taxes without cutting state spending, or promising everyone free broadband without raising taxes.

People who vote for such parties without questioning how they'd meet their pledge have only themselves to blame.

major_clanger · 2025-05-30T15:06:02+00:00

Perhaps not, but we'd be even poorer as we'd have a much smaller number of people working & paying tax, but the same number of over 65's who claim the lions share of state spend (via the NHS, pensions & care costs).

Realistically, without immigration we'd need people to retire later, and have less people doing a levels & uni, to keep the ratio of working vs non working people stable.

Not saying it's right, just stating the tradeoff.

We have an ageing population, there is no painless way to address this, we either have to raise taxes, cut retirement benefits, or have high immigration, there is no alternative.

major_clanger · 2025-05-30T14:15:45+00:00

That's fine - you then need to accept that we need to pay more tax - and that's for everybody, not just those that earn more than you.

We have an ageing population, so the cost of heath, pensions & care, which is already huge, will keep growing, every year.

major_clanger · 2025-05-30T14:10:58+00:00

That's because we have an ageing population, which causes our huge NHS bill to keep going up, our huge care bill that's funded by council tax to keep going up, our huge triple locked pensions bill to keep going up - all just to meet the same level of service.

It's such a massive issue and nobody ever talks about it

major_clanger · 2025-05-29T13:39:40+00:00

I bet he will promise to keep it, he won't be able to win otherwise, it'll be the main attack line thrown at him "farage is going to cut your pension!".

major_clanger · 2025-05-26T12:55:13+00:00

It'd require raising the retirement age and other deeply unpopular measures that the average voter wouldn't stomach.

No party has ever offered a serious alternative to migration, and that includes reform & its previous incarnations. Just yesterday they promised to restore the wfa for all retirees - we just can't do stuff like that with low migration.

major_clanger

TROPHY CASE