General British politics discussion thread

For all its faults the UK property market seems a lot more functional than the Irish one. At least they are actually building things..

Interestingly enough one of the schools in my home-town actually has staff accommodation, but yes it is still a rare thing.

Rishi Sunak's downfall in the past few weeks has been pretty spectacular. First there was the disastrous round of interviews that he gave after his Spring statement and now there's the news that his own wife is a tax dodger (using a non-dom status for tax purposes). I'm not naïve - i know that almost all people with her sort of wealth do this sort of thing but her husband is the minister responsible for taxation - it's not a good look!

Mind you the bookies still have him as favourite to be the next party leader but that's probably more an indication of the lack of serious contenders within the cabinet. All in all, good news for Johnson really.

The whole lot should be turfed out based on their performance in the "Homes for Ukraine" programme. I'm being generous by calling it that, more like a 'get our names in the media but actually accomplish nothing.'

Laughable. 32000 Visa applications, 4700 approved. Ireland's housing more refugees from Ukraine and we're less than 1/10th the UK population.

Whats worst of all is how much some people in the UK btch and moan about their "massive refugee crisis" when all the numbers show it's tiny compared to the Mediterranean countries. At least with the Ukrainians people seem upset at the utterly poor job being done to play their part in the crisis.

A pathetically small amount. Listening to LBC this a.m., seems like if you bring in a Ukrainian relative who is a refugee, you're not able to claim the 350 pound allowance. Just more pettiness by the horror that is the Home Office in this government.

Local flavor: A friend (UK citizen who lives in Ireland) recently needed to renew his UK passport. Sent it in well in advance following the instructions from the website as he's done in the past. Days go by, tracking shows passport has arrived. But, nothing on the website. Calls them up. After a myriad of attempts to get ahold of someone living via the phone system, he's told that as his phone call originates from Ireland, there's nothing they can do wrt tracking his passport - they apparently have a process for that, which they would not start. He's first asked if had a relative in the UK who could originate the call(!), and if not, try again around 7p.m. right before they close, there might be someone available then that can help.

This is a British citizen born and raised in the UK that can't renew a passport nor have enquiries about it answered because of where he's physically located. Amazing. What a shower of clowns is the current UK Government.

Edit: I saw that article that states 25000 visas issued. I don't believe it - it's too precise a number for one thing, and why should we believe anything coming out of the Home Office? other stories talk about how complex the visa application process is (one described the web experience as 'Kafkaesque', another caller to LBC talked about how you'd need a command of English at a high level as the website was *English only*). Let alone web access for a prolonged period of time. Laughable. A refugee programme in name only

This isn't the Ukraine thread. His post doesn't have to just be about Ukraine.

Im gonna hazard a guess you wouldn't give a sht if it wasn't a Tories wife.

The only people to whom this is relevant are the daughters of billionaires, figuratively speaking.

She pays £30,000 a year, every year, to qualify for non-domiciled status, which means that she saves tax of at least this amount by being non-domiciled - otherwise it would be cheaper just to be taxed as if domiciled in the UK.

So, this women has income in India that is taxed in India and that, if taxed in the UK as well, would qualify for double taxation relief under the UK-India Double Taxation Agreement. So the £30,000 doesn't mean she has Indian income which would attract UK tax of £30,000; it means she has Indian income which, after a full credit is given for Indian tax paid at the full rate, would still attract UK tax of £30,000. You'd need to research Indian and UK tax rates and do the sums, but that is a serious amount of income.

In other words, this is a UK tax break that is available only to the seriously wealthy. If you're just Joe Blow, an Indian citizen who resides in the UK but had income in India from, say, a share in the family farm, or letting out the house you inherited from your parents, you don't get the benefits of this tax break. Unless it's going to save you more than £30,000 in UK tax, you don't get this.

Fine. She is super-wealthy, so naturally she avails of a tax break for the super wealthy. But this creates a number of political problems for her husband, the first of which is that all this calls attention to the fact that he presides over a tax system that offers special tax breaks to the super wealthy, who simply folk like you and me might think are the people least in need of special tax breaks. The second problem is that she's his wife; he presides over a tax system that offers tax breaks to people who don't appear to need them but who include his wife. And the third problem is that, the statement she has put out raises suspicions that, on a correct view of the matter, she's not entitled to the tax break. (There's a bit more to qualifying than being fabulously wealthy and paying a fee of £30,000.) And, if it turns out that, indeed, she's not entitled to it, questions then arise as to how she got it.

@Fasano

The last thing the Conservatives need is yet another us-and-the-rest. Think Zac Goldsmith eventually gave up his non-dom status because even he could see it would not go down well.