Kemi Badenoch has hailed a flat rate of tax as a “very attractive” idea as she took a series of swipes at Chancellor Rachel Reeves last night.
Speaking to business owners and farmers at a summit specifically set up to oppose Reeves’s family farm tax – which Badenoch has previously labelled “cruel” – the Leader of the Opposition pushed to “lighten the burden” of taxation, but only after “a lot of work”.
Flat tax is “very attractive”, the Tory leader said, “but if we’re going to get to that sort of scenario, there’s a lot of work we will need to do first hand”.
She continued: “At the moment, we are a welfare state with a little bit of an economy attached to it. We’ve got to turn that around. We cannot afford flat taxes where we are now.”
On the farm tax, Badenoch said: “I can tell you we will reverse this damaging tax grab at the earliest opportunity. It is absolutely essential that we go back to how things were.”
Speaking at the London Palladium, in which a Robin Hood pantomime was underway, she also joked that the Chancellor was just like the folk hero, “but she’s taking from both the rich and the poor”.
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Lowe tears into Labour’s ‘bureaucratic monster state’ as he labels business owners and farmers the ‘backbone of Britain’
Reform UK’s Rupert Lowe has hit out at Labour’s “bureaucratic monster state” in a fresh swipe at “overwhelming incompetence” in the public sector.
Writing on social media this morning, the Great Yarmouth MP issued a direct message to business owners and farmers – Kemi Badenoch’s audience at a summit last night.
He wrote: “Creating a business, building it up, making it a success – it is bloody hard work.
“There are no sick days, no paid holiday, no excuses. You are on call, 24/7/365. It’s down to you. Sink or swim.
“These are the people actually driving the economy, and they should be treated with far more respect. Small business owners, and farmers, are the backbone of Britain.
“It’s not just Labour, it was the same under the Tories. Record taxes, record incompetence – those taking the risks and generating the wealth are the ones treated with utter contempt by the establishment.
“I’ve built countless businesses, I understand. I genuinely do. Not all of my risks have paid off, that’s the nature of business! But we need to encourage people to try – that means making it worth the gamble. And it is a gamble!
“There needs to be a fundamental reset of the relationship between the productive economy, and the bureaucratic monster state. Who works for who?” Lowe said.
Unemployment stagnates since Labour’s election win, ‘stark’ ONS data says
‘Today’s figures are a stark reminder of the work that needs to be done,’ Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall said
PA
Britain’s unemployment rate has remained unchanged at 4.3 per cent in the three months leading in to October, the Office for National Statistics has said.
The figures come amid fears over a plunge in hiring and jobs following Rachel Reeves’s National Insurance hikes and ahead of her minimum wage rise next year,
“Today’s figures are a stark reminder of the work that needs to be done,” Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall said.
“To get Britain growing again, we need to get Britain working again – so people have good jobs which pay decent wages and offer the chance to progress.”
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