What have the Labour Party cooked up on the menu of today as the special? No Stamp Duty for purchasers up to £300,000 and a restriction on foreign buyers for new developments.
Didn’t the Tory’s already organise this give away for Stamp Duty in the lower price ranges in the Autumn Statement …and did we not hear from the boffins that such a restriction is unworkable or am I asleep at the wheel?
Mr Miliband is silent on how this give away will be funded and yet he is proud to be interviewed on the Andrew Marr Show , to say that ‘the present Labour Party shouldn’t be confused with previous administrations that had a propensity to tax and spend’. Here is another Tax give away not 24 hours later.
The market up to £300,000 was doing very nicely during the course of last year (probably too well) before it received the Coalition Tax give away in the Autumn Statement that excited it further. If you exacerbate this by a further Tax give away you will have a ‘run away’ market which is fine for those already owning properties in this price range but further disenfranchises the first time buyers who are struggling to get on to the property ladder and as a result will be left moribund.
We all know that there is a major issue with new home development in the UK in that we are building a fraction of the new homes that we require to stabilise the markets.
In effect we build less than a third of the properties that we built in the 50s and what is the point by increasing the demand through this Tax stimulus for a finite supply?
Is it to help the property owners? I don’t think so. Is it to help the first time buyers? Definitely not. Who will it help? Mr. Miliband and Mr. Balls get into 10 and 11 Downing Street? So, seeing it for what it is this is an Election bribe that is crass and painfully transparent which not helping anyone bar the Socialist politicians.
Not content to have interfered in the markets already with the threat of Mansion Tax (which will be unworkable) the very latest offering is some sort of cobbled together plan to restrict the buyers of new developments to just local residents. Goodness knows how this will be implemented and policed but we shouldn’t become too transfixed on practicalities since need we be reminded that these Tax plans don’t have to work or be enforceable they are just designed to bribe the Electorate sufficiently to get Labour in power.
You would laugh if it were not so serious and if you are foolish enough to believe all this rhetoric and nonsense you will get what you deserve which is an incompetent administration ‘hell bent’ on grabbing the reins of power presumably to offer this country what they did last time – a broken economy.
I hope the Great British Public is not foolish enough to fall for this cynical ploy.
I can’t wait for tomorrows ‘specials’!