Kwarteng says “you cannot tax your way to prosperity” No doubt tax policy important for growth but it’s not the only way of looking at it. Look at Sweden (highly taxed) compared to a swathe of emerging economies with much lower tax. Growth is complicated.

HMT document on lost revenue to Exchequer in 2026-27 NI change: £15bn Dividend tax: £1pm Income tax: £5bn next year to +£45m in 2026 Abolition of 45% rate: £2nd Stamp duty: £1.6bn Tax free shopping: £2nd Corp tax: £18bn

One of the other consequences of not having a proper budget red book is not having a distributional analysis.

Scrapping the 45% rate on incomes over £150,000 will cost exchequer £2bn a year according to Treasury’s own estimate. The politics of how this shapes up is obvious. It is…courageous.

Reminder, we’re supposed to have a *full* budget in a few months.