This week 932,693 visitors visited 978,313 times viewing 942,562 pages. The most read and shared stories in order of popularity were:
- Healey to Hike Minimum Wage
- Revealed: Government Document Admits Pay-Per-Mile Tax Coming for All Drivers
- No10 Tries to Roll Back Burnham’s Brexit Referendum Bluster
- Tory MP Calls Jenrick Neanderthal for Supporting Foreign Aid Cuts
- Telegraph’s Cost Cuts Set to Target Brexiteer Columnists
- Rayner Fails to Guarantee Leasehold Costs Will Come Down
- Even the Economist Comes to Terms With Scale of Sexual Offences by Migrants
You’re either in front of Guido, or you are behind…
The LibDems have scrapped their all-staff Christmas party this year, despite holding festive gatherings in both 2024 and 2025. LibDem MP Tom Gordon has emailed his colleagues to suggest 20 of them donate £100 each for a more modest bash. He says £2,000 would cover a room and some drinks tokens, and that the party “doesn’t need to be lavish”. When is a party not a party? When it’s hosted by the LibDems…
According to Politico, a LibDem spokesperson insisted the party “will be celebrating Christmas in style this year, like every other year”… but to avoid the cost of bringing staff into London, teams will have to host smaller, local gatherings instead. That wasn’t very Christmassy, Ed…
Hat-tip: Noah Keate
AI firms have told a government-commissioned study that high taxes and political instability are pushing British start-ups to scale in America. The Ipsos interviews with 30 AI businesses, published yesterday afternoon by DBIST, found founders expect to go to Silicon Valley:
“Businesses noted a cultural and financial expectation that ambitious firms must eventually relocate to the US, specifically Silicon Valley, to access deeper pools of capital, higher risk appetite, and faster execution speeds. Domestic policy headwinds were also cited as a deterrent to scaling, with businesses pointing to high taxation and political instability as factors that left the UK ‘middle of the pack’ compared to pro-business jurisdictions.”
Firms had a clear fix for the jobs tax, saying that “reforming employer taxes, such as National Insurance, would remove the financial disincentive to hire young UK talent.” Reeves’ National Insurance raid strikes again…
The government report says British firms cannot match American pay, with applied data scientists earning up to four times more in the US:
“This disparity was driving a brain drain, with UK founders moving to places like San Francisco to improve their odds of success.”
One micro business said:
“We’ve got some fantastic brains and fantastic people but at the end of the day… they are being snatched up by the international players. I think we still have got the potential, but it’s just unused potential at the moment.”
A large AI firm said:
“At the minute there’s a real premium attached to any AI person with any kind of experience behind them… And that is a real expensive cost. We just can’t bear that.”
A medium-sized AI firm said:
“The UK doesn’t have an AI strategy at a national level or a government level … There are no incentives to come and buy from a start-up … you could almost look at apprenticeship credits offset against tax.”
Firms also want “targeted tax incentives for individuals and pension funds investing in AI, similar to existing schemes for fixed assets.” This week John Healey cut capital gains tax for a narrow group of potential founders and simplified R&D claims and investment schemes, but provided nothing on pension fund incentives, buyer tax offsets, or graduate salary subsidies. Tweaking around the edges…
The company responsible for tagging prisoners released early missed its contractual targets every month for 15 months straight. Before they were miraculously met as Labour’s early release scheme kicked in…
Serco holds the one national contract for all field and monitoring services, worth up to £329.9 million and running to April 2030. It took over from Capita in May 2024. Handily, the MoJ paused its official tagging statistics from June 2024 to June 2025 during the handover. New figures show Serco missed most of its tagging targets every month for 15 months straight, hitting two out of 13 in some months…
The new figures show Serco met between two and five of its targets every month from August 2024 to October 2025. It only hit all 14 in March this year. For 18 months, the MoJ formally judged it against a reduced set of four targets. The MoJ now says Serco has hit all of its KPIs from March to August… curious…
Watchdogs also reportedly found this week that Serco counts just attempting to fit a tag as hitting its target, and that more than 5,000 offenders, including violent and sex offenders, domestic abusers and stalkers, walked free from prison untagged. Serco insists it is “consistently meeting all our contractual measures”. From six targets met to full marks in four months is something…
Incidentally, in 2013 Serco agreed to repay £68.5 million after overcharging for tagging offenders, some of whom turned out to be dead, back in prison, or abroad. In 2019 it was fined £19.2 million under a deferred prosecution deal. The MoJ hired it again anyway…
The MoJ also refuses to say how many breach alerts Serco sent to police and probation more than 24 or 53 hours after a tagging breach. It claims the data will be published in the future. Probably not before the next wave leaves the gates…
Labour is releasing 4,500 prisoners across 10 waves, with the final releases scheduled for June 2027, on the promise that all of them will be tagged. Justice Secretary Alex Norris said it was “too soon” to say how many of the roughly 700 prisoners released in the first wave had been fitted with monitoring devices. No wonder they thanked Burnham on their way out…
Krishnan Guru-Murthy asked John Healey: “Just finally, I mean Andy Burnham has been very clear he wants Britain back in the European Union in his lifetime. Do you?”
The Chancellor replied: “I’m older than Andy Burnham. I don’t expect to see that.”
