Britain’s original waste watchdog – from the TaxPayers' Alliance – 14.03.25
- Michael Julien
- Mar 14
- 3 min read
Politics has entered a new era. An 80+ seat Conservative majority swung to a 170+ seat Labour majority in less than five years. And this new government’s popularity has crashed at record pace.
There are lots of reasons why - continued sky-high levels of immigration, which the British public have never voted for; dangerous foreign policy blunders like giving away the Chagos Islands, and paying for the privilege; and a war on free speech that sees a silly social media post receive a harsher punishment than violent assault.
But the new government has also hiked taxes, set up new quangos at great expense to taxpayers and set out a whole raft of regulations that will make life near-impossible for many businesses; they told the public that energy bills would come down by £300, but have overseen further increases in obscene prices; and they’ve launched an assault on anyone who saves for a pension, owns an asset or wants to pass on a family business to their children.
Not bad for seven months’ work! We knew that the likely election victors didn’t have the stomach to do what’s needed to return Britain to growth and prosperity. It was quite clear that they didn’t want to address gargantuan levels of spending and waste. They made no secret about their aims to strengthen the powers of unaccountable arms of the state machine.
So we got to work straight away. Since July 2024, we have:
Secured 4,817 media hits
Launched a new weekly podcast, hosted by a professional broadcast journalist
Held 26 ground campaign events
Established the first national campaign to fully scrap inheritance tax
Released 36 research papers
As I mentioned at the top of the letter, politics has entered a new era - and that applies to how it's conducted, too. We know there has been a huge shift online, and that means increased exposure to the zeitgeist over the Atlantic. While there are downsides to that, one thing that has become clear is that everyday Brits are fed up with government waste, and are celebrating the so-called ‘DOGE’ movement in the US.
We at the TPA already knew that. For two decades, we’ve been doing the hard work of uncovering wasteful spending and hitting the town squares and high streets of our great country to build support for the campaign.
We’ll continue that work in the coming years - and build on it.
Very soon, we’ll be launching interactive public spending dashboards that allow taxpayers to see how their money is spent and whether they get good value for their money. Exposing waste is important - it always will be - but in order to build the case for big savings we have to address the big-ticket items of welfare, education, healthcare and public sector pensions.
Our new project will examine in more detail the public services that receive ever-more taxpayers’ money, but seem to be getting worse. And it will give us a unique place in the online debate - yes, we will continue to highlight individual cases of wasteful spending, but we will be able to properly address how to get better value for taxpayers’ hard-earned money, while engaging mass audiences online.
But we can only do that with your support. As ever, our campaign relies on the generosity of thousands of people like you who are fed up with politicians and bureaucrats not having the backbone to deal with spending - and instead, they come back to families and businesses and take more in taxes.
Thank you for your ongoing support
.John O'Connell, Chief Executive
TaxPayers' Alliance, 55 Tufton Street, London, SW1P 3QL
+ 44 (0)20 7340 6020
24-hour media line: 07795 084113 (No texts)
@jjpoconnell
If you'd like to support our work, please click here to donate
TaxPayers' Alliance is a trading name of The TaxPayers' Alliance Limited, a company incorporated in England & Wales under company registration no. 04873888 and whose registered office is at 55 Tufton Street, London SW1P 3QL.
In the pamphlet below, you’ll see some of the recent results that come from our hard-won reputation as Britain’s original waste watchdog.
Commenti