Voters here treated rising borrowing costs less as a case for new revenue than as an indictment of the state’s appetite to spend. The decisiveness of the verdict reflected a settled instinct: before asking taxpayers for more, find what can be cut.
The No case was strongest when it was least theatrical. The floor’s most-respected argument offered the austere remedy, “A more radical thought would be to spend less”, while another warned that “Tax and spend is already completely reckless”. Across the side’s arguments, the prescription widened into cuts to welfare, waste, overseas aid, net zero and what several voters called an overgrown state.
The Yes side did not defend an indiscriminate raid on incomes. Its best argument said, “The govt cannot keep squeezing normal taxpayers dry to appease bond markets”, while proposing targeted taxes on wealth, loopholes and highly profitable businesses. But it was arguing for a route through the pressure; No voters were arguing that the pressure itself proved the route had already failed.
That left the two sides talking past each other on the state’s capacity to reform. A Yes reply accepted the case for “reining in Whitehall bloat / spending less” but feared cuts would hit frontline services, conceding: “I don't think there's an easy answer in all honesty.” The room’s wider argument was not simply tax versus no tax, but whether public spending can be made credible before the bill comes due.
The verdict was a demand for discipline first, and revenue later if at all.
41 Opinions
A more radical thought would be to spend less.
Tax and spend is already completely reckless. We are borrowing at war-time levels and cannot kick the debt can down the road for much longer. Unless spending is cut now we will face a sovereign debt crisis, or worse.
It's very much a yes BUT... The govt cannot keep squeezing normal taxpayers dry to appease bond markets. It can, however, squeeze unearned wealth, close corporate loopholes, and steady the books through targeted taxes, not necessarily aimed at the poorest because quite simply we are already living under the highest peacetime tax burden in modern history, and people have nothing left to give.
No. Something is wrong with the tax system if in the year 2026 - we are very incompetent with spending each others money. If you cannot be trusted with little, how can you be trusted with much(?!) Also - as citizens we complain about things we should govern ourselves and stay silent on really important things. There is a third group who just bray at everything without careful thought or analysis. We end up SPENDING more to solve nonsense while the foundation is crumbling.
The answer must lie in reducing waste and duplication in public spending, easy to say but difficult to achieve. Having worked in the public sector I am well aware that there is duplication and also creeping corporatism where the organisational demands start to take more and more time and effort rather than the core purpose of delivery to the public.
The Govt cannot continue to live beyond its means like this. The answer must be to spend less and to tax less. Our leaders need the discipline to look at runaway costs and do something about them rather than deciding that the long-suffering taxpayers need to pay the bill for the Government’s inadequacies
Spend less, cut the Blob, depart illegals. Simple.
You cannot tax your way to prosperity! The only way forward is to drastically cut the welfare bill and cut the size of the state.
Considering we've been rasing taxes for decades we end up in same loop, Tax rises strangle growth even further as people cut spending realising there's only more taxes on the way. Public spending has to be brought under control were only delaying the inevitable and making it even more painful when we do it.
Cut spending.!