Labour propose confiscating 10% uk equities - pension planning response?

mat5664 wrote: »

make no mistake - the combination of this proposal, together with nationalising utilities and increasing business taxes will be a disaster for UK equities (and the economy in general). Any sign of a snap election, I am switching all my pension funds out of UK equities or anything instrument linked to the UK economy.

Too late. You'll see the announcement try to get on your stockbroker website, find it is down or at a crawl. By the time you get in, prices will already have crashed 20%. And the pound 5%.

Either do it now or dont bother.

I did it several years back for most of my investments. I do though, thinking about it, have some UK shares pretty much just for dividends,I think it might be time to sell those and replace with a foreign income fund.

Wonderful use of language from the conference today - "Much of the money to pay for the policy will come from the public purse". For new listeners, the nice warm phrase 'public purse' means taxation and/or borrowing from future generations (we have both a massive debt and a deficit, so there are no savings to be able to use). To get a better view when any politician (of any flavour) uses this phrase, simply substitute the word's 'tax payers credit card' for 'public purse' and then re-read the sentance.

My biggest concern is that Labour now seem to have reached the stage of being comfortable talking about government effectively seizing private assets with no compensation, once governments start heading down that path, forgive me if I am very concerned about where it ends up.

I don't think Corbyn and McDonnell ever found a problem for which their solution wasn't more state control, more taxation (or indeed just plain seizure of assets now) and more government spending.

Filo25 wrote: »

My biggest concern is that Labour now seem to have reached the stage of being comfortable talking about government effectively seizing private assets with no compensation, once governments start heading down that path, forgive me if I am very concerned about where it ends up.

I am starting to reduce my allocation to UK stocks, shuffling assets around generally to better insulate myself from GBP currency effects, and further I am also investigating options for living in other countries so that I can leave the UK quickly if the need arises.

Paranoid? Perhaps. Probably, even. It is possible that Labour have made themselves less electable, not more so, with this ill-thought through expropriation scheme. The most surprising part to me is that it is barely concealed behind the very flimsiest of lies. Given that political parties are of course going to lie to me -- Labour is not alone in that; all of them do -- I would prefer that they at least do me the courtesy of coming up with something relatively convincing.

Although panic is rarely the best option, if you are going to do it you need to do it early, and with conviction. I have unflinchingly weathered any number of financial and political crises over the past two decades and never changed investing tack before. This may be about to change.