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Welcome back
Welcome to the first TaxPayers’ Alliance bulletin of 2026! On behalf of the whole TPA team, I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and a relaxing break. While our guys may have decamped to their families far and wide, the wasting of taxpayers’ money took no rest and so TPA spokesmen could regularly be found popping up in the media calling out the latest nonsense, but more on that later.
A nation of taxpayers
Your favourite TPA podcast didn’t miss a beat over the break. First up, Duncan Barkes was joined in the studio by our very own Elliot Keck and Anne Strickland, alongside Joe Dinnage from CapX [[link removed]] and Matthew Bowles from the Prosperity Institute [[link removed]]. With the festive fizz flowing, there was banter and political predictions as the guests made their nominations for a variety of categories including Legend Of The Year, Pub Of The Year and Political Moment Of The Year.
Next up, Jonathan Eida sat down with Duncan and former professional footballer and campaigner, John Stiles. John, the son of 1966 England World Cup winner Nobby Stiles, discusses his campaign to get justice and support for ex-players suffering from the effects of neurodegenerative diseases caused by repeatedly heading the ball. With Nobby’s family having had to sell his World Cup medals to help fund his dementia care prior to his death, John and fellow campaigners want the football industry to set aside cash for future care for former players, and he does not think it’s something taxpayers should be having to pay for.
Listen to a nation of taxpayers on Apple Podcasts [[link removed]], Spotify [[link removed]], and YouTube [[link removed]].
It’s spending that’s the problem
If you happened to tune into GB News on Christmas Day, you may have seen a familiar face. Taking a break from the festivities, Elliot could be found in the studio pointing out why you might have felt the squeeze [[link removed]] that bit more this Christmas.
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With a third of Brits worrying about the costs of Christmas, Elliot rightly highlighted the growing tax burden and a refusal to get a grip on spending [[link removed]] by ministers: “It’s getting more difficult because politicians are choosing to make life more difficult for the British public and taxpayers rather than finding ways to cut the cost of providing government. Every single time politicians have difficult decisions to make, it’s difficult decisions they pile onto ordinary British families and British households.”
A few days later, John O’Connell was hitting the airwaves to hammer the message home [[link removed]]. With the Tories pledging tax cuts, John pointed to the need to also cut spending on Talk telling listeners: “There is this assumption in SW1 that we must spend a certain amount of money and we just need to pull different tax levers and go into peoples’ pockets to pay for it… In terms of the big cost pressures into the future, we’re looking at welfare, we’re looking at healthcare.”
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Tackling these big spending areas is absolutely key to delivering a leaner, more efficient state, that doesn’t leave hard-working Brits barely keeping their heads above water!
Money down the drain
If politicians are really struggling to find ways to save money, the expenses from members of the Scottish parliament (MSPs) would be a fine place to start. New figures revealed that expenses for MSPs soared to £27.5 million in 2024-25 including claims for a toilet seat, bleach, and a sponge scourer. [[link removed]]
Callum McGoldrick blasted the waste when he spoke to the Daily Mail: “Scots will be furious to see the credit card bills of their jumped up politicians escalate while services continue to suffer. The Scottish parliament has so far delivered little else other than higher costs, greater bureaucracy and an even higher tax burden than down south.” Politicians on both sides of the border need to clean up their acts before more taxpayers’ money is flushed away!
The OBR and the supply-side effects of government policy
Former TPA chairman and ex-treasury-and-city economist, Mike Denham, kicked off the new year with a blockbuster blog [[link removed]] this week, taking a deep dive into the importance of dynamic modelling when it comes to tax and spend decisions.
Mike uses his latest blog to look at the OBR’s baby steps towards better modelling and how they could go further: “Despite its more open approach to the supply-side effects, it seems clear that the OBR remains sceptical about the power of such effects. And while on one level its insistence on a sound evidence base is fair and reasonable, elsewhere in its work it makes judgements on all sorts of things where evidence is thin… Most of us understand that economic forecasting is difficult, requires judgement as well as econometrics, and is always subject to considerable error margins. At a time when the tax burden is reaching unprecedented peacetime levels, it surely makes sense to exercise some judgement, and give us a view on the supply side impact of the cumulative tax increase through the 2020s.” Check out Mike’s must-read blog here [[link removed]].
War on Waste
There are few areas of government better at wasting cash than the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the latest project they’re spending your cash on is no exception. The AHRC has handed over £850,000 [[link removed]] for researchers to look into “Africa’s ‘audiovisual history’.”
William Yarwood absolutely nailed it when he heard the news: “AHRC's funding record increasingly looks like a conveyor belt for activist scholarship that delivers no meaningful benefit to British taxpayers. AHRC should be defunded and abolished.” Quite right!
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