Quote Originally Posted by Montmorency View Post
A reasonable contribution, though many of these are contested, for example the statistical relevance of Labour-LibDem competition. Most broadly, I'm sure the trick Corbyn wants to pull off is to out-organize the Tories on the ground and close the polling gap in the immediate runup to the election - as he did in 2017.




The tactic being used here by some energy and water companies is to transfer operational ownership (not "share ownership," I'm not aware of a way that a company can do that without actually buying back shares) to holding entities in countries outside the EU with which the UK has bilateral investment treaties (or parties to the Energy Charter Treaty, which covers basically all of Europe). The motivation is to have a backstop in the form of recourse to treaty claims to arbitration, because most of these treaties reference "fair market value" with respect to nationalization and enable legal challenges in various forms against governments. I don't know how likely such arbitration would be to come in favor of the private owners, but the prospect of drawn-out litigation is clearly leveled as a deterrent to any perceived undervaluation by a Labour government. However, I don't see how any of this forecloses nationalization.

They have undertaken a share for share exchange, so yes, it looks as though the shares are now owned by a foreign held entity.

What are tariff prices? Prices on imported electricity?

Whether you agree with it or not the purpose of nationalization goes beyond providing marginal relief to consumers.

How are council taxes assessed now, and how important are they? Looking at various info pages, council taxes (a fee for living in a neighbourhood basically) are already assessed according to property valuation. Which seems kind of daft to me, since I gather that renters are subject to the same tax as owners. Or am I wrong?
Tariff prices already exist for some in the UK (generally the poor) and basically stipulate the price something can be sold at. I know that Nationalisation would go further and there is the belief that doing so is of itself going to magically make things better.

Council taxes are assessed by property valuation - BUT the top bracket is c. £500,000 whereas houses go into the tens of millions. So the richer you are the less it matters. Hence why so many rich foreigners like buying property in the UK with the mix of lax oversight, opaque ownership, the asset over time appreciates and the costs of ownership as a percentage to value drop the more it is worth. What renters are subject to is what they agree with the landlord. My house has a large mortgage on it. The bank doesn't pay its share of the council tax either. You could split the taxes into a council tax for living n the area and a property tax for the dwelling itself. I doubt that would change anything.