Relatively high income people can cope with increasing bills, rent, and food, but that means they aren't spending money at the pub or whatever, reducing economic activity. Those with lower incomes can't even afford food.

It's the economical equivalent of "beer got me into this mess, so it can damn well get me out of it"

Neither rent control, for all its long term issues, nor utility bill limits were something I remember being brought up.

Council tax in particular, I think isn't done by central government? Although it probably should be, given how messed up local council funding seems to be.

It's sort of based on house values, but that's values in 1990 so very little relevance to today, and its certainly not proportional -- someone in a £5m house pays just 3 times the amount someone in a £80k flat.

That's not likely to get many extra people into the pub, because there aren't that many people earning >£150k.

Those earning 55k a year used to, now they can't afford it.

(Marginal tax at 55k for a parent with 2 kids and a student loan is 69%, for someone on 150k who's probably paid off their loan it's 47%)

From 2010 to 2023

Minimum wage has risen 76%

House prices have risen 76%

State Pension is up 52%

Median earnings is up 45%

CPIH inflation is up 41%

NHS Band 7 salaries (41-47k) are up 37%

So, this is a bit of an odd case where they're kind of _blaming_ their base; it is hard to think of a demographic in England more likely to be a Tory voter than an early retired person.

Of course, they're doing this because telling early retired people to go back to work, while highly unlikely to be at all effective, is at least quite cheap, whereas dealing with chronic illness would involve fixing the NHS, which would be terrifyingly expensive.

Also, if you're the Tories, the very last thing you want to do is to draw people's attention to the state of the NHS. They've been in government for _13 years_; it's very much on them.

Messaging that the kidz and the early retired (aka someone else) need to do their bit for the country will make the 99% of people in the audience that are employed and working hard feel like the true patriots trying to save the country from the forces of evil that they are.

Doubling university places for medicine would be a very sensible move - but it'll take ~7 years before all the new medics are ready to practice. That's two elections in the future.

On the other hand, if you can tempt a retired doctor back into practice? They'll be treating people before the next election starts.

Of course, I doubt it'll work - wasn't the retired-doctors silver bullet already fired, during the pandemic?

The other thing is junior doctors can't progress forward in their training and career as there is limited training slots for specialization. So they end up logjammed being in the low rung doing scutwork at little pay.

Also doctors pay has not kept up with inflation for the last decade. Right now what they really want is full pay restoration but the government isn't budging.

There is a Reddit subreddit where UK jr doctors chat about this stuff and its very enlightening.