Transcript of 📰 Sky News Press Preview | Friday 18 October

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Welcome back. You are watching the press preview. A first look at what's on the front pages as they arrive. It's time to see what's making the headlines with Conservatives Homes Deputy Editor, Henry Hill, and the Daily Mirror economist, Susie Boniface. They'll be with us from now until just before midnight. So let's see what's on some of those front pages for you now. The mirror reflects on Sheryl's heartache, carrying a tribute from the former partner of the late One Direction singer, Liam Payne. The Sun speaks to a source who describes what the paper calls Liam's brave bid to get clean from drugs and alcohol. The Express leads with what it calls fresh fury at the number of migrants crossing the channel and the death of a baby yesterday, with the headline, How many more will die before we stop boats. Looking ahead to the budget, the eye says the Chancellor is expected to freeze income tax thresholds again, which will raise billions for the Treasury, but also drag many more people into paying tax. The story is also front-page lead for the Financial Times. The Times says the move would push a million people into paying higher rates of tax.

The Mail describes a reported increase to air passenger duty as a tax raid on your holidays. While the Telegraph predicts what it calls a triple tax whammy, with hits on fuel duty, income tax thresholds, and increased inheritance tax. And the Star mourns the demise of tea drinking, because apparently, most Brits now prefer coffee. The important stories of the day. A reminder that by scanning the QR code you'll see on screen during the program, you can check out the front pages of tomorrow's newspapers while you watch us. And we are joined tonight by Henry Hill and Susie Bonnerface. Tea or coffee? Tea.

Tea or coffee.

Coffee.infidel..

I know.

Kelt surprise that you don't agree. Let's start with the FT, and the allegation that Rachel Reeve is looking to keep the freeze on tax threshold, thereby dragging many more into a higher tax are banned. Yeah.

So this is effectively probably going to be Richie Sunak's most abiding legacy because it was he who originally unlinked the tax thresholds. What this means is that effectively, the income tax thresholds are pegged to your nominal income, i. E, the number, rather than the real value of your salary. With inflation, pushing up the face value of your salary, but not actually how much you can buy with it, that means effectively what's happening in practice is that the income tax rate is ratcheting downward slightly every year. That means that for anyone close to the threshold, and I think the figures here are in total, about a million people will be dragged from one threshold into another, that means that they're going to be paying more in tax. Now, the difficulty for labor is that Technically, this isn't a tax rise. The Tories went really hard on it not being a tax rise when they fought the general election campaign. That is nonsense, no matter what party says it. But Rachel Reeves said that as much a few months ago. She was saying that freezing income tax threshold was a stealthy has tax on working people. Given that she's been elected on a manifesto that promises not to increase tax on working people, that makes life difficult.

A bit difficult, doesn't it? Really, because they're extending a conservative policy.

They are. What's interesting here, especially what we've seen with the Labor government up to now is that they've been really bad at getting their message across, or it was certainly getting it across in a way that was remotely positive. It seems quite negative, I think we've got to say. What you've got is not just allegations, it's not just the FT, it's pretty much all the main conservative papers was the Times, the Telegraph, the Mail, have got the same line, which usually indicates that an official has been briefing, and the FT says someone who is briefed on Reeves' thinking, for example. So it would appear to be that this is labor rolling the pitch, as it's known, just letting it, just getting the word out to some chosen journalists, this is the thing that might be in the budget so that all the furore about it happens now. And then when the budget happens, they can have, hopefully, some press or publicity about something else that's in the budget, which they would hope would be a slightly better, happier, perkier story. The thing is with this income tax threshold business, a fiscal drag, as it's known, it is something which the Tories have We've been doing for years.

It's something which in May, Labor and the Tories both said before the election, they were not going to change. Richie Sunacks said after the pandemic, it was 2021, he said he was going to spend four years. This was he's going to freeze the threshold. More people are going to be paying this tax. Jeremy Hunt then extended it by another two years. And now what we're hearing is that Reeves is talking about extending it for another two years again. So effectively, we've all just voted for a change of government, and they're doing exactly the same thing as the last lot. I'm sure Chris Slummer would argue about some of the detail on what they're doing. But fundamentally, in terms of your personal income tax, it does seem a bit like same old, same old.

You can have your government in any color you want as long as it's the Treasury.

And it does seem like a massive view turn, doesn't it, really? Because Reeve, she admitted that freezing income tax threshold did amount to a tax on working people last year. She admitted that.

Not just that. She said, When people are dragged into higher tax brackets, that is a sign of failure. She said. That wasn't said a long time ago before circumstances changed. It was said a few months ago about exactly this policy.

When they knew they were going to come into office. Personally, I don't think I'd be surprised if at any point in the medium term, future any party brought this back because the way that freezing income tax thresholds happened was really unusual. It's basically, historically, one of the only times a government was ever defeated on a budget. Basically, way back in the late '70s, two Labor MPs, one of whom Jeff Rooker, is still in the lords, proposed an amendment to a budget saying we should freeze income tax thresholds, and the Tories thought, Hold on, we can defeat the government. And so that's the way it happened. No government is voluntarily going to choose to get rid of a revenue raise of this easy. So the ridiculous thing was promising it. The ridiculous thing was going into that election when they were 20-ish points ahead in the polls, they were definitely going to win, offering all of these hostages to fortune, which now are going to be played back at them endlessly over the next four years.

But I guess technically, it isn't a tax rise. That's the defense.

Well, this is the What Rachel Reeves would say is that this is what Jeremy Hunt and Richie Sunak baked in several years ago. They said it was going to last till 2028. So she's just saying, I'm doing what you guys did over the other side of the island. There's nothing I can do about it. This allegation or the stuff that's been briefed last day is that she's going to extend it by another two years. I suspect what you might hear in the budget is when she stands up, she's going to say, I'm going to continue with what the Tories over there did till 2028, and then we will review We may think about extending, but hopefully we won't have to, because by that point, remember, they would be one year out from the next election, so they would like to be able to unfreeze that then, I would have thought.

It seems very unlikely. Technically, if you're in court, it's not a tax rise. But in reality, that's ridiculous. During the general election, for example, Rishi Sunak accused labor of planning to tax pensions. What that actually meant was that this, the massive stealth tax on everyone else, he'd proposed to exempt pensioners from it, and Labor hadn't. So he was creating, and this was the way the Tories did effectively every time the Tories were claiming to make a tax cut by the end of the last Parliament. What they actually meant was they were creating some exemption from the massive de facto tax rise that fiscal drag represents. So technically, not a tax cut. In reality, millions of people are going to be paying more to the Treasury on exactly the same income.

Just staying with tax briefly, both the Telegraph and the Mail, the Telegraph looking at the tax triple whammy, the Mail saying our holidays are under threat.

Well, they're talking about possibly increasing air passenger duty, which is a fee or tax that you pay on top of your holiday price. Seeing as, I think, the reason that inflation has just dropped very, very slightly is because mainly there's been a drop in air passenger ticket prices. That is the thing that's caught the inflation come down. They think maybe some room there to do it. But actually, what's happened with air passenger duty is it's come out that there has been a request going out for the data on this back to the Treasury, plenty they're looking at finding somewhere around it. That's a bit of an assumption. But also talk about raising inheritance tax somehow. Perhaps at the moment, I think it's over... This estate is over, help me, Henry, £325,000? Just about. I think, and 650 if you're a married couple that you have to pay 40% tax on. Maybe they're going to have a higher band or something where someone who's got a £40 million property. Some places like that exist now in this country that would pay the same inheritance tax for inheriting that as if you're inheriting a-That property is in a trust.

750,000, and registered in a different country.

This is the real problem with it. They went into the election promising not to raise any of the big revenue taxes, income tax, EAT, and national insurance, which means that they're stuck with stuff like fiscal drag. Then a load of taxes which basically don't raise much or any money. Inheritance tax really never raises that much because the main thing it does if you target the people who are really rich is that they just pay better accountants to avoid it. Then fuel duty, which I think was mentioned in one of the papers in their passenger duty, they don't raise that much money and they affect a lot of people. If you're somebody who has to drive to get to work to drop your kids to school, you'll feel a fuel duty rise, or at least you think you will. If you're somebody who wants to go on holiday and is saving up and it's a cost of living crisis, you'll be irritated by the APD rise. So they're spreading a lot of low-level pain politically because they haven't got the ability, because of their own manifesto commitments, to just bite the bullet. And so we're going to raise national insurance by X, which would at least be one story.

Let me Let us go stateside now. We can take viewers to America. And this is a story on the front page of the FT Weekend. Regarding Donald Trump and his campaign, they are prediction markets. The named one here is Polymarket, who were actually giving him a 62% lead.Explain.

What's happening.There's some interesting things that have happened in the predictions for the White House in the past couple of weeks. A fortnight ago, it was pretty clear the polls were, although it was neck and neck in some states, that Harris was probably going to win the popular vote by some margin. The issue was whether she was going to be able to take the Electoral College to take power, and the betting markets were reflecting that. In recent weeks, betting markets, including Polymarket, but others as well, have seen a small number of individuals placing large amounts of bets, large big sums on Trump to win. The belief is that this isn't done necessarily. It could be because they're true believers, and they just think he's going to win. But there's a concern that actually is being done in order to influence those markets, to make it look like he's to change the odds, to make it look like he's more popular than he is, the Bookies say Trump's a winner, and that in turn is then being used by some of Trump's supporters in the States to talk up his chances of success. Harris and Trump are in the situation at the moment where it's so close, they both need to get their base out to vote for them.

Trump's base, if he's going to motivate them, need to see him as a winner. And so the theory is that if a couple of people with big deep pockets are influencing the betting markets to make him look like a winner, and conservative commentators in the US are then saying, Oh, he's a winner. The bookies think he's going to win. Somehow the Trump voters are more likely to go to the poll and actually make him win. And when it comes to a few thousand votes here or there in some swing states, it might make a difference, which is the theory behind this, whether or not it's true.

Who knows? But how did the electorate know what's true? I mean, if this is manufactured.

Well, I mean, the betting markets are not a scientific opinion polling. They're always a little bit voodoo. I mean, any voter who's assessing it on the basis of this. Also, this isn't a bookie. I'm not going to pretend to know exactly how this works. This is a crypto exchange in which people can buy shares that pay out one way or another? No idea how that works.

It's a gamble of some sort. All share trading is gambling.

But what I mean is that there's no traditional bookmaker on the other side of it. It could be that there's stuff in this report that says that They all seem to write in a similar way. It could simply be that this is one person who's spreading across multiple accounts because if they're a sincere tree believer who's just trying to make money, they don't want that one big whale by, which then moves everything too quickly because if it's smaller, they can get those better odds quicker. But in terms of electoral interference, the largest purchase here was, I think, $30 million. That could almost certainly, given America doesn't have spending limits, if you went to Trump's Pennsylvania campaign and gave it $30 million, you probably do more to actually shift the election than moving polymarket. So my personal suspicion on balance of probability is this is simply a very rich Trump voter or several thereof, trying to make a quick buck on an unregulated market. But it could be something.

Yeah, and maybe it could also be putting their thumb on the scales to some extent.

So do you think that that's what the motivation is then? It would be a Trump-I think it's someone who maybe is thinking...

It's obviously somebody who's got 30 million to spend. It's not very many of them. It's someone who thinks Trump is going to win or who wants Trump to win, or so to make him look like he's going to win, they don't want to donate to a particular pack in Pennsylvania or Georgia or Carolina or anywhere else. They want to do this because they also want to try and put something in their pockets at the end of the day if he does manage to win. The actual odds you can get at the moment for bookmakers are getting shorter by the second. You're better off now putting your money on Harris in terms of getting a return. But the thing is, it does change It changes the way people talk about it. It changes the conversation. It changes the way journalists and commentators on all sides of the debate start talking about it. Trump looks like a winner. The book, you think, he's got the odds of this and the odds of the other. And it changes the conversation. It changes the perception publicly. So it does actually start seeping through.

That's more of an us problem than a them problem. Yes, it is.

But it does have an impact.

But it's the same thing with financial markets that you can talk the markets up or down. So, yes, talk is very important. Susie and Henry for the moment. Thank you very much. Coming up. It's emerged that Liam Payne was seeking help for substance abuse issues in the months before he died. We'll discuss that and more tributes to him today when we come back. Stay with us.

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Welcome back. You are watching the press preview. Still with me, Henry Hill and Susie Bonnerface. Let's take a look at the front page of the Sun, and obviously, tributes still coming in to Liam Payne, the X1 Direction star who tragically died in Buenos Aires. This is a revelation that's come out since his death, that he was actually trying to rid himself of addictions. Susie.

Liam spoke quite a lot about the problems he had with substances and with alcohol. And he had more than one attempt at rehab, and for a variety of reasons, never stuck with it for very long. And the fact that there are an awful lot of people out there who are very upset about what's happened to him, and I'm sure he's got family, he's an uncle, he's a father, he's a boyfriend, and there are other people to be very upset as well. But while there are lots of people paying tribute to him, and I'm sure that the other members of One Direction who grew up with him, who were teenagers when they were forced together to become a boy band and then had this astonishing experience as they were growing up and becoming young men, have an awful lot in common with him. And feel it very deeply. When I hear tributes from people like Simon Cowell, who is part of this horrible process of manufacturing very young people and creating a product and making millions and millions of pounds out of it, and then something like this happens at the end, I do tend to think that, do you even realize what you're doing?

I've been a journalist for 30 years. I've seen Fame. I've seen people who want to be famous. I've seen people who crave it. I've seen people who've had it. I've seen people who've got it. I've seen people who've lost it. And not one of them has ever really been truly happy, I think.

You can't hold Simon Cowell responsible.

I don't hold him responsible, but I do feel that there should be a moment in which the music industry in general goes Is 14 too young? Is 16 too young? Is 17 too young? At what point are we going to... When we start giving them help for the fact that they're going to be locked in hotel rooms, they can't come out because they're screaming fans outside and there's a minibar, as Liam said himself. How are we going to give them help in that situation? How are we going to get their families and their support network around them? How are they going to make sure this doesn't keep happening? Because it happens again and again and again, and it has to find a way to stop rather than just someone has a It's a tragic ending like this and people come out and pay tribute and blah, blah. How do you fix it?

We are told now that those support networks have been built into the infrastructure of shows such as Simon Cowell's and that there is support, and they are given what they need, essentially, to traverse this journey towards fame.

I think the problem with anything like that is just assessing what people need, because obviously, that will be very different for each person. And even if you do take them through the show, and from what I've heard, and I'm not entirely familiar with the story, but from what I've heard from interviews with other people who are on, actually, the support network on the show was fairly good. Ultimately, if you launch someone into a career in pop stardom, You're not responsible for them forever. And they are just going to have endless opportunities to go astray, because they've got the money and they've got the fans, and they'll be surrounded by flunkies and yes men. It is actually incredibly difficult in those circumstances for anyone to build up a support network because they don't have the thing that we all need in life, which is people who can say no, people who can call them on their nonsense and all the rest of it. And I don't know if that's necessarily soluble. I mean, to go back to the story on the sun, it says he went into the Priory, which is the great rehab clinic for the stars, and he left after two days.

Now, he's an adult man. He can leave unless you've got a way of committing him, effectively. If you read about people who deal with the substance abuse in the mental health sector more widely, if you commit them temporarily, they often will get better because you simply do not give them access to the self-destructive cycle. But you then have to release them. As a grown man, he had to make his own decisions. While it is tragic, I don't think there is a safety net that we can leave.

I think part of the problem is that people who want Fame, who go to audition these things by their nature, have something that they wish they think they can be fixed by becoming famous. And part of the problem is they have this whole fairy tale built around them.

Susie and Henry. Thank you.

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The most significant day of this conflict. They keep telling us that they want me. This is what's left of it.

Don't necessarily call. Why only in America? People want their country to work. They want a job in a normal life. Why are these homes empty?

I want you to be honest with people. That has happened within minutes.

Sky News, the full story first. Free wherever you get your news.