Finance TikTok tells you to optimise your ISA. The party you elect will do more to your financial position in five years than a decade of investment decisions. I graded every party on the economic evidence. Here are the numbers.
Graded on economic evidence only. The four things that determine your housing costs: supply, land reform, capital allocation, and tenant protection. No ideology. No party loyalty.
Legend: ✓ Pass | ~ Partial | ✗ Fail | ↓ Makes it worse. Full methodology and party-by-party analysis on Substack.
Five-year cumulative financial impact by household type. 2025 real prices. Rent, council tax, energy, rail, and — for homeowners — the gilt market impact on your mortgage. Select the profile closest to you.
Note for this profile: Gilt yields drive fixed mortgage pricing, not the Bank Rate. The Reform figures below include the gilt market impact on your next remortgage. See Section 3 for the mechanism.
Finance TikTok tells you to watch the Bank of England base rate. But your 2 and 5-year fixed mortgage is priced off gilt yields — government bonds. When markets lose confidence in fiscal sustainability, gilt yields rise. Your mortgage follows within weeks.
Bank of England research: every 25 basis points added to gilt yields costs a £250,000 mortgage holder approximately £50 more per month on remortgage. We saw this in real time with the Truss mini-budget in September 2022 — gilt yields spiked, mortgage products were pulled from the market within 48 hours. The Bank Rate at the time was 2.25% and had nothing to do with it.
IPPR analysis confirms: UK gilt yields were already 40–80 basis points higher than comparable economies after the 2024 election, on a relatively modest fiscal deterioration. Reform's programme has a £100bn+ unfunded hole. That would add 75–100 basis points. On a £280,000 mortgage renewing in year 2: +£9,540 over your next 5-year fix.
Our programme reaches surplus by year 3. Conservative estimate: 30bp compression, saving £3,060 on the same fix.
Sources: Bank of England gilt transmission research; IPPR analysis of UK gilt risk premium post-2024 election; IFS Reform UK manifesto assessment. Full methodology on Substack.
Thirteen policies, an OBR-defensible fiscal model, household bill projections, and the full structural argument. All on Substack.