TORY proposals to share the proceeds of growth, in those distant sepia-days when the economy grew, were denounced as cuts in public services by the Prime Minister. Gordon Brown would unfold an envelope and jot down a few figures to show diverting resources into lower taxes would shut hospitals and close schools. Now Labour is committed to sharing the proceeds of growth, when growth returns, by increasing overall spending by less than the expansion of the economy.
It’s tax cuts all the way with Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg behaving like market traders shouting they’re selling the cheapest fruit and veg.
Labour is to pay for cut-price taxes by increasing borrowing until the economy recovers. The Tories would finance cuts by saving on unemployment – a fanciful boast that should have the trading standards taking them to court when dole queues are lengthening. And the Liberal Democrats would collect a pot to give away by increasing taxes on the rich and cancelling £20 billion of big projects from fighter planes to nuclear subs.
Credit where it’s due and the Clegg-Vince Cable package is the most progressive, nearest to the vote-winning promise of Barack Obama. The President-elect (a week on, it’s still exciting to be able to call him that) made “sharing the wealth around” a central plank of his platform.
Taxes on those earning in excess of $250,000 a year – that’s about £160,000 in our money –, are to be increased so those on low and middle earners will be decreased.
The back of my envelope says if Brown upped the top rate here by 10p to 50p in the pound at the Obama starting level, he’d grab around £3 billion which is not to be sniffed at. Introduce the new rate at £100,000 and he’d collect
£4.5 billion which would help hit poverty targets if redistributed.
End the £25bn of tax dodges exploited by the filthy rich and rapacious corporations that Richard Murphy identified in his landmark study for the TUC, and the PM can slash taxes for most families and pensioners and play fairy godfather to public services. Who said you can’t have it all?
Again Clegg-Cable are out in front when it comes to cracking down on tax scams, echoing Obama’s rallying cry to stop a wealthy minority exploiting British-run havens so they avoid paying their fair share.
On the stump, Obama regularly referred to Ugland House on South Church Street in Grand Cayman, a block housing thousands of corporations. It is the “the biggest tax scam on record”, declared the next tenant of the White House. “You’ve got a building in the Cayman Islands that supposedly houses 12,000 corporations”, said Obama in New Hampshire on 5anuary 5, 2008. “That’s either the biggest building or the biggest tax scam on record.”
The list of supposedly Great Britons who keep their loot abroad and use legal ruses to avoid coughing up is as long as my arm. I feel this urge to shout at the television every time I see Richard Branson draped in the Union Flag or BHS owner Phillip Green attacking financial chicanery. And don’t get me started on Aussie-American Rupert Murdoch lecturing a British government – Labour or Tory.
They must have been cheering in Switzerland when Lewis Hamilton was crowned world champion after he screeched out of Britain to a low-tax canton.
If Obama wins in the United States on a pay-up ticket, why not Brown in Britain? It’s a sure-fire winner. The fairness argument is so powerful I’d love to hear the Conservatives oppose it as the political wing of the hedge fund sharks. If only Alistair Darling would in next week’s Pre-Budget Report announce what he must know to be right. Alas, I’m not holding my breath.
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WHAT is it about defeated politicians? Stripped of power, or the prospect of power, they sound almost human. John McCain on Jay Leno’s The Tonight Show in the US showed a wit and warmth missing on the campaign trail when he was a Republican machine.
Asked how he was coping after losing the Presidential race, McCain replied he was sleeping like a baby: “I sleep two hours, wake up and cry. Sleep two hours, wake up and cry.”
It’s a very funny line that could have been written by a stand-up comic. It probably was crafted for him, but he delivered it smoothly and if McCain had shown more humour like that during the campaign we might not be celebrating Barack Obama’s stupendous victory.
In Britain John Major, Neil Kinnock and dear old Michael Foot are all treated with a respect absent when they sought our votes. Perhaps that’s because they no longer endure daily abuse in the public prints.
Tony Blair’s reputation is also recovering and he’ll be a good card for Gordon Brown to play during an election campaign. The exception is Margaret Thatcher. Ed Waugh’s play, Maggie’s End, about half the country celebrating (the other half mourns) her death will hopefully be staged in London next year on the 25th anniversary of the miners’ strike. It tells us all we need to know about she’s regarded.
