The so-called TaxPayers’ Alliance is the most inappropriately named organisation in British politics. The right-wingers connected to this front for rolling back the state, who are intent on disabling government, don’t seem to want to pay any tax. And it’s not much of an alliance when its niche is the millimetre between the rantings of the Adam Smith Institute and the ravings of the Institute of Economic Affairs – a couple of Margaret Thatcher’s favourites which, alas, are still with us.
I’m loathe to give the TaxPayers’ Alliance the satisfaction of fresh oxygen of publicity, except that I hear its bigwigs aren’t as thick-skinned as they pretend, resenting criticism of their campaign to let the devil take the hindmost which, in their ugly world, would be most of us who rely on public services.
I’ll grudgingly acknowledge that the organisation is very successful when it comes to winning publicity, which is what it does best, providing rent-a-quotes to any journalist unable to find an authoritative figure to give a comment when they’re trying to stand-up a story. Every response from the TaxPayers’ Alliance should carry a health warning, but its misleading title is all readers, listeners and viewers are given.
I’d love to see its accounts to discover who funds the outfit, so if you’re reading this and have access to a copy, please send them on. The backers aren’t the decent people I encounter at meetings on child poverty, housing or employment rights and I suspect they’re more likely to be at the Tory than the Liberal Democrat conference. So I hereby appeal for names and amounts.
But the slashers and burners calling themselves the TaxPayers’ Alliance are learning all publicity isn’t good publicity. Their unfounded criticism of initiatives to stop kids getting into trouble, such as organising street football on estates, has been exposed in the past. I remember hearing one of its mouthpieces being ridiculed on Radio Newcastle for criticising a community scheme. And I enjoyed on Radio 5 discovering that a young man in the studio condemning what he dismissed as useless degrees had studied philosophy. That explained why he was toiling for the TaxPayers’ Alliance instead of doing a proper job.
Where it’s really overstepped the mark, however, is the report published with the Institute of Directors demanding £50 billion of cuts.
That £50 billion championed by the unpleasant duo smacks to me of a round figure selected to work back from – big enough to earn a few headlines and include most of their favoured targets. So the axe would be swung for children’s centres, tax credits, education maintenance allowances, child benefit, jobs galore, rises in state pensions, building schools and increases in public sector wages. It was a right-wing wish list – the wet dream of an extremist imagining a world without rights and services getting in the way of employers hiring and firing without paying tax.
The only two items for the chop that I agreed with were national identity cards and Eurofighter, but I’ll put that down to a coincidence. Even right-wingers throwing dozens of darts are likely to hit the target now and again.
This report demands more publicity. It’s so off-the-wall that it exposes the TaxPayers’ Alliance as prejudiced against intervention to extend opportunities, to make Britain a fairer country. It’s nothing to do with taxpayers and everything to do with the wealthy paying little or no tax. Hedge fund managers, bankers and the few earning upwards of £150,000 a year might have much to gain from what this unsavoury gang campaign for. Ordinary taxpayers would lose the help and services they rely on.
Britain’s two Vauxhall car plants were sold by a United States company to a Canadian and Russian consortium with German Chancellor Angela Merkel oiling the wheels of the deal.
No wonder Unite co-leader Tony Woodley is worried about jobs when globalisation has left Ellesmere Port and Luton vulnerable to cuts the British Government will have little influence over unless Peter Mandelson tips a dumper truck of used notes in the foyer of the new owners’ building.
Gordon Brown must rue putting so many of Labour’s eggs into financial services instead of the manufacturing sector. Germany and France, both of which nurtured industries and are proud to control takeovers and hold public stakes in important firms, are out of recession. Britain, which worshipped the City of London, with Thatcher’s Big Bang baby turning into a wild adult under Labour, is lagging behind.
Rover being dropped into the hands of the Phoenix Four in 2000 when BMW offloaded Longbridge – with a healthy dowry, it should be remembered – proved to be a disaster. Re-nationalisation might not have staved off closure but, after investigators stripped bare the pillaging of the motor manufacturer, who could argue public ownership would have been worse?
Bank shares are edging up in value and holy goat Lord Myners (he is to study theology) may have the last laugh when he claimed the Government may find itself sitting on “a nice little nest-egg”. Brown should resist his instinct to sell the state’s stake before the general election. Cars and banks both make the case for public ownership.
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